life on earth
Praying
for
Our Enemies?
Tzvi Freeman
A
m I to pray for the brutal demise of the enemy? If the enemy is the dark evil of this world, pray for an end to evil. If the enemy is a human being, defend yourself, attack first if necessary, and pray that all your enemies will live, become your friends and fulfill the mission for which they were born: To join together to create a peaceful, harmonious world. Welcome to the inscrutable world of Judaism, where there are so few issues on which an honest, educated Jew cannot be conflicted. In Jewish Law, in ethics, in mysticism, in whatever field—even once an issue is resolved, it must take into account so many angles and conditions that very little can be said in a simple line or two, other than, "Hear O Israel, G‑d is our L-rd, G‑d is One." And as the paradigm of Jewishness, the Rebbe's approach was one that could never be pigeon-holed. In every assertion, its opposite lies; in every approach, the other road must be taken into account. And here you have touched one such perfect example. Just yesterday, a friend referred me to a talk in which the Rebbe discussed your question. This was in September of 1982, at the height of an incendiary war between Iraq and Iran that had begun to threaten the entire region with the fear of nuclear reprisals. "Nations are attacking one another," the Rebbe repeated again and again, "and the whole world teeters." He spoke of how some take a partial approach to the war, praying for "whatever is good, whatever that may be." He himself opposed such a position. War is not good, he said, because human lives are lost, and "... we are commanded to care for the poor even if they be idolators, together with our own— all the more so to care for their lives." The talk that followed gave us a remarkable look into the Rebbe's Weltanschauung. The Rebbe's words are not always smooth reading—filled with allusion and euphemism. I've translated from the Yiddish: Yes, there are violent people and terrorists in the world. But there is nothing that says the only way to deal with this is through taking their lives. Even when we speak of "the enemy and the avenger," our actions must be "to stop the enemy and the avenger."
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Meaning, to stop and to annul this that he is an enemy and avenger. In the language of the Talmud, "the sins should cease—not the sinners themselves." To the point that they will become friends of the Jews and assist us. As the promise concerning the Time to Come, "Strangers will arise and tend to your sheep"—although they are "strangers," that is not the emphasis. The emphasis is that they nevertheless tend to your sheep. You read that correctly—the Rebbe prays that the terrorists should become our friends. But does this mean we should not defend ourselves? On the contrary, the Rebbe took a zero-tolerance approach to self-defense. He rested his argument, as always, upon a legal ruling. Here is how he explained this to Rabbi Immanuel Jakobovits, then chief rabbi of the U.K., in a letter dated November, 1980: I am completely and unequivocally opposed to the surrender of any of the liberated areas currently under negotiation, such as Judah and Samaria, the Golan, etc., for the simple reason—and only reason— that surrendering any part of them would contravene a clear ruling found in Shulchan Aruch (O.C., Ch. 329, par. 6,7). I have repeatedly emphasized that this ruling has nothing to do with the sanctity of the land of Israel, with "the days of Moshiach," the coming redemption or similar considerations—but solely with saving lives. The Rebbe here refers to a ruling in the standard codification of Jewish Law that discusses a border town attacked by marauders. The ruling is that all that are able must go out, even on Shabbat, to fight with them—even if the marauders are only attacking to obtain straw. The reasoning behind this ruling is that once a border town has become vincible, life within those borders is endangered. The Rebbe generalizes this logic: In a situation involving danger to human life, the mitigating factor for determining action is exclusively how best to protect and save lives, and nothing else. Not how will we justify this, not how do we finance this, not what the world will say or what they will think of us. Just the protection of lives.
To drive my point: The source for this ruling is in the Talmud (Eruvin 45a). The example given of a border-town is the city of Neharde'a in Babylon (present-day Iraq) — clearly not in Israel. As I have emphasized time and again that it is a question of, and should be judged purely on the basis of, saving lives and not geography. The said ruling deals with a situation where gentiles (that is the term, not enemies) besiege a Jewish border-town, ostensibly to obtain "straw and chaff," and then leave. But because of the possible danger, not only to the Jews of the town, but also the cities, the Shulchan Aruch rules that upon receiving news of the gentiles (even only of preparations), the Jews must mobilize immediately and take up arms even on Shabbat — in accordance with the rule that "saving lives supersedes Shabbat." The Rebbe continues that the decision whether a particular concession will endanger lives or not must be left up to the experts. Just as in a medical question, the experts are the doctors, so in a military question, the experts are military experts. Yet even they are not to make political, economical or sociological considerations, but simply: the protection of human lives. Since all the experts he consulted agreed that returning the areas of Judah and Samaria would place many millions of lives in greater danger, the Rebbe was opposed. On the one hand, a hawkish view indeed: Not an inch of territory could be relinquished to the PLO. Even the very act of discussing territory, the Rebbe asserted, was enough to embolden the terrorists and endanger lives. Furthermore, the Rebbe would cite the Talmudic ethos of self-defense: "If someone is coming to kill you, rise early to kill him first." "Which means," the Rebbe insisted, "that it is possible to know that someone wants to cause mortal harm, and in such a case, one has the responsibility to prepare a preemptive attack." Yet, even here, the Rebbe noted that the dictum does not say that you must actually kill anyone, only that you must be ready to do so. They said, "Rise early to kill him," he pointed out, not, "Rise early and kill him." If you show that you are ready to attack first,
June 2021 / Tammuz 5781
