AND THE LORD WILL DRIVE OUT ALL

THESE NATIONS FROM BEFORE YOU, AND YOU WILL POSSESS NATIONS GREATER AND

STRONGER THAN YOU. EVERY PLACE UPON WHICH THE SOLES OF YOUR

FEET WILL TREAD, WILL BE YOURS: FROM THE DESERT AND THE LEBANON, FROM THE RIVER, THE EUPHRATES RIVER,

AND UNTIL THE WESTERN

SEA, WILL BE YOUR

BOUNDARY. NO MAN WILL STAND UP BEFORE YOU; THE LORD YOUR

GOD WILL CAST THE FEAR OF YOU AND THE DREAD OF YOU ON ALL THE LAND UPON WHICH

YOU TREAD, AS HE SPOKE TO YOU.

(Devarim

11: 23-25)

No man will stand up – within these boundaries.

(RaShBaM

Devarim 11:25)

No man will stand up

before you – not even

outside the Land.

(Seforno

ad loc)

as He spoke to you – and when did He speak? [In the verse,] I

shall send the fear of Me before you (Shemot 23:27).

(Rashi

ad loc)

I shall send the fear of

Me before you – Just as the rich blessing of health and

strength will show themselves as the direct acts of God, so will this same

power of God effect the weakening and destruction of the inhabitants who are to

disappear from the land that you favor. For both your healthy rise and their

decline and fall you have only to thank your moral submission to the dictates

of God's will. It seems that if Israel, right from the beginning, had kept up

to the heights of their calling, and had not, by repeated disobedience, shown

that they required an educative guidance and management, and hence one full of

trials, they would not have had to wage any wars to conquer their land. The

inhabitants of the land destined for Israel,

who, by their degeneration, were doomed to destruction, would have vanished

from the land by means that God would have used, and Israel, the people of God's law, would

simply have taken root in the land.

(Rabbi

S.R. Hirsch on Shemot 23:27, Levy translation)

My strength and the might of my hand

Pinchas Leiser

The

renewal of Jewish settlement in the Land

of Israel, and even more

pointedly, the establishment of the State of Israel, reacquainted the Jewish

People with the need to use force (not taking into account, of course, the

armed rebellions on the ghettoes of the Holocaust period). The establishment of

the State of Israel in a territory which – despite one of the false slogans

attributed to Lord Balfour, "A land without a people to a people without a

land" – was partially settled by members of another people, created a

situation of national conflict that grew violent through the years and has yet

to be resolved.

In

this connection it is interesting to note that the Haredi rabbinic world

opposed the Zionist movement and the project of establishing the State of

Israel before the Messiah's arrival. This approach was given its sharpest

expression by the Satmer Rebbe, Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, principally in his book,

VaYoel Moshe and in an essay he published following the Six Day War,

titled Al HaGeula Ve'al HaTemura.

In

his writings, and especially in VaYoel Moshe, the Satmer Rebbe basis his

absolute rejection of Zionism upon the midrash of the "Three Oaths"

which he understood as giving halakhic instruction that opposes any struggle

for the creation of a Jewish state.

The

midrash is based upon three verses from the Song of Songs:

I

adjure you, O

arouse love until it please. (2:7)

I

adjure you, O

arouse love until it please. (3:5)

I

adjure you, O

why should you awaken, and why should you arouse love until it please?(8:4)

The

midrash on these verses takes the traditional exegetical approach to the Song

of Songs, interpreting it as an allegory for the relationship between God and

the Jewish People:

What

are these three oaths?

One

– that Israel

not ascend the wall,

and

one – that the Holy One, Blessed be He, adjured Israel not to rebel against the

nations of the world,

and

one – that the Holy One, Blessed be He, adjured the nations of the world not to

oppress Israel

overmuch. (Ketuvot

111a)  

Rabbis

and religious thinkers who supported Zionism, or who at least did not oppose it

on theological grounds, contended with the Satmer Rebbe's theological arguments

in various ways. Some of them viewed the "Three Oaths" as a midrashic

dictum lacking halakhic force. Others claimed that the oaths had been annulled,

since they had been transgressed by the nations of the world. Some rabbis held

that the expression "ascend the wall" refers strictly to the building

of the Temple

and does not prohibit massive aliyah and the founding of a state.

In 1925 a Jewish movement

called Brit Shalom was founded by a group of Jewish intellectuals. They strove

to promote Jewish-Arab coexistence by abdicating the right to establish the

Jewish national home in the Land

of Israel which had been

recognized in the Balfour Declaration. They favored the creation of a

bi-national autonomous body under the rule of the British Mandate in which Arabs

and Jews would enjoy full equality of political and civil rights.

Among

its members and supporters could be found Arthur Ruppin, the philosopher Martin

Buber, the philosopher Shemuel Hugo Bergman, the kabbalah scholar Gershom

Scholem, the educator Ernst Simon, and Yehudah Leib, the first president of the

Hebrew University. Other supporters included

the businessman Shlomo Zalman Schoken and the British statesman Herbert Samuel.

The movement became a marginal factor within Zionism after the majority of the Zionist

Congress rejected its views and sought the creation of a sovereign Jewish state,

freed of the British Mandate's authority. The Arabs were also unwilling to

collaborate with the movement and it was dissolved in 1930.

It

is not my intention in the context of this devar Torah to evaluate from

an historical perspective Brit Shalom's arguments against the establishment of

a Jewish state in the Land

of Israel. The State of

Israel is an existing fact and we should be glad for it, but there is no doubt

that these streams within Jewish thought brought up dilemmas which cannot be

ignored.

It

is interesting to turn to our parasha in order to see to what extent the Torah

warns us against the moral dangers that we are likely to contend with upon

entering the Land

of Israel.

In

chapter 8, verses 11 through 20, Moses points out one such problem:

First

Moses tells the Israelites that, the Lord your God is bringing you to…a land

bread without scarcity…and you will eat and be sated. Satiation

brings its own dangers: Beware that you do not forget the Lord, your God, by

of Egypt, out of the house of bondage…And then: you will say to yourself, "My strength and the

might of my hand that has accumulated this wealth for me." And if

you forget:

And it will be, if you forget the Lord

you perish; since you will not obey the Lord your God.

This

powerful statement identifies the attitude of My strength and the might of

my hand with you forget the Lord your God. It is an attitude which

leads the People Israel to ruin, leaving it to a fate not different from that

of the idolaters who had lived in the Land previously.

Later,

Moses mentions another danger awaiting the people upon their entry to the Land (Devarim 9:4-5):

Do

that the Lord swore to your forefathers, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

The

People Israel enters the Promised Land at the same time as other nations pay

for their sins by being expelled from it. The Israelites might deceive

themselves into thinking "It can't happen to us" because we are

better. In the verses just quoted Moses warns the people against this dangerous

illusion: You are not any better than the others. The peoples who inhabited the

Land were banished because of their deeds and the Land was given to you because

the Holy One blessed be He made a covenant with the patriarchs. However, the Land of Israel is a land upon which the Lord

your God sets His eyes; it is sensitive to the behavior of those who dwell

within it. It will vomit out those who practice injustice, and if you act in

the same manner as your predecessors, your fate will be similar to theirs.

Some

will say that these words were spoken by Moses as the will and testament of a

leader who knows that he lacks control of future events. The is no doubt that

the passages of rebuke in the Book of Devarim give human and literary

expression to the understandable worries of a leader who knows his time has

past. These passages are rife with pain and many midrashim describe the

difficulty with which Moses accepted his imminent death and the fact that he

would never enter the Land

of Israel.

However,

can we be satisfied with this literary and psychological reading, which makes

the passages of rebuke into nothing more than part of Moses' ancient biography?

I

think that it is possible for us to apply some of Moses' concerns and warnings

to every situation in which an exiled nation finds itself re-establishing a

sovereign and independent society on its own soil and must contend with new

challenges and dilemmas which it had not encountered while wandering in the

"wilderness." Wealth and plenty can be taken for granted;

achievements in various areas (security, science, technology, sport, and economics)

can cause moral blindness. After the Six Day War (as the songs of victory bear

witness) we became intoxicated with power and many of our leaders – and not

necessarily the stupid ones – thought that "time is on our side." I

think that many of our leaders and a significant portion of the citizenry

eventually understood that this illusion might stem from the mindset of My

strength and the might of my hand.

Unfortunately,

voices can still be heard in the style of, "Let the IDF win,"

reflecting from the belief that all of our problems can be solved through

force, "And whatever can be solved through force can be solved by more

force." Even the Second Lebanon War did not raise any doubts in such

people's minds regarding the limits of power.

In

addition, the attitude of Because of my righteousness, the Lord has brought

me can still lead us today to the feeling that we are always justified in

everything we do. This arrogant attitude sometimes blinds us to the injustices

we perpetrate.

Do I

live with the illusion that the time has come to abandon the considered use of

force in dealing with genuine security problems? Unfortunately, we have not yet

arrived at such a time, but I think that at the mature age of 60 years we can

allow ourselves – and perhaps we are obligated – to stop turning a blind eye to

authentic moral dilemmas. We must appreciate the reasonable use of certain

means without glorifying them or turning them into an ideal, as the prophet

Zachariah (4:6) put it:

Not

by valor and not by power, but by My spirit,' says the Lord of Hosts.

And

Rabbi Avraham Ibn Ezra explains: Not by valor and not by power – As when

I saw the oil coming into being of its own account and burning, so the Temple

shall be built – not through Zerubavel's great power and numerous troops, but

rather through the Lord's spirit and assistance.

Pinchas Leiser,

editor of Shabbat Shalom, is a psychologist.

When you have eaten

the power to get wealth…

(Devarim 8)

It was not by their

sword that they took the land; their arm did not give them the victory.

(Psalms 44:4)

Remember that it

is the Lord your God who gives you the power to get wealth – It is

known that the Israelites are brave, courageous in battle, for they have been

compared to lions and to rapacious wolves, and they vanquished the kings of

Canaan in war, therefore He said, if you think My own power and the might

of my own hand have won this wealth for me, remember that it was

God who took you out of Egypt, and there you had no strength and power

what-so-ever. Remember further that you lacked the wherewithal to live in the

wilderness and there He provided you with all your needs. So too, this wealth

which you made with your strength, it is God who gave you the strength to

produce it. If you forget God, your strength and might will wither and you will

be lost just like them, for all who abandon God will be lost… and this is

what David said (Psalms 44:4) It was not by their sword that they took the

and Your goodwill, for You favored them.

(RaMBaN, Devarim 8:18)

It is written When you enter the land of Canaan that I give you as a

not give them the victory but rather the right hand of Lord is exalted in

order to give them the inheritance of nations, and it is out of place for the

begrudging to say My own power and the might of my own hand have won this

wealth for me, because it is God who gives you strength and this [wealth],

therefore it is proper that you give of His to the poor of His people. And if

you disobey his word, and become one of those begrudging people who credit

themselves for their possessions, then I will inflict an eruptive plague

upon a house in the land you possess, meaning: In that place where you

attribute the possession to yourself as if you are holding onto it with the

strength of your hand…

(Kli Yakar, Vayikra 14:34)

You shall devour

and Its Implementation

Initially the king is

to wage only a war of commandment, and what is a war of commandment? This is

the war against the seven nations, etc…

(RaMBaM, Hilkhot Melakhim,

5:1)

It is a commandment to

devote the seven nations to destruction, as is written: You are to devote

them to destruction, yes, destruction. Whoever has the opportunity to kill

one of them but does not do so transgresses a negative precept, as is written: You

are not leave alive any breath – and their memory is no more.

(RaMBaM, ibid. 5:4)

…Values have worth

and weight only in proportion to the difficulty by which they are attained and

the ease by which they are lost. This is the true religious and moral meaning

of our national revival and of the return of the possibility of use of power to

our hands. Now we are being tested, to see whether we are able not only to

suffer for those values we proudly profess, but also to live according to them.

It is easy to endure physical and material suffering for values, even to

sacrifice life; this demands only physical courage, and this is found in

surprisingly large degree in every human society. It is difficult to suffer for

the sake of values, when this suffering means conceding things which are considered

to be positive values – just needs and interests of the collective. The moral

problem exists only when there is a clash between the Good Inclination and the

Good Inclination; the eradication of the Evil Inclination by the Good

Inclination is difficult, but it is not problematic.

Very undemanding – and

therefore also cheap and pathetic – is morality which has reservations about

acts of violence and bloodshed when this morality is not accompanied by the responsibility for issues and values

for which – or in whose name – these acts are perpetrated and this blood is

spilled. Before the establishment of our State, we witnessed in our camp highly

moralistic persons, who came to the Land of Israel against the will of the

Arabs, and lived and worked there under the protection of the bayonets of the

British and the pistols of the Haganah, but the right of aliyah for

other Jews was made conditional upon the consent of the Arabs; aliyah by

force – without consent of the Arabs – they condemned it as immoral…

In our

religious-ethical soul-reckoning, we do not justify nor do we apologize over

the spilling of blood during war (when more of our blood is spilled than of our

enemies). The big problem arises with regard to the manner in which the war –

which continues till this day – is conducted, and with regard to what happens

after this war. The problem is immense and difficult: Since permission was

granted to employ "the profession of Esau" – the distinctions between

permitted and forbidden, between the justified and the improper, are very fine

– just like that "Handbreadth between Gan Eden and Hell," and we are

obliged to scrutinize and examine whether or not we have breached these

partitions.

(Y. Leibowitz: "Le'Ahar Kibiya",

1953, from Torah U'Mitzvot BaZeman HaZeh, pp.168-170)

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