And it shall be, if you indeed heed my commands

with which I charge you today

 to love the Lord your God and to worship Him

with all your heart and with all your being

I will give you the rain or your land in its seasons

early rains and late,

and you shall gather in your grain and your wine and your oil…

Watch yourselves lest your heart be seduced and you

swerve

and worship other gods and bow to them.

(Devarim

11:13-16)

And I will give the rain of your land in its time – In the proper time for sowing and when you

find in it satisfaction, and so explained our Sages (Taanit

22b) "And I will give

you rains of your land in its seasons" – neither overly-saturated nor

thirsty but middling, for when the rains are heavy, the land becomes muddied

the earth and does not produce fruits. Another explanation of "in its

seasons" – on Wednesday nights and Shabbat nights., in the days of

Rabbi Shimon ben Shetach

rain would fall on Wednesday night and Shabbat night until wheat kernels

reached the size of kidneys, and barley kernels reached the size of olives, and

lentils like gold dinari, and the sages drew analogies

for future generations to illustrate how much sin can cause, as is written (Yirmeyahu

5:25) " It is your

inequities that have diverted these things, your sins that have withheld the

bounty from you" and so we find that during Herod's reign, while the

Temple was under construction, rain fell only at night, on the morrow the winds

blew and the clouds scattered, and the sun shined, and they would wake up and go

out to work, to declare that they were doing the work of Heaven.

 And you shall gather in your

grain and your wine – Our Sages homiletically interpreted (Berachot 35b), But is it not written (Joshua 1:8) "Let not the Book of the Teaching

cease from your lips"?, But, follow the usual custom of the land, a

time for this and a time for this, it is good that you hold on to this, but

do not neglect the other.

(Rabbeinu Behayey, Devarim

11:14)

Sum up what we have said concerning beliefs as follows: In some cases a

commandment communicates a correct belief, which is the one and only thing

aimed at – as, for instance, the belief in the unity and eternity of the deity

and in His not being a body. In other cases the belief is necessary for the

abolition of reciprocal wrongdoing or for the acquisition of a noble moral

quality – as, for instance, the belief that He, may He be exalted, has a

violent anger against those who do injustice, according to what is said: And

My wrath shall wax hot, and I will kill, and so on, and as the belief that

He, may He be exalted, responds instantaneously to the prayer of someone wronged

or deceived: And it shall come to pass, when he crieth

unto Me, that I will hear; for I am gracious.

(Rambam, The Guide

of the Perplexed III:28)

Not by might, nor by power,but by my spirit

Pinchas Leiser

Dedicated to our daughter Naama

and to Shachar,

in

honor of their marriage.

May they merit building a true Jewish home

within a just and peace loving Israeli society.

The renewal of Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael, and even more so,

the existence of the State of Israel, presented the Jewish people once again

with the need to employ force (excepting, of course,

the armed rising in the ghettoes during the Shoah).

The establishment of the State in a region partially populated earlier by

another people – in contrast to one of the misleading statements attributed to

Lord Balfour: 'A land without a people for a people with-out a land' – created

a situation of national conflict which, through the years, developed into a

violent conflict yet to be concluded,.

It is interesting, in this context, to note

that the chareidi (ultra-Orthodox) rabbinate objected

to the Zionist Movement and the establishment of the State of Israel prior to

the coming of the Messiah. The sharpest formulation of this approach was penned

by the Rabbi of Satmar, Rabbi Yoel

Teitlebaum, mainly in his book "Vayoel Moshe" and in the essay published after the Six

Day War "Al Hageulah V'al

Hatemura." In his writings, primarily in "Vayoel Moshe", the rabbi bases his firm opposition to

Zionism on the "Three Oaths" midrash

which he reads as halachic law negating struggle for

establishment of a Jewish state. The midrash

is based upon three passages in The Song of Songs:

I adjure you, O maidens of Jerusalem, by gazelles or by hinds of the

field, do not wake or rouse love until it please.

I adjure you, O maidens of Jerussalem,

by gazelles or by hinds of the field, do not wake or rouse love until it

please.

I adjure you, O maidens of Jerusalem, do not wake

or rouse love unitl it please.

This midrash

is built upon the traditional interpretation of The Song of Songs, which reads

the scroll as a metaphor for the relation between the Holy One and the

Congregation of Israel.

What are these three oaths?

One – That Israel not rise up on the wall.       

And one – that the Holy one

adjures Israel

not to rebel against the nations of the world.

And one – that the Holy One adjures the idolaters

not to oppress Israel

too much. (Bavli, Ketuboth 111a)

Rabbis and religious thinkers who supported

Zionism – or at least did not oppose it on theological grounds – coped with the

Satmar Rabbi's theological arguments in various ways,

Some saw the "three oaths" as aggadic texts without halachic significance.

Others argued that the oaths have already been voided, because the nations of

the world have already violated them. And there were also rabbis who

interpreted "not to rise up on the wall" as not building a Temple rather than as mass

immigration into Eretz Yisrael

and establishing a state.

A group called "Brit Shalom", a

movement established in 1925 by Jewish intellectuals, even sought to create co-existence

between Jews and Arabs by relinquishing the right to set up a national homeland

for Jews in the Land

of Israel, as formulated

in the Balfour Declaration. This movement called for the setting up a

bi-national autonomy under rule of the British mandate, one in which Arabs and

Jews would enjoy full equality of rights, political and civil. Among its members

and supporters were, among others, Arthur Ruppin, the

philosophers Martin Buber and Shmuel Hugo Bergman, Kaballa scholar Gershon Sholem, educator Ernst Simon, and the first president of the

Hebrew University, Yehudah

Leib Magnes. Other

supporters included businessman Shelomo Zalman Shoken and the British

statesman Herbert Samuel. This movement became marginal to Zionism after the

majority of the Zionist Congress rejected its views and sought to establish a sovereign

Jewish state under the British mandate. Among the Arabs, too, there was no willingness

to cooperate with this movement. In August 1930, the group disbanded.

Even Rabbi Aaron Shmuel

Timrat (1890-1931), who was a proponent of spiritual

Zionism and a critic of political Zionism and an especially acute opponent of

the glorification of force, pointed to the spiritual danger lurking for the Jewish

people:

How great the pain! How terrible the loss! If

there was a single nation in the world, Knesset Yisrael,

which longed for the vision of Isaiah: "No nation will lift a sword to another

nation" – along come our "Balfourian young

men [In the Hebrew original 'avreichim Balfouriim' – a caustic reference to Yeshiva students –

Trans,] and they dishonor that too… for the sword has not left the nations'

hand for a second, and they are sunk in battles and skirmishes from generation

to generation. The force of inertia pushes them to war. But that Jews should

suddenly crave the beauty of "the warrior's hip' wearing a sword – they

are degrading the prophet Isaiah with raised arm" (Timrat:

            Three Unethical Matches, p.

40, in: Holzer, E., A Double Edged Sword: Military Activism in

Religious Zionism. The Judaism and Israel

Series: Faculty of Law, Bar

Ilan University; Hartman Institute and Keter Publishing House Ltd., 260 pp. (Hebrew)

I do not intend, within the framework of this

dvar Torah, to examine the arguments of

the opponents of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel in a historical

perspective; the State of Israel is an existing fact and for this we bless the

Lord, but there is no doubt that these currents within Jewish thought raised

moral dilemmas to the surface, and it seems that we cannot ignore them.   

Our parasha can

prove an interesting lab for testing to what degree the Torah cautions us

against the ethical dangers awaiting us upon our entering the Land of Israel.

In Chap. 5, verses 11-20, Moshe points to a problem: "The Lord brings you

to a good land, a land of wheat and barley… a land where not in penury will

you eat bread , , , and you shall eat and be sated," And once sated: "Beware

you lest you forget the Lord your God and not observe His commandments… lest

you eat and be sated… and your heart become haughty and you forget the Lord

your God who has taken you out of the land of Egypt, the house of slaves"…

and then: "And should you say in your heart: My strength and the power

of my hand made me this wealth" For should you forget: "And

should you forget the Lord your God and follow other gods, and worship

them and bow down to them, I bear witness against you today that you shall surely

perish, Like the nations that the Lord causes to perish before you, so shall

you perish, inasmuch as you would not heed the voice of the Lord your God".

This stern statement identifies the position

of "my strength and the power of my hand" with "and you will

forget the Lord your God". This position leads the Jewish people to

destruction and its fate will be no different from that of the residents of the

idolatrous residents of the land. Further on, Moshe points to an additional danger

awaiting the people upon its entry into the land (Devarim 9:4-5):

Do not say in your heart when the Lord your

God drives them back before you,         saying,

"Through my merit did the Lord bring me to take hold of this land and

through     the wickedness of these

nations is the Lord dispossessing them before you. Not through

your merit nor through your heart's rightness do you come to take

hold of their land but through the wickedness of these nations is the Lord our

God dispossessing them before you and in order to fulfill the word that the

Lord swore to your fathers to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.

An Israelite nation entering the promised land, when other nations have been evicted because

of their sins, is liable to deceive itself and think "It will not happen

to us", because we are better. In these passages, our teacher Moshe

warns the people against this dangerous illusion: You are not better;

the natives were expelled because of their behavior, the land was given to you

because the Holy one entered into a covenant with the Patriarchs, but Eretz Yisrael, a land "where

the eyes of the Lord your God are upon it" is sensitive to the behavior of

all who dwell upon it, it vomits the evildoers, and if you behave as did your

predecessors, your fate will be similar to theirs.

Some might say: These words were said by our

teacher Moshe for his particular time, in the context of a final testament of a

leader aware of what will happen in a future not under his control, There is no

doubt that the admonitions in the Book of Devarim

reflect, on a human and literary level, the understandable concern of a leader

who knows that his time has passed; there is much pain in these chapters, and

many midrashim describe Moshe's difficulty in

accepting death and the fact that he will not enter the Land of Israel.

But are we to be content with this literary

and psychological reading, seeing in these words only the story of Moshe and

his generation? It seems to me that we can apply some of Moshe's concerns and

his warnings to every historical situation that a nation exiled from its land

has to cope with when establishing a sovereign and independent society on its

land, with new challenges and dilemmas not faced "in the desert". A

condition of plenty and wellbeing are liable to be taken for granted; accomplishments

in various fields (security, science, tech-nology,

sport, economics) are liable to engender moral blindness. After the Six Day War

– and the many songs of victory are testimony to this – the sense of power-intoxication

grew, and somehow many of our leaders – and not necessarily the less

intelligent among them – believed that "time works in our favor". Many

of our leaders and not inconsiderable segments of the nation understood sooner

or later that this illusion is rooted in "my strength and the power of my

hand." Sadly, this faith that all our problems can be solved by the

employment of force and that "what doesn't work with force will work with

more force' is still found among some of us. Even the Second Lebanon War did

not succeed in arousing some degree of doubt regarding the limits of power. Even

more – the statement "in my merit did the Lord bring me" is liable to

instill in us the feeling that we are always right in whatever we do. This

feeling sometimes blinds us to the inequities done by us as a result of this

arrogance.

Rav Kook was also aware of the moral and

spiritual danger hidden in the return to "world politics":

We left world politics due to coercion, which

contained inner desire, until the arrival of a fortuitous hour, when it will be

possible to lead a kingdom without wickedness and barbarism; this is the time

for which we hope. It is understood that in order to realize it, we must awaken

with all our forces, to utilize all means which the hour provides, all

controlled by the hand of God, creator of all worlds. But the delay is a necessary

one; our soul is disgusted by terrible sins of government in bad times. Now the

time has come, very close, that the world will be established, and we can

already prepare ourselves, for we can already administer our kingdom on

foundations of goodness, wisdom, justice and clear divine enlightenment. Yaakov

sent Esav: 'Pray let my lord cross on ahead of his

servant' – it is not advantageous for Yaakov to engage in government at a

time when it must be bloody, when it demands the capacity for evil. Of

necessity we received only the basis for establishment of a nation, and once

the stock reached maturity we were denied rule, we were dispersed among the

nations, we were sowed in the depths of the earth, until (such time as) "The

the turtledove is heard in our land." (Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaCohen

Kook, Orot p.13)

Has the time come to forgo the enlightened

use of power in the face of realistic security threats? Unfortunately, this

time has yet to arrive, but it does seem to me that at "age 64" we

cannot and perhaps we even must not allow ourselves to ignore the essential

moral dilemmas, to differentiate between the judicious use of certain methods

without glorifying them and converting them into an ideal, as in the words of

the prophet Zachariah (4:6):

This is the word of the Lord to Zerubbabel: Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit – said the Lord of Hosts.

Rabbi Abraham Ibn

Ezra explained: Not by might, nor by power – As I saw the oil, made without

human assistance and burning, so will the Temple be rebuilt, not by Zerubbabel's great might nor by his power, but by the

spirit of God and His assistance.

Pinchas Leiser, editor of Shabbat

Shalom, is a psychologist

You shall devour all the peoples… Your eye is not to take pity upon

them": The

Mitzvah and Its Implementation

Initially the king is to wage only a war

of mitzvah, and what is a war of mitzvah? This

is the war against the seven nations, etc…

(Rambam, Laws of Kings, 5:1)

It is a mitzvah to devote

the seven nations to destruction, as is written: "You

shall surely destroy them." Whoever has the opportunity

to kill one of them but does not do so transgresses a negative precept, as is

written: "You shall let no breathing creature live" – 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 Eretz Yisrael 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 aliya for other Jews was made conditional upon

the consent of the Arabs; aliya by

force – without consent of the Arabs – they condemned 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 Esav" – 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:

"After Kibiya", 1953, from "Torah and

Mitzvoth in Our Time", pp.168-170)

"He will hear the cry of the poor and

save him"

Who does justice:

Although He is lofty, He does justice for the orphan and the widow for there is none who aids them,

as in the expression Father of

orphans (Psalms

68:6). And so too regarding the stranger – He provides for him when he

depends on Him; and since the Lord loves the stranger, you are [also] required to love him.

(Ibn Ezra Devarim 10:18)

And place these, My words upon your

hearts

Next to your

hearts, as in the verse and place it as a cover with it upon the

Ark, and

place upon the covering. From this our Rabbis learned that

it [the tefillin] should be placed

in juxtaposition to the heart.

 (Hizkuni Devarim 11:18)

Rabbi Menahem Mendel of Kotzk used to say: Why is it written upon your

hearts and not in your hearts? Because sometimes the heart

is closed up and cannot open itself to certain words, so in the meantime they

shall rest upon your hearts, so that one day, when the heart

opens up, they will be able to enter…

.

About us

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom is a movement

dedicated to the advancement of a civil society in Israel. It is committed to

promoting the ideals of tolerance, pluralism, and justice, concepts that have

always been central to Jewish tradition and law.

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom shares a deep

attachment to the land

of Israel and it no less

views peace as a central religious value. It believes that Jews have both the

religious and the national obligation to support the pursuit of peace. It

maintains that Jewish law clearly requires us to create a fair and just

society, and that co-existence between Jews and Arabs is not an option but an

imperative.

4,500 copies of a 4-page peace oriented commentary on the weekly Torah

reading are written and published by Oz VeShalom/Netivot

Shalom and they are distributed to over 350 synagogues in Israel and are

sent overseas via email. Our web site is www.netivot-shalom.org.il.

Shabbat Shalom is available on our website: www.netivot-shalom.org.il

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