Author Archives: Rabbi

Supreme Court Preview

Posted on June 20, 2012 | 2 comments

The US Supreme Court decision in State of Florida v. US Department of Health and Human Services, and related cases, better known as the Obamacare decision, is but days away. Throwing caution to the wind, I offer this preview.

By a 5-4 vote, the Court will rule the “individual mandate” provision of the health-coverage bill unconstitutional. What should surprise is the closeness of the vote, the narrow margin provided as is customary by Justice Anthony Kennedy. That is because the individual mandate – requiring every American to purchase health insurance or pay a penalty – is an unprecedented expansion of Congressional power. For the first time, Americans will be told that as a condition of citizenship, they must enter the private marketplace and buy a commercial product. That is, frankly, extraordinary.

It is harsh to draw this conclusion and it sounds biased, but justices who vote in favor of the individual mandate are exercising a political, not a legal, judgment. They are essentially saying that there are really no limits to government power or government intrusion into the private lives of American citizens. Such runs counter to the Constitution, the ethos of American life, and the fundamental concepts of liberty as traditionally embraced by Americans. Those liberal justices must maintain: that government can, in fact, order every American to eat broccoli, and/or that the great good of universal health coverage supersedes the constitutional norms that have governed the lives of Americans for more than 220 years. They must also politically support universal health coverage, and wish to defer their constitutional role to Congress and the Executive Branch.

It is interesting that Congress could have chosen to raise taxes to fund a universal health program – but that was politically unpalatable. So the Dems chose the underhanded approach of asserting that the fee Americans must pay for failure to procure insurance a fine, not a tax, but, curiously, a fine to be collected by the IRS. So how can the minority of four rationalize the individual mandate under current Constitutional conceptions?

Much of the current debate is rooted in the Court’s understanding of the Commerce Clause, that part of the Constitution that allows Congress to “regulate commerce…among the several states.” In a strained manner, they make reference to cases like Wickard v. Filburn, a strange 1942 (wartime) case in which farmer Filburn was fined for growing too much wheat on his farm and thereby violating wartime quotas, even though he claimed the wheat was for his family’s use and not for commercial sale. But in that case, and other similar cases, the Court essentially ruled that Congress can order an American not to buy something, or not  to sell something, or not to possess something – all of which might ostensibly affect interstate commerce. But the “individual mandate” would be the very first time that Congress ordered Americans to actually buy something from the private sector, and not simply abstain.

Often, misleaders have pointed to obligatory automobile
insurance as analogous to the “individual mandate” but such is duplicitous. Auto insurance is a state, not a federal, requirement, and is only required of automobile owners. The analogy would be precise if, for example, the government ordered everyone individual American to buy auto insurance, whether or not they own a car, to defray the cost of the illegals who drive without insurance and cause uncompensated harm to others. That dog won’t hunt.

The American conception of liberty does not allow for such intrusions on government’s part into our lives.

The law itself, and not just the “individual mandate,” should be invalidated; yet, I sense that the law itself – minus the mandate – will be upheld 5-4, with Justice Kennedy again providing the swing vote. This – in maintaining the perch he has created in the center – keeps him in the good graces of the liberal press and legal scholars, who will leap to praise his moderation, judiciousness and deference (as opposed to a “no” on the entire bill, for which those same writers would immediately castigate him for being partisan, a right-wing Neanderthal, a prisoner of the conservatives and probably a racist as well).

In effect, such a vote is a distinction without a difference, between Obamacare hinges on the “individual mandate” designed to thrust into the system billions of dollars of young people’s insurance premiums – those who will have to pay into the system but owing to their youth and health are rarely medical consumers. Thus the law would be sent back to Congress, die there – but at least Obama could partially save face. Many are worried about the fate of the “popular” aspects of the bill – especially the “child-on-parents’-insurance-policy-until-age-26,” also known as the “Infantilization of the American Adult Clause.” How pathetic is that, a telling indication of the success of the nanny state. (Why stop at 26? Why not 46?)

The politics are also labyrinthine. Obviously, a defeat for Obamacare in whole or part would be a blow to the President, who would have wasted so much of his and Congress’ time on a quixotic bill while the economy foundered. It would also undermine his self-anointed credentials as a distinguished legal scholar, having taught Constitutional Law (as an adjunct) at the University of Chicago Law School – and despite never having published any scholarly articles. To have his primary domestic achievement reversed would be embarrassing, and should be another nail in the coffin of his re-election hopes.

Nevertheless, there would be a bright side for Obama even in the case of a reversal. After all, his signature legislation is wildly unpopular, and he would not have to run while defending it. He would also then find himself in his most enjoyable position – campaigner on the stump making promises (health care done right, more amenable justices on the Supreme Court, close Guantanamo, etc.).

In effect, he wins by losing. The theory is good, but the reality is that the spin placed on it will dictate to many non-thinking Americans what exactly they should think. And there is a precedent for such a Pyrrhic defeat (!)  In 1935, the Court ruled much of FDR’s New Deal unconstitutional, which infuriated the president, led him to devise a scheme to pack the Court with his supporters – but only after he won re-election by a landslide in 1936. The fact that FDR was rebuffed by the Court was no bar to his re-election.

Obama, though, lacking FDR’s gravitas, record and substance, will not fare as well. He especially lacks FDR’s grace under pressure and is not likely to accept defeat with poise and dignity. On balance, a reversal of Obamacare will harm the President and his re-election efforts, and just as well. Added to the wobbly economy, an incapacity to internalize blame, and a lack of a plan to extricate the US from this economic morass deeper than “tax the rich,” Obama’s defeat on Obamacare should make his re-election more difficult – better for America and the world.

We’ll see soon enough.

[Click on my lecture on Florida v HHS and the Torah’s View of Obamacare for more.]

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Syria’s Challenge

Posted on June 13, 2012 | Comments Off on Syria’s Challenge

     The ongoing massacres in Syria raise a number of compelling issues. The most obvious is the state of the world when the United States takes a back seat in world affairs, or, as in the Obama Administration’s precious phrase, prefers to “lead from behind.” Leading from behind has made the US (and the world) bystanders to the murder and brutalization of more than 10,000 people, all the rhetoric of compassion notwithstanding.

      And the massacres have indeed unleashed a torrent of rhetoric, a nuclear arsenal of verbiage designed to accomplish nothing more than placate the feelings of the bystanders and make a record for posterity. The record? That the civilized world did not stand by idly and watch children being dismembered alive but intervened with forceful and articulate denunciations of such vile conduct. Hillary Clinton might have joined a bit late (as of February, she was praising an Assad-led government for its stability) but her recent and strident declarations of “Assad must go!” resonate with almost-biblical passion. Of course, no one has yet done anything beyond the rhetoric, and only the hopelessly naïve believe that Assad will surrender because he cannot bear to have his feelings hurt enduring the insults of world leaders.

Chalk this up as another great Obama foreign policy success. Few remember that the prior administration had isolated Assad, but the Obama team chose to re-engage with Syria, even sending back the US Ambassador after a long absence. That re-engagement has worked out as well as the “reset button” with Russia which has easily manipulated the US into dismantling the missile defense in Eastern Europe already even as Russia awaits further US concessions after “my election,” as Obama was carelessly recorded saying “when I will have greater flexibility.” Putin plays Obama like a marionette. And the failure is compounded by Russia (and China’s) stonewalling on a UN resolution even condemning Syria for its atrocities, and Russia’s arming of the Syrian government today with the means to kill even more people.

Obviously, history’s narrative requires – demands – UN resolutions as de facto proof of the world’s concern, but of course it doesn’t really matter. A few choice editorials praising the resolutions and denouncing evil are icing on the cake. This recalls the famous statement of W.R. Inge, Dean of London’s St. Paul’s Cathedral, who said in 1915: “It is useless for the sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism, while the wolf remains of a different opinion.” No UN resolution – and no sanctions, as we see from Iran’s case – will persuade evil people to desist from their evil. The calculus of evil is completely different from that of a normal, healthy psyche. One who doesn’t care about murdering the young and innocent will care even less about sanctions that starve them. And, as shocking as it sounds, murderers have also been known to lie, and even to renege on written agreements and commitments. Yes, shocking!

The bottom line is – and I know I am breaching propriety and the etiquette of nations – that no one really cares about the death of Syrian civilians. A cynic might argue that no one cares because the rebels in Syria are either worse than Assad or slightly less evil than Assad but they are evil, contemptible people regardless. Dictators – as noted here several essays back –bring a sort of macabre stability to their countries, and even though Assad and father were global trouble-making, Jew-hating murderers for more four decades, they did bring some type of predictability to their affairs. That same cynic might further contend that no outcome here is good for Israel – in fact, what benefits Israel is a long, drawn-out war that devastates Syrian society, much like Israel (and the civilized world) benefited from the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980’s, and probably why the US armed both sides in that protracted conflict. As no one has any great love for Syria or its people, the argument goes, let them stew. Their personal plights are a misfortune but their national collapse and weakness on the international scene is a net gain for all. Additionally, there is no vital US interest at stake, except insofar as the US has occasionally intervened to prevent human suffering – not always but certainly more than any other nation.

We need not be such cynics, but nor do we have to tolerate the rank hypocrisy that passes for the diplomatic discourse in this sphere. The fact is no one cared when Assad Sr. massacred more than 20,000 rebellious residents of the town of Hama in 1982, and then leveled the town to boot. Nor did anyone really care when 800,000 Rwandans were massacred in 1994 – although its aftermath produced a lot of hand-wringing and even a fine movie. But to actually do something ? No. And the massacres in Darfur in the 2000s, in Cambodia in the 1970s, and even the Holocaust for that matter, confirm the sad reality that people just don’t care. And if America does not take the lead – even though it suffers intense criticism for it – then people are murdered in staggering numbers.

That is part of the anomaly – and hypocrisy – in world affairs. Americans will be criticized for invading countries to save the citizens from their dreadful dictators – and then criticized again for not intervening in other places. Faced with such fraudulence, the easiest approach is just to do nothing and say everything – condemn loudly and wave a wet noodle. But then we have to endure the verbal duplicity that is so prevalent and grating, empty expressions of concern and “prayers” for the welfare of the victims.

Or, countries can do the right thing, and the right thing might not always entail military intervention. The simplest form of succor is shelter for fleeing refugees, and any sensible Syrian (or denizen of any dictatorship) should want and attempt to flee given the opportunity. This is primarily the burden of the Muslim neighbors of Syria, but don’t expect much. Indeed, as one wise physician pointed out to me, it is puzzling that Turkey and surrounding countries have not organized a flotilla to sail to Syria with humanitarian aid (and arms). After all, thousands are killed, wounded and imprisoned in Syria, versus none in Gaza, to which the much-ballyhooed flotilla was launched. Curious? Of course not –that is standard hypocrisy. Where is the Mavi Marmara when it is really needed?

Sometimes force is useful in rectifying these situations, and then only the US which remains the world’s dominant power is capable of exercising it. But when the military does not engage and negotiations are obviously unsuccessful, then simple integrity would demand that platitudes and crocodile tears be eschewed, and citizens be encouraged to fight their own battles against their own tyrannies. Syria, like many dictatorships and most Arab countries, is ripe for civil war.

There is something embedded in the spirit of the Left that equates words with actions, and loves to congratulate itself on its rhetoric. (President Obama, last week: “The economy is not doing fine. That’s why I called this press conference,” as if his press conference will somehow improve the economy.) It is difficult to live in a world where civilian life is cheap and dispensable, but spare me the soppy sentimentality, the feigned distress and the cries of “Assad must go.”

For Bashar Assad, the determined dictator, is likely to be in power longer than Barack Obama, the leader from behind.

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events

Unity Blues

Posted on June 5, 2012 | 1 comment

      Unity is among the most cherished qualities for the Jewish nation, so much so that it was the hallmark of, and perhaps even the condition precedent for, the Revelation at Sinai. “’And Israel encamped opposite the mountain,’ like one man with one heart” (Rashi, Shmot 19:2). The harmony of Sinai contrasts sharply with the acrimony and discord associated with most of our sojourn in the wilderness. So, if unity is a virtue, why are reasonable people anxious about Israel’s “unity” government?

     Several reasons suggest, the first being a distrust, or at least apprehension, of the motives and future plans of the current Prime Minister that is symptomatic of the dysfunction of Israel’s political system. Simply put, no person has a clue as to the intentions of his government, short-term or long-term. His ministers are largely at cross purposes. PM Netanyahu – wisely, from a political perspective – rarely gives interviews, and when he does, or speaks publicly, he talks in clichés, platitudes and bromides that can mean different things to different people. Often, he will embrace right-wing rhetoric to mollify one segment of his coalition while allowing ministers to implement policies that are the antithesis of that rhetoric and hostile to the concepts of land and peace. Then he will embrace left-wing rhetoric to keep the media off his back but petrify the right-wing. His core principles remain a mystery. His words are belied by his deeds, but his words provide cover to the gullible voters for his party and members of his coalition.

    Thus, Kadima’s new chieftain Shaul Mofaz called Netanyahu a “liar” and “incompetent” whose government he would never join – just weeks before he joined that very government. Certainly, Mofaz realized that his party and career ambitions would be devastated by imminent elections, with polls showing Kadima losing some 75% of its mandates. In the grand tradition of Israeli politics, his personal fate played the leading role in the unfolding political drama of today.

     That underscores another reason for the anxiety engendered by this government – the utter disarray of Israel’s political system. It is impossible to take seriously any statement made by any party during any campaign. It is almost impossible to match any party’s platform with its actual policies or performance once elected. Politicians often lie – usually whenever their lips are moving – but the disconnect between Israel’s political parties and their policies is staggering. There is no real opposition – vital to any democracy – because the defeated parties hope to dine on the spoils of power anyway, in some subordinate role. Kadima “won” the last election (more seats than Likud) but lost power when Netanyahu made a deal with the National Union party, a natural ally with Likud (one would have thought). Once designated to form a government, Netanyahu immediately reneged on that deal to make a new deal with the leftist Labor Party installing Ehud Barak, the failed prime minister of a decade ago, as Defense Minister. Consider this: how much support would Netanyahu have lost among Likud voters has they known during the campaign that the Defense Minister in a Likud government would be Ehud Barak, sworn enemy of the residents of Judea and Samaria? Suffice it to say, he would not be prime minister today.

    And this deal with Labor followed Netanyahu’s arrangement with Avigdor Lieberman’s Yisrael Beteinu party, avowed antagonists to Labor’s leftist policies – and Lieberman agreed, only to be effectively marginalized in his Foreign Minister post while awaiting indictment on political matters that date back many years. Shas and Aguda, k’darkam bakodesh, sell their souls for money and their parochial needs that they conflate with the glory of Torah, even as they are junior (and now unneeded) partners in an enterprise whose future course is completely unknown to them and likely hostile to their interests. The “Jewish Home” party –brought in because the “National Union” was considered too outspoken and unreliable a coalition partner – has actually acquitted itself well, and may be the first domino to fall from this government, even as its real strength is non-existent. At least it has principles to which it adheres.

The flip side of the government’s political stability is its unpredictability, and that volatility can shake Israel’s core to its foundations. Witness the current imbroglio over outpost construction in various parts of Samaria that many elements in the government, and the High Court, want to see destroyed. The leftist High Court operates from a presumption that the land in question is “Palestinian” land, and renders its decision based on that presumption even though there is a scarcity of hard (or soft) evidence adduced to prove it. As bizarre as it sounds, an Arab will come forward – usually at the initiative of Peace Now or some similar group – and assert that the land has been in his family for generations without a shred of evidence, documentary or otherwise. This is the story in Migron, for example, in which Peace Now withdrew the Arab claim to the land – which prompted the High Court, nonetheless, to rule that the homes in Migron must be dismantled. Undoubtedly, these confrontations and planned expulsions are designed to intimidate the settlers and apprise them to look at the handwriting on the wall, for they serve no other rational purpose.

A unity government, in theory, could accomplish much for Israel’s polity. It could unify the disparate parties in the event that an attack on Iran is deemed necessary (much like the unity government that preceded the Six-Day War – but no other war in Israel’s history, and prompting much of the bitterness of the last 30 years);

–           it could take unilateral measures like annexing Judea and Samaria while giving autonomy to the Arab residents of that region;

–          it could secure Israel’s borders and respond forcefully to attacks on its citizens without concern for the sniping of political opponents;

–          it could declare the Oslo Accords a failure, renounce its provisions, acknowledge the impossibility of peace in our time and focus on maximizing Israel’s strengths and assets;

–          it could further move Israel away from the economic legacies of the Socialist welfare state that hampered its development for decades and from which the State is emerging to become an economic powerhouse;

–           it could refine the protocol for appointing Supreme Court justices so they are not almost uniformly secular leftists from north Tel Aviv;

–          it could declare halacha the official law of the land of Israel;

–          it could even come to some workable arrangement regarding military or national service for all citizens – religious and non-religious, Jew and Arab.

That would assume that the values of the leaders are fixed and resolute. What typifies this government, though, is the wall-to-wall secularism (right and left) of the majority of its participants which never bodes well for long-term statecraft. As one distinguished Rosh Yeshiva once explained to me, if one could achieve the same result (he meant, in context, love for the land of Israel) through the Torah and not-through-the-Torah, then you would not need the Torah. Hence, a secular love for Israel will cease at a certain point, the left before the right, but both will eventually cease. There is a palpable and realistic fear that such is on the horizon, in pursuit of the same fantasies and chimeras that produced the Oslo debacle.

A secular national unity government, legitimized by the presence of a group of beards and hats feeding at the public trough and who thereby grant the kashrut supervision to all activities, can do untold damage. Some possibilities have already been floated – e.g., another “unilateral withdrawal,” this time from much of Judea and Samaria in order to “take advantage of the lack of a peace partner” and thereby “move the peace process forward.”  (If the preceding sentence makes no sense to you, then that is a good sign that your brain is still functioning.) A unity government unencumbered by a vibrant opposition can basically do anything – unravel the social fabric with anti-Torah legislation that seeks to weaken the study of Torah, recklessly throw open the Treasury in order to reward supporters, punish opponents and buy votes, dilute the Torah by amending the laws of conversion, the qualifications for rabbis and the definition of Jewishness. They could even vote to make Shabbat come on Friday or Sunday, not that religious Jews would listen. They could so secularize the country as to make it unrecognizable to the Jewish people – and not pay any political price for it.

A democracy without a functioning opposition looks more like an elected dictatorship but actually operates as an oligarchy of the powerful. And elections in which no political party is held accountable by the voters for gross deviations from its platforms and stated purposes is more akin to the voting on reality-entertainment shows than to elections that produce serious governance. Ultimately, countries get the leaders they deserve.  So do people – a message to Israel’s religious Jews, perhaps a third of the country – who routinely vote for secular parties and assume that only a secular Jew of the right, left or center can guide the nation properly. This is a tragic error that lingers in the Israeli electorate which specializes in recycling discarded and failed leaders of the past.

As the Gemara (Sanhedrin 26a) states in a different context “a confederacy of the wicked is not counted.” Confederations are esteemed, and unity is a treasured goal in Jewish life.  But sometimes the benefits of creative conflict and thoughtful opposition outweigh even those of a contrived unity. While we should not leap to label Israel’s current government a “confederacy of the wicked,” its capacity to do good or to commit mischief is almost unlimited. Hence the trepidation, as we await the true unity of the future when all Israel will be “like one bond to fulfill Your will with a complete heart.”

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Posted in Contemporary Life, Current Events, Israel

THE BOOK AND THE SWORD

Posted on May 30, 2012 | Comments Off on THE BOOK AND THE SWORD

(This appeared first in a condensed version as an Op-Ed in the Jewish Press  of May 25, 2012.)

   The forthcoming debate over an updated Tal Law – that defined the parameters for service by Haredim and others in the Israel Defense Forces – is liable to become heated and nasty. Mutual accusations will be hurled, with one group asserting that a demand for mandatory service is part of an ill-disguised war against Torah and the other side seeking an equal sharing of the defense burdens that fall on most other Israelis. The debate will feature arguments that are both somewhat compelling and somewhat misleading: that Torah study is the defining mitzvah in Jewish life, comparable to no other; that the IDF has a manpower surplus, not a manpower shortage; that it is unfair that some young men risk their lives for the safety of the Jewish people, while others sit in the comfortable confines of the Beit HaMidrash – and are supported (through government funds) by the families of those who are serving; that military service is often a prerequisite to entering the Israeli workforce and will resolve many of the financial struggles that beset Israel’s Haredim;  and that Haredi opt-outs from the military are a small percentage of the total number of Israeli youth not serving in the military, a number buttressed in recent years by hundreds, if not thousands, of secular Israelis (often from the Tel Aviv suburbs) who receive medical and/or psychological deferments from physicians all-too-willing to sign them.

    The proponents, both secular and religious, will struggle to distinguish between Israeli citizens who are Haredim whose service is compulsory, and Israeli citizens who are Arabs who – as Israeli citizens – should be just as required to defend their country but whose widespread service in the IDF would be problematic, to say the least.

    Undoubtedly, the dispute will become embroiled in coalition politics of the most sordid kind. Although the current government no longer needs the votes of the religious parties to survive, future governments surely will and the horse-trading involving prospective support will be typical and distasteful politics. The Torah itself will be unnecessarily dragged through the mud. While certainly Torah protects those who study and uphold it, it does not exempt the sick from seeking medical assistance, the hungry from eating food or the destitute from finding gainful employment. The Torah still demands that we live in reality – after all, the Torah is the book of the Source of ultimate reality –  and therefore not make national defense the only realm (if, indeed, it is the only realm) in which mystical considerations dominate our decision-making.

    Nonetheless, understood properly, this controversy affords a wonderful opportunity to re-define the terms of the debate in a way that can revolutionize Jewish life and restore the crown of glory as of old.

There have been many dramatic transformations that have occurred in the Jewish world since the re-establishment of the State of Israel. Obviously, the highlight is the regained Jewish sovereignty over the land of Israel for the first time in nineteen centuries and the reborn capacity and willingness of the Jewish people to provide for our own self-defense. But something else changed in the Jewish psyche – if not in the Jewish people itself: the renaissance of the scholar-warrior, what Rav Eliezer Shenvald, the distinguished Rosh Yeshiva of the Yeshivat Hesder Meir-Harel in Modiin, and Colonel in the IDF, called tzva’iyut and yeshivatiyut – the fusion of the military and the yeshiva. In the exile, we grew accustomed – even to think it natural and proper – that, in the language of the Talmud (Masechet Avoda Zara 17b)  “either the book (safra) or the sword (saifa),” but never both, and certainly not together.

     Not only is that wrong, but it is detrimental to the Jewish people.

     It was not always like that – in fact, it was never like that. The giants of our nation went to battle. Avraham went to war, Moshe himself went to war, David famously went to war. None of this was considered out-of-character or a concession to the times, but rather a natural part of serving Hashem. The Netziv wrote in his commentary to Shir Hashirim (4:2) that “your teeth are like the counted flock that has come up from the wash,” i.e., your teeth, that consumes anything before them, are the warriors who triumph in battle, who are pure, carefully- groomed, all righteous, meticulous even of their observance of simple mitzvot. It is the righteous who are supposed to lead the Jewish people into battle.

     Many justify prioritization of Torah study over military service by referencing Rabbi Elazar’s statement (cited by Rabbi Abahu) in Masechet Nedarim 32a that Avraham was punished and his descendants enslaved in Egypt because “he conscripted the Torah scholars” who lived with him when he went to battle against the four kings to rescue his nephew Lot. Besides the facts that this point is not cited as normative halacha by the Rambam or Shulchan Aruch, we generally avoid deriving normative halacha from Agadic statements, and there are other interpretations of that Gemara (Shitah Mekubetzet understands Avraham’s mistake as not rewarding them for their service), this opinion is even cited in the Gemara as a solitary view with which others disagreed. The Ralbag explained the verse as praising Avraham for taking with him into battle “chanichav yelidei beito,” those raised in his home and educated by him, saying that it is appropriate to take into battle only those “who were trained in Avraham’s ways and values since their youth.”

    In a similar context, Radak (Yehoshua 5:14) rejected the criticism of Yehoshua for abandoning his Torah study on the eve of battle as a “far-fetched exposition, for wartime is not a time for Torah study.” Indeed, Yaakov on his deathbed praised his sons Yehuda, Yissachar, Dan, Binyamin and Yosef for the martial abilities, however we wish to interpret his sublime words.

     Furthermore, Chazal underscored that King David’s fighters – Benayahu ben Yehoyada, Adino HaEtzni, and others – were the Sanhedrin, they were the Torah Sages of the generation. As the Gemara notes (Moed Katan 16b) in asserting that King David himself was called Adino HaEtzni, that he was adin, in Torah study he was supple and flexible like a worm, but in battle he was an etz, hardened like a spear.

    What happened to us, to the concept of the scholar-warrior, to the notion of the man of Torah leading the Jewish nation into battle?  In short, the exile robbed us of that, and over the centuries we made – perforce – a virtue out of passivity, pacifism, and even surrender. We artificially created a division of labor in Jewish life between students and soldiers.

    Who better to teach us this point than Yehoshua, depicted in the Torah (Shmot 33:11)  as one “who never left Moshe’s tent,” the tent of study. Really? He never left Moshe’s tent, he was only engaged in the study of Torah? What about Moshe’s command to Yehoshua (Shmot 17:9), “choose men for us and go out to battle with Amalek”? The answer is that the battle itself is part of Torah.

      Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook wrote that “the Torah personality is the fighter who conquers the land of Israel, it is all the same matter.” Only the greatest in Torah study can fully conquer the land of Israel. Indeed, there are two defining statements about Yehoshua, Moshe’s successor: “Moshe received the Torah from Sinai and transmitted it to Yehoshua” (Avot 1:1), and the prophecy of Eldad and Medad in the wilderness, “Moshe will die and Yehoshua will bring Israel into the land” (Sanhedrin 17a). The two statements are inseparable; that was Yehoshua. That was the essence of his Divine service, and that was normal. It was dedication to Torah and divine service that is comprehensive and not bifurcated. Such a personality, and such an endeavor, is not Bitul Torah (the nullification of Torah) but rather Kiyum HaTorah, the very fulfillment of the Torah. Who is more suited to conquering the land of Israel and investing it with holiness than people who love Torah, Divine service and the Jewish people!

    “If the Jewish people had not sinned, we would only have been given the five books of the Torah and the book of Yehoshua, which contains the disposition of the land of Israel” (Nedarim 22b). The books of the prophets admonish us and keep us on the right path. If we were worthy, we would simply obey the Torah – and only require the book of Yehoshua for its description of the allocation of land to each tribe. But why would that be necessary beyond that generation? Once the land was apportioned, then even the book of Yehoshua should be finished. So why is it eternal?

   The answer is that if we had not sinned, we would need only the Torah that tells us how to live and the book of Yehoshua that teaches us how to allocate the land – how to permeate it with holiness, how to implement the Torah and G-d’s will in it. All we would need would be the Torah for a healthy soul and the land of Israel for a healthy body. We would live a holy and holistic existence.

   The exile took such a toll on us that we have had a hard time re-acclimating ourselves to the normalcy of Torah, with many still idealizing the division of responsibilities and incapable of merging the safra and the saifa, the book and the sword. Many persist in re-defining all the giants of Jewish life to make them conform to their pre-conceptions, to render them uni-dimensional figures that ultimately diminish their greatness – whether it is Avraham, Moshe, Yehoshua, David, Yehuda Hamaccabee, Rabbi Akiva and many others. They denude them of their military exploits and ensconce them in the House of Study, as if there is necessarily a conflict between the two or that the two are mutually exclusive. They once might have been – during the exile – but no longer. Today, the halls of the Hesder Yeshivot are populated with Roshei Yeshiva who were Captains, Majors and Colonels in the military – and who better to guide the Torah Jew through the maze of modern life than the contemporary scholar-warrior.

    Rav Shlomo Aviner once identified three cardinal mitzvot that are fulfilled through military service in the IDF: saving Jewish lives, conquest of the land of Israel, and Kiddush Hashem, the sanctification of G-d’s name that is engendered when the nations of the world see that Jewish blood is not cheap. There is another Kiddush Hashem as well – when all Jews see that the Torah can be the foundation of a modern state and that the Torah Jew can serve G-d in every sphere of life. Those mitzvot are certainly vital to an individual Jew’s self-definition as they are to the existence of a Jewish State.

     For sure, a free society can willingly choose to exempt certain Torah scholars from military service as it exempts others for frivolous reasons. But the ideal of the scholar-warrior should be nurtured and cherished as the one best capable of ensuring Israel’s defense and its sacred standing. And it forever deprives the secular Israeli of his persistent complaint, whether sincere or contrived, that “ultra-Orthodox” Jews are parasites who contribute nothing to society and live off the blood and sweat of others. We can hold the book and sword together and achieve greatness in both; can they?

      Fortunate is the generation that has witnessed the renaissance of the Jewish spirit that is a harbinger of the Messiah who himself will personify both virtues – “meditating in the Torah and observing Mitzvot like his ancestor David and fighting G-d’s wars” (Rambam, Hilchot Melachim 11:4) – so that we will all behold the glory of Torah and merit complete redemption, speedily and in our days.

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