Author Archives: Rabbi

Taking Torah Seriously    by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky, Esq.

When will we Jews learn to take the Torah seriously?

There are Jews who perceive the Torah as all rituals, filled with virtuous deeds that make us better people, but who derive their values from alien sources. Others embrace the lofty ideas that the Torah articulates but prefer to implement them in ways they fabricate relying on their own judgment. But we are taught that the Torah is “your life and the length of your days to dwell on the land that G-d swore to give to your forefathers” (Devarim 30:20).

The privilege of living in the land of Israel is dependent on our fidelity to Torah – and that is made abundantly clear in an unexpected but revealing way, and quite relevant to current events – in this week’s Torah portion of Shoftim (ibid 20:10-12) where the Torah delineates how we should conduct our wars.

“When you approach a city to wage war against it, you must first propose peace to it. If it responds with peace and opens its gates to you, then the people therein become tributary to you and serve you. And if the city does not make peace with you and wages war against you, you must besiege it.”

Rashi, citing the Sifrei 200:5, defines a siege: “you are entitled even to starve it, to make it suffer thirst and to kill the inhabitants by mortal diseases.” That is a siege, and that is a key to victory. That shows the enemy strength and resolve and is designed to induce unconditional surrender which spares lives on both sides. Rashi, on a previous verse, notes that this tactic applies to an “optional war,” for conquest; how much more so would this apply to a war of self-defense forced upon us by a brutal and evil enemy that invaded our land, murdered innocent civilians, raped our women, pillaged, ravaged, and kidnapped as many of our people as it could.

Was the Torah concerned about the welfare of enemy civilians? In a word, no, except to declare that all their suffering could be averted by surrender of the hostile forces.

Instead of adopting the Torah’s approach of besieging a city with starvation, thirst, and the spread of disease, we have embraced the opposite approach, and then complain when the war drags on, our soldiers are killed, and our hostages suffer privation and death. Instead of “starvation” we provide our enemy with food, instead of “thirst” we furnish them with copious amounts of water and fuel, and instead of “spreading disease” we inoculate them against the polio virus. In its worst corollary, we give the enemy everything they are depriving our hostages.

Rather than make the enemy surrender, succumb, and become subservient to us, we argue amongst ourselves how quickly to (again) abandon Gaza. And we wonder why we have fought over Gaza seven times and never succeeded in achieving any resolution. It is because we have scorned the Torah, hear the above verses without considering their relevance to us, and think that the Torah is silent on the conduct of war.

We think that the problem will just go away. Here again Rashi counsels us otherwise. “If you don’t make peace with it, it will eventually make war against you,” to which Rashi comments, “Scripture is informing you that if the enemy does not make peace with you, it will in the end make war against you. If you leave it alone and go away [you will solve nothing and only hasten an attack against you].”

That has been the Gazan reality for almost seventy years, except when we controlled Gaza. Whenever we “leave it alone and go away,” it becomes a nest of terror and a springboard for deadly attacks on Jews. It would be sobering to say that we have learned this lesson the hard way but, unfortunately, we have not yet learned that lesson at all.

Far be it from me to advocate a siege against Gaza, which would violate the chimera known as “international humanitarian law,” most forcefully utilized as a weapon against Israel and only Israel in the world’s effort to thwart an Israeli victory. An unlikely voice has emerged who articulates similar thoughts – retired Israeli General Giora Eiland, former head of the National Security Council, and, ironically, one of the architects of the expulsion of Jews from Gaza in 2005.

Eiland said this week that Israel should cut off northern Gaza, evacuate all non-terrorist residents, and impose a siege on the territory to starve out the several thousand terrorists hiding there. They will be given a choice – “surrender or death” – and he suggests that such is compatible with international humanitarian law once the civilians leave. If the civilians choose to stay, then they suffer the same fate. “And this is the optimal way to end a war with the minimum number of casualties.”

Many months ago, Eiland expressed similar sentiments in even stronger language: “What happened on October 7 is that the State of Gaza went to war against the State of Israel. State against state. Now, the state of Gaza does have vulnerabilities. It doesn’t have sufficient fuel, food, and water of its own. You can impose a legitimate boycott on that state until the state returns all of your hostages. Humanitarian for humanitarian.”

The reluctance to fight this war along these lines was an epic mistake, notwithstanding the pressure from the US and others to prioritize Gazan civilians over the fate of our hostages or the welfare of our soldiers. We should have pushed back against the West’s bathetic but depraved ideas of war at the very beginning – but even now it is not too late.

Continuing to supply Hamas with food, water, and fuel pursuant to the illusion that this material is reaching the civilian population just prolongs the war. It also fosters the impression among Gazans that Hamas is still in control. That is no way to win a war.

In truth, as the Talmud (Bava Kamma 46b) puts it, “why do I need a verse? It is logical!” We should not need the Torah to teach us the obvious point that strengthening our enemy during a war or abandoning the territory we have conquered is no way to win. And yet, apparently, we do need the Torah even for that – to teach us the Jewish ethic of war, to teach us how to wage war, and to teach how even to bring our enemies to reconciliation and peace. There are no shortcuts and no guarantee of short-term success. After several millennia of existence, we are still learning that we forsake the Torah at our peril, that a complete and wholehearted commitment to Torah is, indeed, our lives, the length of our days, and the only tried and true formula for our eternal sovereignty over the land of Israel. We should take it seriously – during this month of Elul and thereafter.

It is a good time of year to acquire my “Repentance for Life” (Kodesh Press, 2023). It is available at their website or here or at fine stores everywhere. Enjoy!

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

We are drowning in a sea of clichés that purport to provide guidance as to the policies needed to navigate the manifold strategic challenges that confront us. The problem is that clichés contain some truth but rarely furnish a complete picture and, as such, tend as much to obscure as to enlighten. Some examples present.

One incessantly repeated refrain is that “ransoming captives (Pidyon Shvuyim) is the most important mitzvah in the Torah,” to which all other interests are secondary, if that. Most highways in Israel feature such signs. It is certainly understandable that the relatives of hostages feel this way. Their loved one is the world to them and little else matters. The kernel of truth is that Rambam (Laws of the Gifts to the Poor, 8:10) stated that “there is no greater mitzvah than the redemption of captives,” so great that Rambam repeats this point again in the same paragraph. Yet, the context sheds a different light; Rambam did not include this law in the “Laws of Preservation of Life” or the “Laws of War” but in the “Laws of Tzedakah.” That is to say, ransoming captives is a great mitzvah because it incorporates all the different varieties of tzedakah, “for a captive is among those who are hungry, thirsty, unclothed and is in mortal peril.” In terms of tzedakah there is no greater mitzvah – but even in terms of tzedakah, there are limitations derived from the Talmud (Gittin 45a) that Rambam also embraces (ibid 8:12), that “we do not redeem captives for more than their worth for the benefit of civilization.”

How can these two ideas – the importance of the mitzvah v. the inherent limitations imposed on its fulfillment – coexist? It is quite comprehensible as long as we do not reduce the teaching of our sages to a simplistic cliché. Our sages assumed that ransoming captives required only money, and even then placed limitations on its practice, because the survival of the community takes precedence over the survival of any one individual. (For that reason, the laws of Pikuach Nefesh [preservation of life] are much more liberally applied when the endangered party is the community than when it is an individual.) Thus, the Talmud taught that we do not ransom captives for “more than their worth” either “due to the financial pressure on the community,” which could be bankrupted by recurring kidnappings for monetary ransom, or because “an exorbitant ransom will incentivize the seizure of additional captives.”

In our agonizing situation, winning the release of our innocent hostages by paroling vicious murderers places enormous pressure on the community, which has paid and will again pay an awful price for such releases.  Unrepentant terrorists, pledged to murder Jews, will once again be afforded the opportunity to do so. This is not speculation; this is reality. It has happened, it is happening (just a few weeks ago a precious Jewish soul was extinguished by an Arab murderer released in November’s hostage deal), and it will happen again.

Just as egregious, these deals “incentivize the seizure of additional captives.” There is no way to avert our eyes from that fundamental and infuriating reality. If we continue to make these deals, as we have for 40 years, we are stating quite clearly to our enemies that this tactic works, and they might as well do it again. Why wouldn’t they? Add to this the insanity of withdrawing from Gazan territory we have conquered for the seventh time, which mocks the sacrifices of our soldiers and paves the way for the next round of conflict and more dead Jewish soldiers fighting over the same land. It is a poor reflection on our leaders that they have acquiesced so readily and for so long to these execrable exchanges instead of categorically ruling them out and applying real pressure on our enemies and the civilian population that supports them.

It is heartbreaking for the families and a trauma for our nation. It is reminiscent of a terminal illness in which the family is left to pray for a miracle because multiple life-saving organ transplants would require the deaths of the donors. We can only pray alongside them. It is a trauma that will remain with us for decades which, perhaps, only victory can somewhat alleviate.

Another empty cliché frequently uttered is that the government must take every risk because “it breached the fundamental covenant with the people.” There is a kernel of truth in that as well. There is an unwritten compact between the government and the governed in which the primary obligation of the former is to provide security for the latter. The Hamas invasion and subsequent atrocities breached that covenant as October 7 was a colossal failure at all levels of the establishment – military, security and political.

Nevertheless, if we think a little more deeply, that was not the only breakdown of the covenant. Every time a Jew is rammed, shot, stabbed, or hammered to death, or cannot live in his or home in the north or south – that is a breakdown of the covenant. The government of Israel had a covenant with the residents of Gush Katif whom it sent there to settle – that covenant was brutally mocked. If we cannot ride our roads without being stoned or sit in restaurants without being blown up, then these “covenants” are empty clichés, or, better, clichés recently invented for the purpose of bringing down this government.

The government owes all of us security – not just some – and the governments that supported Oslo, invited in our enemies and gave them money and weapons (what could possibly go wrong with that?), and then have coddled our enemies for decades, “mowing the lawn” rather than seek solutions, and then releasing thousands of terrorists (including Sinwar) who then indulged in more barbarism against us, those governments also abrogated whatever covenant might exist.

Furthermore, we are entitled to be governed by the leaders we elect and not by unelected Supreme Court justices and unelected bureaucrats, both of whom have usurped the people’s power. And we have the right to expect to live in our homes anywhere in our country without the constant fear of missiles, rockets, and drones falling on our heads. A “covenant” between government and governed has hardly existed for many decades.

Such a cliché might play well in television studios and in opposition politics, but it is disconnected from reality.

A third cliché that confounds us is the pursuit of “total victory.” That is surely a worthy goal and most of the people who oppose it are the defeatists who have (mis)guided security policy for decades. The desire to surrender, to acquiesce in Hamas’ survival, to make another lopsided terrorist exchange that will just kill many more Jews in the future, are all products of self-loathing and/or a hatred for the Netanyahu government.

My objection to the cliché is not its substance; it is that our government’s current strategy cannot achieve it.

There is no way around this basic truth: the Arab world equates defeat with loss of land. That is why the establishment of Israel in 1948 sticks in their craw – but that is also why Egypt no longer perceives the Six Day War as a defeat and does construe the Yom Kippur War as a great victory. We have already surrendered most of the land won in 1967 in a war of self-defense. And the Yom Kippur War ended – at least the diplomacy ended – with Egypt (and Syria) gaining territory at Israel’s expense, and within a decade, Egypt had recovered every inch of land it lost in 1967.

There cannot be victory, total or otherwise, unless Israel controls Gaza, period, and resettles it. Seeing Israeli flags flying over thriving Jewish communities is the only image of “total victory” that the Arabs will recognize, grieve over, regret their ruthless assault, and be deterred from attempting again.

The sad reality is that we do not – maybe even cannot – understand the mentality of our enemies. When they say they “prefer death to life,” we shrug our shoulders and deem it hyperbole. The devastation of their buildings and infrastructure means nothing to them. The arrest and incarceration of their terrorists, rapists, and butchers mean nothing to them. They diverted billions of dollars in international aid just to build underground terror tunnels with which to harass us, leaving Gazans as indigent as they were before the money poured in. They do not think like we do. Sure, they might laud “martyrdom” and then (falsely) accuse us of genocide, which, if you think about it, is a reasonable means of achieving the martyrdom they crave. It is somewhat inconsistent – but is logical when we realize that the accusations are only made as part of their rhetorical warfare designed to weaken us, make us reassess our strategies and objectives, and allow them to continue to murder Jews unimpeded.

They really believe that they are entitled to murder Jews because of the “occupation” but Jews are not entitled to defend themselves because that is “genocide.” They are genuinely evil – but this belief is sincerely held.

If defeat is synonymous with loss of land, and Israel’s government has ruled out permanent Jewish sovereignty over Gaza, then “total victory” will never be achieved. Why then are we wasting our soldiers’ lives for an unachievable goal? Why would we even consider giving Hamas at this point the gift of survival through a deal that will only endanger all of us? They need to fear us, and only then will they be deterred and learn to respect us.

The main obstacle that is still unaddressed is that Gazans – most or all of them – remain implacably opposed to Israel’s existence. They have been brainwashed or believe naturally that Jews are malevolent usurpers and that eventually they will succeed in destroying Israel. We cannot wish this away. We can kill ten Sinwar’s and he will be replaced instantly with ten other rabid haters who will rebuild Gaza – again – as a terror nest. The only solution that secures Israel and provides a better life to Gazans is evacuation to other countries; if not, we are staring at the same morass that will bedevil us in just another few years. If they remain, they will rebuild in order to attack us again. Nothing will change and we will manufacture new clichés for the next massacre, the next brief conflict, and the next series of negotiations – all as equally vacuous as the current ones.

Right now, we are negotiating with ourselves and against ourselves. Hamas is not an interlocutor so Israel is the only party that can be pressured and pressured without end. No one can say yes for Hamas, even their “yes” will not be credible, so we assume we hear “no” and keep conceding, but never enough for our enemies, or for some of our friends.

Unilateral negotiations are never sensible so here is some advice. Antony Blinken has visited Israel nine times since the war started but has never visited Sinwar in Gaza. Sinwar is nominally the other party to these discussions. Blinken should visit Sinwar and find out what he will offer, what concessions he is willing to make, and how Sinwar proposes to realize Blinken’s dream of a “secure and prosperous Middle East for all.”

Of course, Blinken might rightfully argue that he cannot trust Sinwar, that Blinken himself might be taken hostage in Gaza, and that he would rather not take the word of a homicidal maniac.

Then he would know how we feel. Blinken will not even visit Sinwar and yet expects us to live next door to him and give him the means to survive and kill us another day.

It would therefore be helpful if Blinken learned to keep his clichés to himself, for empty clichés are potent, time bombs that will harm us. He should be asked at a news conference if he (or Biden or Harris) wants Hamas to survive. That will tell us all we need to know – and how total victory, if it is to be achieved, will require Israel to act in its own interest, resettle Gaza, evacuate those in the local population who refuse to accept Israel’s sovereignty or generally see no future for themselves under any Arab rule, and exact a real and enduring price from those who attacked us.

Then the better world we all want will be much closer.

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

The exuberance people feel at the release last week of American hostages held by Russia – Evan Gershkovich, Paul Whelan, and others – should be tempered by the price Western nations were forced to pay for them: the release of murderers, thieves, and spies. It underscores that the West has become utterly incapable of dealing with rogue nations – nations that evince contempt for fundamental moral norms, and not just international law – and that incapacity hampers Israel as well. It was not always like this.

Simply put, the United States indulged a state of affairs in which innocent civilians such as tourists, journalists, and dual citizens can just be grabbed off a Russian street, incarcerated in harsh conditions, tried under false pretenses, and blatantly used as pawns in order to free real bad actors. Such weakness only encourages more such hostage taking, whenever the need arises. The feeble response of the US was to protest, and when those protests were ineffective, to strongly protest, and when those also failed, to create hash tags, sign petitions, bask in their superior morality, protest some more, and then surrender to the Russian demands for an exchange of prisoners – the innocent for the guilty. Indeed, further hostage-taking is unnecessary, as Russia still holds twenty Americans, all to remain in prison until another exchange is warranted.

There was a time when arrests of Americans in Russia would be met with arrests of Russians in America. When diplomats or journalists of one country were expelled, the other country would then expel diplomats or journalists of its adversary. These days, the judicial system in democracies would not countenance arrest of an enemy’s innocent civilians (which does not preclude that from happening on foreign soil, with the acquiescence of a friendly government). As such, the playing field is uneven, and slanted in favor of the amoral countries. They have no limiting principle except expedience. They do what it takes to win or, at least, achieve their strategic objectives. Democracies are hamstrung by their commitment to quaint moral notions that, sadly, have little place in international relations.

This is one reason why the West never wins wars anymore. Victory is never the goal of any struggle; the goal is always de-escalation, and conflict avoidance at any cost. The fact that the US celebrated the return of these hostages – as Russia celebrated the return of their agents – proves the point. The goal was to release the hostages, period, despite the statement being broadcast to all about international norms and Western fragility. The US never even enacted a travel ban for its citizens to Russia, sanctions against Russia because of the Ukraine invasion have had little effect, and Russian citizens move freely throughout the West, unafraid of any repercussions.

In other words, the rogue nations – Russia, China, Iran – are winning, and there is little the West can do at this point to stop them, if there is not going to be a change in tactics. The rogue nations are the prime movers, they set the tone of international discourse, they control the lives and well-being of people far from their borders, and they pay almost no price for it. And the West just wants to give peace a chance, as the rogue nations spread their anarchy and mischief across the world.

Israel suffers from this as well, with the twist that we have for too long indulged the fiction of the “proxy” terrorist groups. Imagine if Israel created a “proxy” fighting force that had a free hand in dealing with the enemy as brutally as was deemed necessary, and then denied that it had any control over this force. Who would accept that?

It is bad enough that Iran wages war through surrogates and pays no price for it – its oil fields lie unmolested, generating billions of dollars of revenue, with Western submission to the relaxation of sanctions – as it attacks Israel and American assets in the Middle East. Far worse is the fiction propagated by American diplomacy that compelled Israel to distinguish between Hamas and Gaza – as if Hamas were not the elected rulers there – and between Hezbollah and Lebanon – as if Hezbollah is not the dominant component of the government there. The Hamas/Gaza distinction was accepted by Israel and greatly impeded the war effort; fortunately, the Hezbollah/Lebanon distinction has been rejected by Israel. What is still extant, and the prevailing theme in US diplomacy, is halting the fighting short of victory, de-escalation, an end to violence, all of which will just allow the bad actors to survive to massacre another day.

This surrender to rogue actors is part of the same pattern that produced the West-Russia hostage for prisoner exchange. And since democracies change governments much more frequently than do dictatorships when the deconfliction inevitably blows up, it is usually on someone else’s watch.

The Allies did not distinguish between Nazi Germany and German civilians, nor between Imperial Japan and Japanese civilians, which is why those enemy civilians were bombed to oblivion (this week marks 79 years since two atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and those rogue nations surrendered unconditionally. In the West, the will to win has dissipated; consequently, Israel’s stubborn insistence on victory – and survival – perplexes some and antagonizes others.

The inability to fight evil by all means necessary – I am not even referring to nuclear weapons, which have limited, practical value – is typified by Israel’s uncontrollable and unmanageable Supreme Court which has now taken on the cause of protecting the “rights” of the Hamas terrorists who murdered, raped, brutalized, and kidnapped, and still threaten to do it again. Our justices are unduly, and unseemly, concerned with the conditions of their incarceration. But count me among those who could not care less about the conditions of people who burned alive children, and so incinerated one Jewish woman that she was only identified this week as dead, ten months after being murdered.

These terrorists are not soldiers. Their targets were civilians. They do not deserve prisoner-of-war status. They do not deserve to be treated any better than our hostages are being treated and, indeed, they deserve to be treated worse – because our hostages are innocent, pure souls and they are guilty, contemptible, unfit even to be called human beings. They are not criminal to be incarcerated or soldiers to be exchanged at the end of the war. They are savages who have lost their right to live on this planet.

Similarly, it is a morally obscene that Israeli prosecutors are looking to indict IDF soldiers accused of maltreatment of a terrorist by that very terrorist. They must think that “this terrorist might rape and mutilate Jewish women but he would never even think of lying to frame the accused soldiers and demoralize others.” It is a legal system that has again failed us, does not represent or speak for the people, and should have been reformed years ago.

We hear constantly that our morality is our greatest strength, and we must maintain the moral high ground or we will “lose the world’s support.” The latter is risible, as our attempts to fight a “moral war” have earned us only international opprobrium, charges of war crimes, and indictment threats against our leaders and soldiers. It is the worst of all worlds – our self-restraint is harming our chances for victory and we are still vilified as international criminals. We have been foolishly providing food to our enemies – and nonetheless are still being accused of starving them. Bizarre, but not unexpected, as these are the tactics the enemy employs in its quest for victory and our demise.

Morality is undoubtedly a great strength, but not the modern Western moral notions that have seeped into our society. Our benighted justices and self-proclaimed moralists who sit in their ivory towers pondering the abstractions of “rights of enemy combatants” and “rights of enemy civilians” will only be pleased with stalemate, which means defeat. They are imbued with values that, in large measure, are alien to Jews. They assume that it is more moral to be a victim than to be a victor, not realizing that the greatest moral triumph is the defeat of evil and the forging of a better world.

Victory speaks for itself, and as the Allies did after World War II, they duly deliberated the morality and ramifications of their conduct. But they did it after World War II, not during, and they certainly did not afford their enemies the benefits of our morality that they had so brazenly mocked and callously breached. Morality that is not reciprocated is an albatross, a tool for defeat, and a gift to the rogue nations and terrorist groups.

The West is handcuffed by moral notions it fabricated and improvised (better, that its most liberal, progressive elements fabricated and improvised). Those bear little resemblance to the Torah’s ethic of warfare, which is absolute, designed to completely vanquish the enemy and win, and deter future attacks from our foes (see, for example, Chapter 6 of Rambam’s Laws of Kings and their Wars).

The West must learn to fight fire with fire, which will in short order quell the ardor of the rogue nations, wipe the gleeful smirks off their faces, and rein in their worst impulses. And we must learn that our enemies are not entitled to the benefits of Western morality, which they know is an effective weapon against us and the means to their survival. They are entitled to the Torah’s morality, which prioritizes our lives, physical and spiritual. And those who fear the effects on the Jewish soul during or after a war fought according to Torah norms, fret not. We should be confident that fidelity to Torah itself purifies and sensitizes.

Fighting a war on the enemy’s terms, pace, and morality is a recipe for defeat. The West does not realize that, and so its influence on world events is waning, its leaders are hapless, and evil is proliferating. We must realize that, and soon, take seriously that our enemies want to destroy us and will not be assuaged by soft words or a cease fire, and act accordingly. That is the Jewish ethic that should guide our leaders, and with the help of the Almighty, lead us to victory and redemption.