Part II
The first part of this essay told about the roots of
violence in the early days of the Zionist movement that
cultivated the image of the Jew as a fighter and even as a
coarse man of action, in response to non-Jewish criticism of
the spiritual nature of Jews. Fighting and weaponry were
idolized, an attitude that carried over into the makeup of
Israeli society, and especially its army, the IDF, and the
attitudes to army service. This is why the army non-service
of yeshiva students is always such a sore issue: because
militarism is such a universal value in Israel, uniting both
Left and Right. The army is viewed as important because it
cultivates these attitudes.
The shocking incidents that have lately
happened obligate us to contemplate deeply. It is needless to
say that among the Jewish People there were never so many
murders. Such acts, if there were any at all, were considered
exceedingly atypical and very often the work of the mentally
insane. The berserk reality of today, in which Jews kill each
other in routine arguments has only appeared in the last
generation.
This extreme and conspicuous change, that has transpired
among the nation which for thousands of years was known for
its zeal to save life and its deep revulsion from bloodshed,
demands a piercing analysis of the developments that have
occurred to the Jewish Nation in recent times. It is
impossible to ignore the fact that this phenomenon has
appeared along with the ideological revolution and
ideological shocks that befell the Jewish Nation in recent
generations.
The Zionist Movement and its nationalist leaders swept along
with them a multitude of unsuspecting Jews of all ages,
including even young men who forsook the beis midrash
and became non-religious. These pseudo leaders preached an
extreme change of values for our nation. Instead of a
Toras chaim and ahavas chesed they proposed an
alien doctrine of nationalism and hollow patriotism.
Nationalistic aspirations evolved simultaneously with the
worship of power as part of the system that nourished a
"Judaism of muscles," as a prominent Zionist leader once
defined it.
These ideas blossomed especially at the time when the State
and its army, the IDF, were first established. Writers and
poets voluntarily tendered their services to praise the use
of military force. These intellectuals fostered the
idealization of weapons and the power of killing inherent in
them. Young Jewish boys viewed enlisting into a "combat
corps" as the peak of their desires and spoke proudly about
their battlefield accomplishments.
Deploying an army and waging war, once considered by cultured
people -- those possessing even a minimum of humane and moral
feeling -- to be the last resort of desperation, something
that unfortunately could not be prevented when circumstances
compelled it, became transformed into the central element of
Israeli society. In such a militant atmosphere it is no
wonder that the State of Israel has become a place where "a
fast trigger finger is an accepted sight -- something almost
legitimate."
A few weeks ago newspapers printed articles about a bizarre
Israeli person who would shoot, without any reason, at
English tourists hiking in the Judean Desert. Reporters who
researched his past discovered that he was once a member of
what was called the "elite squad," whose members used to
remark that they regarded their missions of killing as a sort
of "sport," an opportunity for "good times together," which
they missed for the rest of their lives.
"That was a period of happiness," said one of them. "In those
wonderful days we felt all-powerful. The gun gave us the
great security of having the power to surprise everyone.
There was real excitement; we were on vacation with our guns.
In the rooms you always heard guns being cocked. It was a
period that left its impression on us all. It is a pity that
I could not always live like that." He summarizes: "That was
the happiest time in our lives!"
The investigating reporter claimed that indeed the period of
Army service left its impression on the desert assassin of
tourists. This man used to say that "my weapon is always with
me. When I go to sleep I put it under the mattress."
Eventually the moment came when he lost control of himself,
and he took out his gun and began to reconstruct in a
terrifying way the old thrills for which he unconsciously
yearned.
Any Jew who is a yirei Shomayim has
difficulty in digesting such a style of talk. Not only is it
difficult for full-time Torah students; all bnei
Torah, and also Torah-observant Jews who served in the
Israeli army, never pictured the battlefield as being
anything but a dreadful necessity in which people endanger
their lives and, with no choice, must fight, since, "When
someone comes to kill you, kill him beforehand"
(Sanhedrin 72a).
Even in the war against the seven nations living in Eretz
Yisroel before bnei Yisroel came, a milchemes
mitzvah against despised and abominable nations, our
Sages proclaim that "the trait of chesed and pity
increased in the hearts of Yisroel. They acted according to
what Hashem had commanded them and not as those who love war
and aggression, cholila" (from the margins of the
Chazon Ish's Chumash, printed in the appendices to
Sefer Chazon Ish at the end of Tohoros).
On the other hand, those young men who did not receive a
Torah-based education and instead absorbed nationalist
ideologies, teachings professing power and a "Judaism of
muscles," look at army service as being a "value" and not a
forced necessity. They are liable to reach a condition in
which they are psychologically prepared to find satisfaction
and entertainment in killing.
It is well known that the Or HaChaim writes in the
parsha of ir hanidachas that the Torah needed
especially to add a guarantee of "and He will give you mercy
and have compassion upon you," (Devorim 13:18) so that
negative inclinations would not penetrate the nefesh
of a Jew. "[So that it would not] create a trait of cruelty
in a person's heart, as the cult of royal murderers of
Yishmoel told us, that they have great enjoyment when killing
a person. Their wellspring of pity is severed from them and
they become cruel."
It is clear, therefore, that someone who was not privileged
to receive the brocho of "and He will give you mercy,"
and who behaves in all that he does in a way opposed to that
of the Torah, is prone to inherit a cruel nature, just like
those Yishmoeli killers who "have great enjoyment when
killing a person."
A Jewish child who studies in a cheder learns the
Torah's outlook on weapons right away in parshas
Bereishis. He learns about Kayin, the first murderer, who
was "cursed from the land," (4:11) because "his sin was too
great to bear." Later he learns about one of Kayin's
descendants, Tuval Kayin, who was "the forger of every
cutting instrument of brass and iron" (v. 22). When the child
studies Rashi, he sees how revolting that profession is.
"Tuval Kayin -- derived from the word tavlin (spice).
He `spiced' and dressed up the trade of Kayin by making
weapons for murderers."
The first "munitions industry" was, therefore, no more than
the product of someone who wanted to improve the skill of the
abominable murderer, to make it easier and more effective. He
was not a regular Kayin. He was an improved, "spiced-up"
model of Kayin.
That is what a child in cheder studies. Not just at
first, either. When he reaches parshas Yisro he learns
that the Torah warns us not to hew the stones of the
mizbeiach with iron tools, "for if you lift your tool
up over it you have profaned it" (Shemos 20:23). Even
to plaster the mizbeiach with an iron spreader is
forbidden (Mishnah Middos, chap. 3) "since the
mizbeiach was created to lengthen man's life and iron
shortens man's life. It is not proper that the shortener be
uplifted over the lengthener" (Rashi, ibid.).
When the child grows up and studies, in the Shulchan
Oruch, the halochos of a beis knesses, he learns
that for the same reason he is not allowed to enter a beis
knesses with a long knife or any other weapon, "since
tefilla lengthens a man's life and a knife shortens
it" (Shulchan Oruch 151, and Taz, ibid.). After
his meal, too, he must cover his knife when he says bircas
hamozone, "since metal shortens man's life and it is not
proper for it to lie on the table, which is like a
mizbeiach, that lengthens man's life" (181, and
Taz, ibid.).
The knife and the sword are therefore something abominable.
The person who invented them gained a title whose meaning is
"an `improved' Kayin." The one who raises it on the
mizbeiach makes it posul and profane. It must
not be seen in a beis knesses, or on the table during
bircas hamozone.
A believing Jew, who has absorbed the Torah's values, sees
weapons as being an unfortunate necessity. We sometimes need
to use weapons, for example when "someone who comes to kill
you, rise earlier and kill him" (Sanhedrin 72a). But a
believing Jew never dares to hold weapons -- or the
profession of warfare -- holy, since he sees in such things,
at the most, a methodology which each Jew prays never to have
to use.
This is the correct attitude towards weapons and military
strategies, as taught to those who study the Torah, those who
remember their whole life what they were taught in
cheder. The members of the Golani Brigade embraced
entirely different values.
An ideology that shows off every sophisticated weapon added
to our weapon stock in a giant picture on the front pages of
all daily newspapers; a society whose generals are "exalted
people," automatically considered candidates for any high
level position, however unconnected to military skills; a
social atmosphere that sends young children to a "tank
display" in order to lovingly embrace the tanks' barrels; a
country that takes pride in its Uzi submachine gun and other
weapons sold on the international market; a country where,
through a natural and inevitable process, corrupt fruits of
materialism and fascism grow -- such a country must expect
such results as Yigal Amir.
Those militaristic values that sanctify bloodshed and idolize
weapons and military force are not absorbed from chareidi
circles nor their Torah institutions. People such as Amir
grow in another hothouse altogether. Precisely because of
this, it is astounding to see those who have cast away the
yoke of Torah stand helpless and see clearly the tail end of
their ideology, but have no other concern in life except
trying to harm bnei Torah, the jug of pure oil, that
small handful guarding the spiritual possessions of am
Yisroel.
The heartless acts of murder to which we have lately been
witness oblige us to reflect upon what has happened and try
and reach conclusions. We see again that those who cultivate
the use of arms as every adolescent's dream, and a society
that portrays military figures as venerated individuals, are
also unintentionally developing decadent inclinations and
awakening negative emotions among the youth. A country whose
politicians constantly boast of their military past, of
having killed people from such a short distance that they
could see the whites of their eyes, and are proud of the
pictures in which they were photographed standing near the
bodies they shot, implants in the nation values of power and
violence, killing and murder, which are not directed only
into the limited framework of defending ourselves from a
threatening enemy.
The real answer, and this is of course utopian, is a return
to the traditional Torah values, that are properly balanced
between the need for defense and the need to remain a morally
sensitive person.
