Middle East Fighting, Peace and UN Non-Member Status
Adapted from Rabbi Braun’s sermon in 5773
In the past few weeks we have witnessed fighting in Israel, rockets fired into southern Israel, Israeli attempts to stop those rockets, a tentative peace and a unilateral move for non-member state status which was approved this Thursday.
What are we to make of all of it? What should our attitude be? Is the peace good or bad? Should we have been more aggressive or not? Ground initiative or not? Is there a place to look for answers?
I thought that I had found it in the commentary of the Ramban, Nachmonides. He is a great believer in the concept of Maaseh Avot siman l’banim – that the actions of our forefathers are a sign to the children. One could take that to mean that we should study the actions of the patriarchs and matriarchs and learn from them.
But the Ramban actually reads this in a fundamentally different way. He believes that they are not simply general guides for us to draw lessons from, rather they are actual scenarios that will play out throughout our history. Literally what happens to the patriarchs will happen to us as well. It is as if those scenarios will play out for us as well.
The Ramban explains (in 32/4) that the episode of the encounter between Yaakov and Esav- between the Jew and the one looking to kill the Jew is recorded to teach us that God will save us in that encounter and redeem us from the one coming to attack us.
And there is also a hint for the future. כי כל אשר אירע לאבינו עם עשו אחיו יארע לנו תמיד עם בני עשו Everything that happened to this father will happen to us in our encounter with the children of Esav. And when we encounter that situation we should react in the same way that Yaakov did – with a three pronged approach of prayer gifts and preparation for battle.
And I thought to myself – that is pretty frightening. That three pronged approach is exactly what we saw in the last few weeks. There was certainly prayer in the Jewish community, there was diplomacy which is what the gifts represent and there was clearly fighting and preparation for war with the massing of tanks and troops at the edge of Gaza.
Although I generally find it hard to swallow this particular approach of the Ramban from a textual perspective, sometimes it is quite scary that he seems to be historically correct.
At the end of this piece of commentary he cites two other places in the parsha where he believes the principle applies.
The first is when Yaakov splits the camps in preparation with the possible fight with Esav.
בראשית פרק לב
ט) ויאמר אם יבוא עשו אל המחנה האחת והכהו והיה המחנה הנשאר לפליטה
All the commentators wonder, why split the camp? Can’t Esav simply wipe out both camps?
Some suggest that one of the camps could slip away while the other was being slaughtered. Others suggest that the second camp could come in after the battle once Esav was tired and smite his camp in their weakened state.
Ramban (32/9) reads this as a metaphysical statement. Yaakov splits that camp into two because he knows that one will survive. That is the promise from God that we will always survive the enemy in part. The splitting of the camps is simply an actualization of the promise from God.
This scenario argues the Ramban will play out through history. There will be many exiles in which some of our people in some of the lands will suffer yet at the same time in other places of the world there will be Jews surviving. In some places there will be physical or financial anti-Semitism and in other places there will be compassion and survival.
That is hinted to by Yaakov when he split the camp.
The Ramban does actually mean that Yaakov does not split the camp in order to save some of his camp, that will happen no matter what. Yaakov splits the camps to demonstrate the promise for all future generations, without any impact on the current scene.
Now I began to wonder- is Yaakov really the right model for us? We are fortunate today to have a country of our own and an army of our own- we are dependent upon God but not open other countries the way we were in exile.
His last peace convinced me that Yaakov might not be the proper model.
In 33/15 after meeting up with Esav and making piece Esav suggests that they travel together and Yaakov demurs. Esav then suggests that a messenger from his camp should accompany Yaakov and again Yaakov says no thank you. Rashi explains that this was because Yaakov wanted nothing to do with Esav at all.
The Ramaban quotes a Midrash that says the following:
When our Teacher4 had to travel to the Government,(Rome)5 he would look at this text and would not take Romans with him. On one occasion he did not look at it, and took Romans with him, and before he reached Acco he had already sold his coat.1 (they stole it all)
How did the Rabbi know to look at this parsha and emulate it? Ramban argues that there was a tradition that these sages had that the story of Jacob is the story of the Jew in exile. And they knew that they were to look at these paragraphs and follow the instructions to a tee because they were written partially for that purpose.
Indeed Yaakov seems to be the galus Jew, the exiled Jew at the mercy of Lavan and then Esav with nothing but God’s promise to protect him. If that is true and it seems to be true, then can we take our cues from Yaakov when dealing with our Esavs or Ishmaels? Maybe the galus Jew should play politics and grovel a little and try and balance diplomacy and war but the Israel settled Jew might fight by different rules.
What about the gallus Jew who knows what is right but whose children are not fighting etc.
So hard to know…
That brings me to the real issue that I have with this approach of the Ramban. In addition to the textual issues which are significant, it seems to me that the situation that we live in will never be an exact match to anything that came before it. In order to actually see the events of the patriarch’s lives playing out in history you have to speak in general and vague enough terms that render the comparison meaningless.
There is also a sense of determinism in the Ramban that makes me a little uncomfortable.
I would read these stories as well as the Avraham stories as giving us general guidelines and providing us with the questions that we must ask and the values that we must consider.
What is the right approach? What is the right combination of diplomacy, prayer and battle?
Do we actually deserve God’s protection, which was one of Jacob’s concerns? How do we balance concern with the outside world UN etc with our belief that God controls our destiny?
Those are the questions and we pray every Shabbat that the right decisions are being made.
