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War is Assur

By Jo Ellen Green Kaiser / August 28, 2008

Commonly, the laws of war in Judaism are understood through the categories of milchemet mitzvah (commanded or holy war) and milchemet r’shut (optional war). These two categories-supplemented at times by the category of milchemet hovah (obligatory war), are helpful in outlining the acceptable and/or unacceptable practices of deploying violence on a massive scale. This is usually the first place that people turn to when trying to think about Jewish notions of just and unjust war.

I want to argue that this specific body of halachah or Jewish law is irrelevant to the contemporary discussion. To find moral insight about the justice of war in the Jewish tradition, one must turn to a less well trod part of the halachic field. A more technical and, in certain ways, legally more sophisticated halachic discussions reveals that these parts of halachah are embedded in a (by definition) particularistic and, at times, chauvinistic tradition. Yet, it is possible to extract a halachic claim from its particularist context by embracing rather than ignoring the specifics of that context.[2]

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  • By Anonymous 9/2/08 at 2:16 p.m. UTC

    Using Torah to determine if a war is just or not is fine, as long as you're using Bronze Age weapons.

  • By hkatz 8/29/08 at 8:38 a.m. UTC

       An important and interesting argument. A few additional comments: 

    1) My understanding is that Milchemet Reshut does not apply to anyone today – including Jews, because the prerequsites – the assent of a King, the Sanhedrin, and the Kohen Gadol questioning the Urim V'Tumim – do not exist.

    2) At least one highly respected contemporary Orthodox rabbi has made a very similar argument  – the late Rabbi Aryeh Kaplan, ztl, in a seminal essay entitled "War Resistance in Jewish Law", in a collection entitled of essays entitled "Encounters" (not surprisingly, very difficult to find; it's on Amazon, though).  

    3) "Even the pre-emptive logic of the "pursuer"-the law that if Shimon is chasing Levi with murderous intent, Reuven may kill Shimon prior to Shimon's actually having done anything[15]-cannot survive the move to the arena of nation states. Even were we to accept the premises of the pursuer as accurate and binding, Reuven can again control the level of violence, and focus the violence to a target in a way that an army cannot, and does not. This in addition to the fact that the pursuer must be showing intent while many of those killed in a pre-emptive strike showed no intent at all."

       Yes, this is precisely Aryeh Kaplan's argument. The parameters of self-defense to be employed in "Din Rodef" are not compatible with modern warfare. "War" is assur for everyone – limited self-defense is permitted. 

       In fact, if I recall correctly (which I may not) Rabbi David Bleich makes the argument that even the defense of Israel is based on "Din Rodef" and defending the lives of individual Jews rather than Milchement Mitzvah i.e. the commandment to conquer the land of Israel, which, again as I recall, he says does not exist today. This would mean in practice a starkly reduced halachic permissibility for military action via Israel, without going into detail. But again, I'm a bit shakier on this as I don't recall all the details of Rabbi Bleich's argument. 

        In any event, this is a welcome and refreshing counter-argument to contemporary Modern Orthodoxy and Religious Zionism, whose extreme nationalism and war-mongering get more strident by the day.

     

    Howie

     

     

     

     

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