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29 Av 5759 - August 11, 1999 | Mordecai Plaut, director Published Weekly
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Opinion & Comment
Militarism Leads To Juvenile Aggressiveness
by Rabbi Nosson Zeev Grossman

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.


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