War & Peace

Torah does not preach pacifism. Indeed, the exact opposite: we have to “wipe out” Amalek, the Canaanites, etc.! Is religion aggressive?  Does it cause war? Would world peace be around the corner without it?
Let’s be honest. Fighting comes naturally to people; it exists without religion and society has always romanticized aggression. From Sparta to the Samurai, from the knight who jousted to the cowboy with the fastest gun, the duel was proof of courage and honor. 
In contrast, Judaism never considered violence glamorous. True, new recruits in Bar Kochba’s army proved their bravery by severing one of their fingers, but the Rabbis then strongly disapproved, considering it destructive and pointless. Still, despite the Jewish distaste for violence, Judaism recognizes both, “A time of war and a time of peace.” The only issue is how those conflicting values interact.
Any Jewish discussion of war must begin with peace. Peace is Judaism’s highest aspiration. The Talmud says the entire Torah is based on the value of peace (Gittin 59b). In order to maintain peaceful relations, we are allowed to lie (Yevamos 65b), and in one instance, a section of the Torah may be erased to preserve marital peace (Rambam).
Clearly, peace is paramount; but does this apply in the face of aggression? Some argue for pacifism which has the advantage of being uncompromising and absolute. Considering the strong emphasis our tradition places on peace, this view has to be taken seriously. There are two major arguments made for pacifism.
A) Violence, even in self-defense, perpetuates more violence. Only pacifism can end this cycle as King Agrippa exhorted the Jews who wanted to revolt against Rome: “Nothing so much damps the force of strokes as bearing them with patience.”
This assumes that people will receive goodwill if they remain passive, a stance often used by Jews in anti-Semitic societies, where it was best to avoid making waves. However, even this approach had its limitations, as in the joke of the two Jews about to be executed by a firing squad. As they are handed their blindfolds, one refuses to put his on. The second Jew, mortified by this act of rebellion, pleads, “Please, don’t make trouble!”
So though Gandhi succeeded against the British through nonviolent protest, it was only because he was opposing an empire with a respect for human rights. For the 6,000,000 Jews in the Holocaust, nonviolence would not have earned Hitler’s mercy!
B) Moral pacifism which argues that it is immoral to use violence, even in self-defense as in the New Testament’s, “Whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
In Judaism, self defense is a moral obligation. Thus Torah allows people to kill a thief if there is reason to assume that the thief will use lethal force (Sanhedrin 72a). Refusing to fight evil is to be party to evil. Torah also challenges the moral assumption of nonviolence that equates the life of the aggressor with the victim. These two lives are not equal. (Rashi to Exodus 22:1).
Peace may be Judaism’s paramount value, yet at times we have to make war. What this paradox means is that we should never lose sight of the humanity of our enemies, and that every death on the battlefield is tragic. The Talmud relates that on the night that the Egyptian army drowned in the Sea, G-d refused to hear the angels sing: “My creations are drowning, and you sing?” (Megillah 10b).
A soldier’s love for peace will affect his wartime behavior. While the old adage contends, “All’s fair in love and war,” the Jewish view is to avoid collateral damage. This concern is first found in Abraham’s pleading with G-d to avoid killing any righteous citizens of Sodom. Torah even prohibits the unnecessary destruction of trees in wartime (Deuteronomy 20:19). A soldier must love peace, even when he goes out to battle.
Thus all Jews wait desperately for the days when, “They will beat their swords into plowshares.” (Isaiah 2:4). As our Sages state, “Peace is equivalent to all other blessings.” Indeed, Shalom, Hebrew for peace, is one of the names of G-d.
Upstairs, in the soul’s heavenly environment, peace is a given. However when the soul “goes out” from that setting and descends to our material world, it is confronted by challenges that require it to engage in battle. This is the origin of all war, the struggle to transform even the lowest elements of existence into a dwelling for G-d. For this reason, Torah commanded us to conquer a land which was notorious for its depravity and turn it into a Holy land. Ultimately, Mashiach will “vanquish all the nations…and perfect the entire world,” initiating the era when “there will be neither famine nor war, neither envy nor competition.”
But until then we will experience war, which as we’ve posited is a very natural phenomenon. In contrast, peace is not natural to the human condition. It had to be taught and learned. And who were the teachers?
The first (and most powerful) vision of world peace was presented by the prophets of ancient Israel, who predicted a time when, “One nation will not lift a sword against another.” In a world that imagined war as an inevitable fact of life, Judaism introduced a radical new concept: that war is undesirable and peace is the ideal, and ultimate, state for which to strive.
Without religion we would find other things to fight about, like parking spots and noisy neighbors. But without religion, world peace would never have entered the human vocabulary. So whether you are aware of it or not, the dream of world peace was Biblically inspired.
Ideals do not live in bubbles. Like people, they need parents to give birth to them and a home environment to sustain them. Peace without religion is homeless. It was Judaism that gave birth to this vision and still provides the best framework to implement that dream.
True, religion has been used by some as a pretext for war. But ridding the world of all religion would not end war any more than abolishing professional sports would put a stop to brawls. In fact, religion provides the strongest argument for peace between people: we were all created by the same G-d. Without this belief, is there anything else that really unites us?