I am not a politician and I have no wish to become one. I am a rabbi, and the role of a rabbi is not to be a military tactician or a political pundit, but to learn, share and teach halacha, or Jewish law. I am a trader in traditions, and occasionally, on a good day, in wisdom.
The last two years have tested my resolve, as it has for many of my colleagues, to stay within the “arba amot of halacha” — the imaginary one-square-meter space that describes each individual’s realm of agency and action. I have been cajoled and challenged to speak of politics and policies rather than Torah. Mostly I have resisted.
In keeping with that spirit, I have tried to respond to the challenge posed by the growing dissatisfaction inside and outside of Israel — including in England, where I live — with the war and its tactics by educating myself further, studying Israeli history and, critically, reconnecting with the sources that structure our Jewish approach to pretty much every problem. One of those problems is the question which has echoed across all Jewish communities since the Gaza war began: How can we observe and protect Jewish law and values in such an extreme and emotive situation?
Halacha does not sanctify war, nor does Judaism celebrate war as a means in itself. There are no glorious songs of valkyries and Valhalla here; there are no glowing affirmations of martyrdom. War is not desirable nor honorable, and in fact, most wars that Israel has had to fight are easily identified as a milḥemet mitzvah, obligatory war. There are three kinds of obligatory wars, and the third kind of commanded conflict is our current one, a war in which we are attacked and forced to respond — a defensive war, in which the goal is both retribution and deterrence.
Such a war is inherently intense, but also limited in scope and tactics. And one of the strategies which our tradition actually has considerable wisdom on is one frequently used in such a war: siege.
In the Laws of War which make up the final section of the Mishneh Torah, Maimonides teaches us two important principles: 1) When you attack a city in order to defeat it, you cannot encircle it on all sides — rather, an avenue has to remain open to allow anyone who wishes to flee and save themselves, and 2) You cannot cut down edible flora which are outside the city, nor stop up water channels so they dry up.
These are spectacular texts. They suggest that we need to put religious and moral values ahead of military and tactical objectives. While the most effective way to besiege an enemy is to encircle them entirely and then starve them into submission, we are not permitted such a strategy. Instead, we have to allow a way out and we cannot interrupt the normal supply of food and water.
Two commentators make these distinctions even clearer: Nahmanides explains that we have to limit ourselves because it is an act of compassion (and we are meant to feel compassion even for our enemies), and also because it is practical – if we let some escape, then there are fewer to fight. The Yad Peshutah (the shorthand for Rabbi Nahum Rabinovitch, the head of Yeshivat Birkat Moshe in Maale Adumim until his death in 2020) echoes this, specifying that the gap left in the siege fortifications needs to be big enough for people to escape, but small enough that the besieged enemy cannot resupply with new weapons or reinforcements.
What I discovered is that this complexity runs throughout the voluminous Jewish legal literature on war, both ancient and modern. It is a topic that deserves more than a pithy social media comment or a quick read in headline news to understand, which is why I have written an essay on that very subject — summarizing these sources and laying out rabbinical thinking so that more people might engage with it.
I am not the first to do so. In a telegram sent in response to news of the Deir Yassin massacre, carried out by Jewish paramilitaries during the War of Independence in April 1948, the two chief rabbis of the time (Isaac Herzog and Ben-Zion Uziel) issued a stark warning and an useful reminder: “The general deterioration of moral values throughout humanity is no excuse for Jews to forsake the basic principles of the moral heritage of mankind which stems in so large a measure from Hebrew teaching.”
Ultimately, I believe we have to put our values first and the Torah first. A Jewish nation with a Jewish army must be governed by Jewish values. Our priority has to be our obligations to God and the system of halacha, even when that means limiting the acceptable military tactics available to us. Or at least, that’s what I think — but that’s why I am a rabbi and (thank God) not a politician.
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