Hitting the mark, missing the point

I’ve just heard about a new book, Ethics of Our Fighters: Judaism and the moral challenges of warfare, by Rabbi Shlomo Brody. Neville Teller, reviewing it for the Jerusalem Post, has this to say about it:

Ethics of Our Fighters has as its background the Jewish reaction to being confronted with the moral challenges of warfare.

In Ethics of Our Fighters, Rabbi Shlomo Brody has produced a deeply considered analysis, based upon a profound understanding of the principles underlying Judaism and Jewish thought, regarding the ethical dilemmas posed by the sometimes unavoidable need to engage in warfare. Never was the title of a book more apt or more descriptive of its contents. 

Its conclusions, however, are far from confined to people engaged in defending Israel or the Jewish people. Like so much of the civilized world’s view of morality, emanating as it does from the Torah and associated Jewish thinking, they are universally applicable.

He then adds the following:

The title … is an adaptation of “Ethics of the Fathers,” the English title of Pirkei Avot, the famous collection of ethical principles uttered by the leading rabbis whose legal and related opinions appear in the Talmud. Pirkei Avot’s six chapters of ethical and moral pronouncements are included in the daily prayer book. Replete with the wisest of wise counsel as they are, Brody points out that Pirkei Avot has nonetheless nothing at all to say about the ethics of warfare or the moral and ethical principles that should be followed in times of conflict.

The reason is not difficult to deduce. For centuries after the Roman era, the scattered Jewish people simply did not engage in military matters. The long lacuna came to an end just over 100 years ago, when Jews were caught up in World War I and fought on both sides, according to the countries in which they lived. Then, starting in the 1920s, in their ancient homeland of Israel, known then as British Mandate Palestine, Jewish fighters found themselves in armed conflict with local Arabs who were intent on preventing the League of Nations mandated establishment of a “national home for the Jewish people.”

I am reluctant to accept that “Pirkei Avot has … nothing at all to say about the ethics of warfare or the moral and ethical principles that should be followed in times of conflict”. That misses the point. Pirkei Avot was not compiled as a warriors’ manual. But this does not mean that nothing our sages taught in that tractate is relevant to wartime, even today. That’s why I recently posted six pieces on Avot Today that dealt with what Avot had to say about dealing with death and bereavement, jumping to conclusions regarding apparent non-combatants, keeping one’s temper at times of stress, prayer at times of war and while in combat, celebrating victory, and postwar reconstruction.

Leaving quibbles about the author’s opinions aside, I’m intrigued by this book and its approach to Jewish ethical issues—and when I’ve got hold of a copy and read it for myself, I shall share my thoughts on it with Avot Today readers. If anyone reading this post has already seen the book, I do hope that they will share their thoughts on it too.