Between the War Within and the War with Iran

The return of Jewish sovereignty has not only transformed Jewish politics. It has also reopened an ancient theological question: what place does war occupy in the moral imagination of Judaism?

I write these lines from a makeshift Home Front Command base where I have been serving for the past week, since the outbreak of our war with Iran. This is my first reserve duty following basic training, and the experience inevitably provokes reflection—on war itself, and on the rare privilege of taking part in it.

Previously, we hesitated in the face of every threat, feared confrontation with every enemy, and turned the fear of escalation into our operating formula

Much has already been written about the transformation Israel has undergone since the bitter morning of October 7. This shift cannot be overstated, and it will surely occupy many a book. Previously, we hesitated in the face of every threat, feared confrontation with every enemy, and turned the fear of escalation into our operating formula. Today, this approach has been entirely overturned: rather than hesitation, we are attacking our enemies with full force and reshaping the entire Middle East.

My present reflections, however, do not concern Israel’s strategic shift, but its meaning from a Jewish perspective. For many centuries, the Jewish people lived without wars of their own. Even in the decades of Israeli statehood, it is doubtful whether we have experienced a war quite like this one.

What, then, does such a war mean for Judaism?

 

Jewish Suspicion of War

Many interpret the Jewish tradition as fundamentally anti-war. “In our literature,” wrote the renowned Holocaust writer and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel, “we love sages, not warriors. We speak more often of dying for Kiddush Hashem—for the sanctification of the Name—than of dying in combat” (“The Jew and War,” November 1975).

Wiesel speaks of the Jewish people’s “hatred of war.” “It is easy to hate war when one is defeated,” he writes, “but Jews have hated war even when they won. We never seem to hate the enemy, it is war we hate.”

In the same essay, Wiesel speaks of the Jewish people’s “hatred of war.” “It is easy to hate war when one is defeated,” he writes, “but Jews have hated war even when they won. We never seem to hate the enemy, it is war we hate, it is war we consider the enemy.” Even regarding the fighters of the Warsaw Ghetto, Wiesel could not imagine them rejoicing in killing Germans. Their joy, he suggested, lay rather in the possibility of eliminating the threat: “They were happy not because they had killed the enemy but because the enemy could be killed.”

At first glance, the words of the Sages might appear to confirm such a view. Instead of the conventional understanding of heroism—“The Lord is strong and mighty, the Lord mighty in battle” (Psalms 24:8)—the Sages famously declared: “Who is the hero? One who conquers his inclination” (Avot 4:1).

Rather than dwell on the great wars between nations, the rabbinic tradition often places the emphasis on the inward struggle of a person against the evil inclination that accompanies him from youth. As the Sages state in tractate Berakhot: “A person should always incite the good inclination against the evil inclination.”

The author of Hovot HaLevavot famously expanded this idea in a well-known parable:

“It is told of a pious man who met people returning from a war against enemies, carrying spoils after a fierce battle. He said to them: You have returned from the lesser war carrying spoils; prepare yourselves now for the greater war. They asked him: What is the greater war? He replied: The war against the inclination and its hosts.” (Sha’ar Yichud HaMa’aseh, Chap. 5)

During the long centuries of exile, when the very idea of war receded from Jewish life, the verse “When you go out to war against your enemy” naturally came to be interpreted as referring to the war against the evil inclination. This interpretation appears frequently in the literature of mussar and Hasidut: in our times, it is said, the primary battlefield lies within.

For generations, this outlook seemed entirely natural. A people without sovereignty does not wage wars; it endures them. In such a world, the language of war inevitably migrated inward—from the battlefield to the human heart.

Wiesel interpreted this development as a principled moral stance. “For the Talmud,” he wrote, “war is a calamity, not an option.” It is always a calamity: “War means disaster; war means suffering.” Even if war must be fought, “one must never endow it with a loftier meaning, a spiritual dimension that would embellish it.” War must never be idealized.

While profoundly engaged with Judaism and loyal to the Jewish State, Wiesel was also deeply influenced by the ideals of Western humanism. Yet it must be admitted that similar sentiments—though sometimes expressed in a different language—are not uncommon within the traditional beit midrash itself. For generations, this outlook seemed entirely natural. But what happens when historical conditions change and begin to challenge it?

 

The War Within and the War with Iran

This question becomes unavoidable in light of the present conflict: the war with Iran, the war of the Rising Lion.

On one level, it may be described as a defensive war. Under the rule of the ayatollahs, the destruction of the State of Israel has long stood among Iran’s central goals. In the year 2000, when Spanish Prime Minister José María Aznar visited Tehran, he asked Ali Khamenei: “What is Iran’s national agenda?” Khamenei did not respond. Aznar sharpened the question: “Sir, when you wake up in the morning—what is the first thing you think about?” Khamenei answered simply: “Eliminating Israel.”

When facing a regime dedicated to your destruction, even an offensive strike may ultimately be defensive in nature.

Yet something deeper is also at stake. The Iranian regime is not merely another geopolitical rival. Its rhetoric, ideology, and actions frame the conflict in civilizational and even theological terms. Israel is not simply an enemy state in their eyes, an object of territorial dispute. Rather, it is a symbol to be erased. When a regime repeatedly defines its purpose in such terms, the confrontation inevitably transcends the logic of ordinary conflict. It becomes part of a broader struggle over what kind of world will prevail.

Is everything reducible to self-defense? The language of international law may suffice with such a definition. The language of the Bible does not.

War occupies a central place in Tanach. Indeed, the only time the Ark leaves its place in the Mikdash is when it accompanies the army into battle: “When the Ark set out, Moshe would say: Arise, Hashem, and let Your enemies be scattered; let those who hate You flee before You” (Bamidbar 10:35). The meaning of the Ark’s journey is unmistakable: the defeat of the enemy.

If one were to ask a student of Torah where the presence of God is to be found, the answer would therefore be twofold: in the Mikdash on the one hand, and in the military camp on the other. The battlefield, no less than the sanctuary, is the place where the drama of divine history unfolds.

The overarching mission of the Jewish people is thus bound up with the struggle between good and evil—with the defeat of evil by the forces of good.

The overarching mission of the Jewish people is thus bound up with the struggle between good and evil—with the defeat of evil by the forces of good.

This idea finds expression in the verse concerning the war against Amalek: “It is a war of Hashem against Amalek from generation to generation” (Shemos 17:16). There exists a perpetual war against the force of evil represented by Amalek—and, as in Yehoshua’s battle in the wilderness, the responsibility for conducting that war rests upon the Jewish people.

One may describe the mission of the Jewish people in positive terms, as Isaiah does: “This people I have formed for Myself; they shall declare My praise” (Yeshayahu 43:21). Our task is to bring the light and unity of God into the world. Yet that mission cannot be fulfilled without its counterpart: the eradication of evil.

For this reason, the commandments incumbent upon the Jewish People Israel upon returning to the Land begin with the eradication of Amalek, and only afterward the building of the Temple, as Rambam rules at the beginning of the Laws of Kings. The labor of destroying evil must precede that of realizing the good.

Wiesel acknowledged that the Tanach speaks extensively about war, yet he suggested that our Sages shifted the biblical position: “War occupies a large place in Scripture, but not in the Talmud. […] The Talmud chose to reject categorically the idea of war as an option.” Yet, it seems that history offers a more compelling explanation.

During the centuries of exile, when the Jewish people lacked the ability to fight the wars of God, the arena of battle moved inward—to the war against the evil inclination. Exile reshaped Jewish language: what had once been the struggle of a people on the stage of history became the struggle of a soul within the heart.

The war never disappeared. It merely changed arenas.

Now that the Jewish people have returned to sovereignty, the horizon widens again. The struggle against evil returns not only to the individual heart but even to the stage of history. And that struggle, too, belongs to the Jewish mission.

 

The Eradication of Evil

Our redemption from Egypt was not complete until the splitting of the Red Sea—a separate event that consisted entirely in the destruction of Egypt’s army. The seventh day of Pesach is called, in the words of Ibn Ezra, “the day of Pharaoh’s drowning,” and Shiras HaYam, the Song of the Sea, focuses entirely on Egypt’s downfall: “I will sing unto Hashem, for He has triumphed gloriously; horse and rider He has cast into the sea.”

Leaving Egypt was not sufficient. Pharaoh and his army, chariots and all, had to pursue the Israelites, ultimately to perish at the sea. Only then could Israel be considered redeemed. Indeed, the Talmud notes that King David could only begin to employ the elevated praise of Hallelujah—it appears first in Chapter 104 of Tehillim—after he witnessed the downfall of the wicked (Berachos 10a).

From these, and many other primary sources, a simple conclusion emerges: the eradication of evil does not contradict Judaism. On the contrary, it forms part of its moral structure. Not out of a lust for killing, God forbid—Wiesel is right that we share nothing with the great killers of human history—but out of love for the good and hatred for its opposite: “O lovers of Hashem, hate evil” (Tehillim 97:10).

Even today, when the Jewish people once again wield political and military power, echoes of that earlier sensibility remain. “The voice is the voice of Yaakov, and the hands are the hands of Esav.”

And yet the long centuries of exile left a deep imprint on Jewish moral imagination. Even today, when the Jewish people once again wield political and military power, echoes of that earlier sensibility remain. “The voice is the voice of Yaakov, and the hands are the hands of Esav.” Over many centuries, our exclusive purview was the voice; the hands of war belong to others.

Within such a conception, there is little reason to take pride in the achievements of war. As in every generation, the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands. For that, we must offer thanks and praise—but nothing more. It is thus hard not to understand Wiesel. He articulates a long tradition in which the war between good and evil took place primarily within the human heart.

In many ways, this remains the official Haredi voice. For instance, on the cover of a popular Charedi magazine marking the military achievements of the first week of war appeared the blessing Harav et Rivenu (from the Megillah reading), scenes from the battlefield, and the proud flag of the United States. Conspicuously (and infuriatingly) absent was the flag of the State of Israel—the state that writes the pages of history, reshapes the Middle East, and increasingly leads the free world in the struggle against global evil. War, as it were, is theirs; it is not ours.

The argument is not always stated openly, but it underlies—among other basic dispositions—the debate over Haredi enlistment. Expressions such as “the precious sons of Zion, comparable to fine gold,” which frequently appear in broadsides opposing Haredi enlistment, hint at the underlying claim: a ben Torah, a person of refined and elevated spirit, does not belong in the army.

Rav Aharon Lichtenstein zt”l articulated a version of this concern in his well-known essay Zot Torat HaHesder. He warned of the possible “loss of refinement and nobility, and the dulling of moral and religious sensitivity that may result from exposure to the rough aspects of reality.” He refutes the claim, of course—but it reflects a moral movement that continues to find expression.

Rav Dov Lando, when confronted by Erez Eshel early in the Gaza war, stated that even visiting wounded soldiers might be unsuitable for the delicate souls of yeshiva students. An exaggeration, certainly, but it reflects the same internal motion, as though to say: What has a ben Torah, one devoted to the inner struggle against evil, to do with the battlefield?

Today, however, another Haredi voice must also be heard. It is a voice that appreciates the new arena of the war against evil, identifies with the cause, and strives to take part in it. It heralds the Haredi future of Israel.

 

Taking Pride

Haredi Judaism is entering Israel. Associated with the Israeli right, it is far removed from the humanism and pacifism—whether in Wiesel’s formulation or even that of Rav Shach zt”l—and deeply embedded in Israeli life. From that position, it expresses strong support for the war against our surrounding enemies.

This does not mean that there are no longer “silken scholars” among us, the kind of Torah students whose entire world lies within the inner life of the beit midrash. They are, and many continue to display a unique readiness to sacrifice for Torah study and a withdrawn lifestyle. But they are no longer the whole story. Far from it. The new voice, the one seeking to maintain core Haredi values while espousing deep responsibility for and partnership with Israel, is heard today loud and clear.

For the first time in many centuries, the Jewish people confront evil not only in the pages of sacred texts but also in the arena of history itself. The time is ripe for us to rise to the larger task to which we are called. And so we shall.

The current war presses home the point: Jewish sovereignty has changed the scale of Jewish responsibility. For the first time in many centuries, the Jewish people confront evil not only in the pages of sacred texts but also in the arena of history itself. The time is ripe for us to rise to the larger task to which we are called. And so we shall.

But as Wiesel himself wrote elsewhere, the Israel of today rests upon the foundations laid by generations of the Jewish people:

“The mystics of medieval Spain, the wandering Just Men of Poland, the sages of Slabodka and the visionaries of Morocco—it is thanks to them, the known and the unknown heroes of Jewish legend that Israel lives and relives” (To a Brother in Israel, 1974).

Those who walk the new path—of partnership and responsibility—must honor the old one. And those who remain faithful to the old must recognize the new. Jewish history now contains both.

Our pride, indeed, lies in both.