Our ancestors and teachers the great Rabbis of the past,
were not acquainted with weapons of mass destruction. For them, people fought wars seeing the
white’s of the enemies eyes, in pitched battles and sieges. According to our Torah stories, God often led
these battles with the few able to defeat the many to prove God’s power and to
increase faith amongst God’s people.
Our Rabbis evolved during millennia in which imperial wars
of conquest and territorial expansion were, by our standards, frequent, common
– the Land of Israel itself has changed hands so many times: Canaanites, Egyptians, Assyrians,
Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Hasmoneans, Romans, Christians, Muslims,
Turkish, British…
But in all these wars, there was never a single weapon that
had the power to determine the outcome of a single battle or a war…
This past week, the President visited Hiroshima, that along
with Nagasaki, have been the only places where a nuclear weapon was used in a
combat situation.
Monday we will observe Memorial Day here, and remember the
soldiers who died in the war that these nuclear attacks helped to end, and
those who have died in all wars.
The message from the visit to Hiroshima was a message of
hope that we might one day prevent mass conflict in the first place.
For my part, I look on the bombings of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki with horror at the power of nuclear weapons equal to the horrors
unleashed by incendiary bombings in Europe and Japan, but also with a sense of
gratitude for American resolve to try to end the war in this way instead of
through an invasion of the Japanese mainland, which projected an estimate of
anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 American casualties.
Operation Downfall, the name for that invasion, would have
included my grandfather, army officer Bernard T. Lewis. If that invasion had gone forward, there is a
chance I, and many others, would not be standing here today.
While the presence and threat of nuclear weaponry remains,
thank heavens, no one has chosen to use this power over the past 71 years, but
the threat is there.
And perhaps the fear of nuclear materials being used by
rogue nations or groups is greater now as borders are more porous than ever and
there appears to be more potential access to acquire these materials.
And so how do we here carve out a life that recognizes the
human potential for destruction and causing chaos while living lives that are
meaningful and that return us with meaning and structure, that we might teach
ourselves, our students, children and others that although we may not be in
control of major destructive forces, we can unleash other forces that with help
can multiply and push back against the fears, the threats, and the sense that
the world might spin out of control.
Our Torah reading this week, that we read on Shabbat, tells
of 3 other types of Shabbats, the 7 year Shemittah cycle of letting the land
lie fallow and the 7 times 7 year cycle leading to the 50th year
Jubilee in which the land lies fallow, debts are cleared, slaves become free,
and all land returns to its original owners, the Jubilee year that begins in
the 50th year on Yom Kippur, a Sabbath unto itself. Unlike our weekly Shabbat and the Shemittah
cycle, there is little evidence to support that the Jubilee ever occurred in
practice, and so it remains a hope, a rallying cry that cycles us back around
to this, our weekly Shabbat, when in a smaller form of Jubilee, instead of land
resting we rest, instead of clearing debts we strive to avoid doing business at
all if possible, instead of releasing slaves we try to release ourselves from
the tyranny of routine and rigid schedules, and instead of releasing the land
to its original owners we take an extra moment to appreciate nature and
creation, and by extension, the Creator who gave us these gifts.
And this Shabbat let’s also recognize and appreciate the
faithful soldiers who gave their lives that we might be able to observe our Shabbat,
those who fell in battle, we remember them today, their courage, their
sacrifice, and their spirit. And we pray
that one day we will not have to remember any more soldiers who’ve fallen, that
neither weapons of mass destruction nor simpler weapons will threaten us, “Lo
yisa goy el goy cherev, velo yilmedu od milchama,” “Nation will not threaten
nation, neither will humankind study war anymore.”
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