I will not be speaking about her… Just needed to get that out of the way.
However, being that today is Shabbos Shira, a Shabbos designated for song, I want to teach you an old Chassidic niggun. It goes way back, and it goes like this:
Nanana…
Is anyone familiar with that tune?
Good. I am glad you’re not familiar with that song because it is not a Chassidic niggun. It was written by Lars Ulrich and James Hetfield, ie, Metallica, a hard rock band that I may or may have not have possibly loved when I was a teenager. But it sounds pretty Jewish, doesn’t it? (For those reading, this is the haunting tune from the end of The Memory Remains.)
So let’s play a little game here – we’ll call it Jewish or Jew-ish (to borrow a term from a former and now disgraced congressman).
Here’s another song:
Yidden, Yidden, kumt aheim!
Moshiach vet shreiyin
In di gassen fin Yerushalyaim
Yidden, Yidden, kumt tzu gein!
Is that song Jewish or Jew-ish?
Sounds pretty Jewish, right? This was a wildly popular song, sung by Mordechai Ben David, that was played at all the Bar Mitzvhas when I was growing up. It even had its own little dance to go along with it, which I always thought was a very yeshivish dance.
The only problem is that the song and even the dance was a complete rip-off of a German song all about Genghis Khan and the many children that he fathered. The song is totally inappropriate, and we’ll just leave it at that.
Or how about this one? At the end of Neilah, right before the shofar is blown, if you were to walk in to a Lubavitch shul, you would hear them singing an upbeat tune. It almost sounds like a tune that a marching band would march to. The truth is, it actually is one. The tune is called Napolean’s march, and it was taken from… Napolean’s army.
What makes a tune Jewish?
According to Rav Moshe Feinstein, the preeminent Halachic authority of American Jewry of the 20th century, it seems like there is no such thing as a Jewish tune. He was once asked if it is appropriate to use the tunes composed by a certain Jewish composer who engaged in a number of very problematic behaviors. There is a prohibition against learning Torah taught by a sinner. What about their music? He responded in Igros Moshe (Even Ha-Ezer, I, no. 96) that there is no intrinsic holiness to a tune and therefore it is allowed. It would seem, according to Rav Moshe, that there is no such thing as a “Jewish” tune.
Okay, let’s move onto the food category.
Is gefilte fish Jewish?
It doesn’t get more Jewish than gefilte fish. Right? Only that the first mention of this dish, gefuelten hechden, goes back to a non-Jewish German cookbook from the 14th century. Apparently, Gefilte fish was a very popular dish during… Lent – when Christians could not eat meat.
How about cholent? Cholent is a Moorish dish, dating back to the 11th century.
So no, there is no such thing as a Jewish food.
A while ago I was talking to a group of thoughtful Jewish people who were describing their connection to Judaism. They told me, proudly, it revolved around lox and shmear, brisket, and learning Jewish values from… Bob Dylan.
It was very sad. Not only was it sad, but it was also incorrect. There is no Jewish ethnicity – look around this room. There is no intrinsically Jewish culture – most of the music, food, or art that we describe as Jewish is borrowed from our host cultures.
So what is Jewish?
Some may say that Judaism is a collection of values. Judaism certainly has an incredible collection of values. To quote Christian historian, Paul Johnson: “To them (the Jews) we owe the idea of equality before the law, both divine and human; of the sanctity of life and the dignity of human person; of the individual conscience and so a personal redemption; of collective conscience and so of social responsibility; of peace as an abstract ideal and love as the foundation of justice, and many other items which constitute the basic moral furniture of the human mind.”
But values are only half the story. Our tradition never revolved around values, it revolved around laws, what we call Halacha, the practical application of those values. What makes something truly Jewish, is when it is codified in Jewish Law.
And so today, as a case study, and since unfortunately war is on all of our minds, I’d like to share with you two laws, two halachos that relate to war. Two laws that we can use to conceptualize a truly Jewish approach to warfare.
The first law is found in the Talmud, in Meseches Shabbos. There is a law that on Shabbos one may not carry any items in an area that does not have an Eruv. However, if you are carrying something that is seen as an adornment, like jewelry, that is permitted. On Daf 63, we find a debate about carrying a sword. Rabbi Eliezer says, it’s an adornment, you are allowed to carry it on Shabbos. The Sages say, you cannot.
Now if you were learning Daf Yomi, you would tell yourself, “Okay, one opinion says this, one opinion says that. Let’s keep on going!” But if you would pause and take a moment to think about what they are really getting at, you would hear the Sages say, “Yes, many people see their weapons as a sign of power, as a sign of brute beauty. But the Torah does not. The Torah paints weaponry as a necessary evil. And therefore, a weapon, no matter how beautiful it may be, is intrinsically not an adornment. It is ugly.”
The Sages are teaching us, and this ruling is codified in the Shulchan Aruch, that regardless of how buff and beautiful our boys and girls in green may look, war is intrinsically unattractive. There is nothing glorious about a Merkava tank, there is nothing wonderful about an F4 Phantom fighter jet. Weaponry, our Sages are teaching us, should not get us excited, it should offend our sensibilities.
There is another law about warfare that is found in our parsha, the Mitzvah to destroy the nation of Amaleik. We read today how Amaleik attacked our ancestors even though we were nowhere near their land, and they broke every rule of engagement, even by ancient standards. The Torah subsequently commands us to obliterate them, timcheh es zecher Amaleik. This includes men, women, and children, what we call in modern times, genocide.
Now it’s worth noting that according to Maimonides, we first encourage them to accept the seven Noahide laws, a baseline of morality. If they say yes, we leave them be. Only if they reject this offer, only if they say, no, we will hold onto our immoral ways, then and only then, is our army to attack. Though this mitigates some of the challenge, the Torah does instruct, if they refuse, to kill them every member of this nation, and many, understandably see this Mitzvah as morally challenging.
While I am troubled by the Mitzvah, I could also acknowledge that my moral compass is not as refined as G-d’s moral compass.
There’s another issue with this mitzvah that I find equally puzzling and that is our obsession with it. This Mitzvah is no longer in practice, we have no idea who the descendants of Amaleik are and therefore even if we wanted to, we could not perform this Mitzvah. It would be absolutely forbidden to commit genocide or even to kill those who are innocent. And yet, despite it being entirely irrelevant to our modern lives, we have an entire Shabbos dedicated to remembering this Mitzvah. There are people who remind themselves of this Mitzvah every day. Why? It would be quite convenient to bury this Mitzvah under a pile of shaimos and call it a day, but for some reason, we are enjoined to make a fuss about this Mitzvah every single year.
The common thread between all those who address this question is this: The reason we are obsessed with this Mitzvah is because it is relevant to our everyday lives. It is a Mitzvah, I would argue, that is needed today more than ever. Because even though Amaleik no longer exists, the eternal and ongoing Mitzvah to destroy Amaleik is meant to remind us that evil still exists. The eternal and ongoing Mitzvah to destroy Amaleik is meant to remind us that despite the emphasis Judaism places on compassion for the downtrodden, we cannot allow that to blind us to the fact that we must defend ourselves against those who come to attack us. It is meant to remind us that the ugliness of weaponry notwithstanding, weapons of destruction must be used at times to remove evil from this world.
In the words of Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm: The motif of this Mitzvah is to “reserve our… hatred for the unusually hateful individuals who commit historic crimes and whose malice is monstrous and premeditated. Anti-Semites who wish to destroy all the Jewish people; monsters who seek sadistically to wipe out whole populations–such people remain deserving, on purely moral grounds, of actual contempt and hatred.”
There are Jews who glorify violence. And there are Jews who wish that Israel put their weapons down and allow Hamas to continue killing Jews. Both views claim to be Jewish, but they are at best, Jew-ish. They are not consistent with Jewish tradition and Jewish law.
Today is Holocaust Memorial Day. It’s a day that I always assumed Jews do not need. How could we, the people who grew up on Never Forget, fail to remember? But it seems like many Jews have forgotten that evil exists. Many Jews have forgotten that when they come for us, they do not care for our politics. Too many Jews have forgotten the Mitzvah of mechiyas amaleik.
Judaism, true Jewish law, promotes a love of peace but also demands of us not to be naïve. What’s truly remarkable is that our modern State of Israel, despite not claiming to run its army according to Jewish law, incorporates so much of these values into their protocols. For example, the IDF is a defense force, and goes to unimaginable lengths to preserve life – because we do not glorify violence. Not only do we not glorify violence, but our hearts are truly broken over the many innocent Arabs in Gaza who are being killed, the collateral damage of this war. And at the same time, to put down our weapons when there are missiles aimed at our cities, to stop fighting when there are people who proudly proclaim that they will continue to steal our children and violate our women, not a chance. Thank G-d, our values have held on for all these years.
There is nothing wrong with culture. On the contrary, we can partake in whatever good we can from all around us. But culture, even Jewish culture, it comes and it goes. What has lasted for three thousand years is not Gefilte fish or Bob Dylan, our ancestors sang the song at the sea I would assume with an Egyptian tune. What has lasted for three thousand years are the laws of the Torah and the values that those laws represent. So enjoy all that is Jew-ish in the world, but never lose sight of what we really stand for.