Shabbat Shalom: Parshat Shoftim Deuteronomy 11:26-16:17 By Shlomo Riskin

Efrat, Israel – Israel’s return to national sovereignty after almost 2000 years of exile and persecution is indeed miraculous: nevertheless, we constantly feel the pressure of an existentially threatened existence, since we are living in “bad neighborhood” surrounded by nations which are at best unfriendly and at worst seek our destruction.

Hence, Israel cannot afford to lose a war. But even when we win, the price we pay is extremely high– first and foremost in terms of the lives that are lost, often our best and our brightest – but also in terms of how destruction of life, even of those who are out to destroy us and our loved ones, and how the control of other populations, even if it be necessary to protect one’s own population, affects the soul and moral fiber of the people of the Book.  In this week’s portion, Shoftim, we read  “...when you approach a city to wage war against it, you must pro¬pose a peaceful settlement. If the city responds peacefully and opens its gates, all the people inside shall become tributary unto you and shall serve you” (Deut. 20:10).

In 1967, Egypt blockaded the Gulf of Aqaba, ordering UN troops out of the Sinai. Broadcasts from Arab lands threatened the Jewish state with destruction. The Arab world prepared for war but when the smoke settled, much land and hundreds of thousands of Palestinians from Judea, Samaria and Ga¬za, who had been waiting for Israel to be driven into the sea, were now under Israeli rule. Certainly our major Government policy was not to maintain control over people who didn’t want to be controlled by us, and we have been offering land for peace ever since our lightning victory in June, 1967. Tragically, however, our offers were rebuffed time and time again, Arab refugee camps, cities and even mosques have been turned into army bases hell-bent on our destruction, and the glow of victory has turned into a savage struggle of blood, stones, guns, home-made rockets and suicide bombers. And as Israeli-Palestinian relationships worsened, a number of move¬ments emerged. The most outspoken one advocated the impossibility of Jews and Arabs sharing this land, thus necessitating their eventual transfer. Although the news¬papers didn’t usually report the source of his remarks, Meir Kahane, an ordained rabbi, who was assassinated in NYC by an Arab gunman, loved to quote from a passage in Maimonides, one of the central pillars of Judaism. Rabbi Kahane and I were friends who often disagreed; I accepted all of his questions, but none of his answers. Unfortunately, I believe that Rabbi Kahane only gave a partial picture of Maimonides’ position.

The passage he would cite is from Laws of Kings, Ch. 6, Law 1, an almost verbatim quote from our verse in Shoftim which commands us not to make war (either voluntary or obligatory) unless we first of¬fer peace. Maimonides, however, adds a condition which does not ap¬pear in our text in the Biblical portion: the Gentiles must accept the Seven Noahide Laws, the prohibitions against murder, immorality and idolatry, as the very first conditions of a peace agreement. And then Rav Kahane continue to quote the master legalist – philosopher:  “And the servitude which they must accept means that they are to be scorned and debased to a lower status, and they may not lift their heads among Israelites, but they must be conquered under their power, and they can’t be appointed over an Israelite for anything in the world. And the ‘maas’ (tribute) which they accept shall find them willing to serve the king with their bodies and with their money, such as the erec¬tion of the walls and the strengthening of the fort¬resses.”

Certainly Maimonides’ words sound rather harsh.  But Rabbi Kahane overlooked that two other central pillars, Nachmanides and Rashi, interpret tribute (l’maas) and servitude (ve’avadukha) quite differ¬ently. In addition, scholars have found no Biblical or rab¬binic source for Maimonides’ interpretation of ‘scorn and servility.’

In fact, Professor Gerald Blidstein, in his work Political Concepts in Maimonidean Halahha, claims that Maimonides’ language con¬cerning a captured people can be traced to the Koran (Sura 9,29)  which uses identical language regarding the status of a captive people. This would suggest that in Maimonides time, the code for captured nation status was set by the Islamic powers, which debased its captives. And it would seem that Maimonides took the code of the Islamic world and their attitude toward non-Muslims and applied it to Jewish law. In effect, Maimonides utilized a rule which he expresses often in his Code of Civil laws when Jews would be called upon to judge Gentiles: “We judge them in accordance with the way in which they would judge us if we were to be judged in their courts.” By adopting the Gentile’s rules, we might get them to see the necessity of their revising their ethics of warfare captivity.

Moreover, Nachmanides disagrees with Maimonides. Tribute and servitude have nothing to do with being scorned and derided. Rather,  v’avedukha (servitude) means that any Jew can hire the captured people to draw his water or to chop his wood, but the worker must be “properly compensated.” And maas means that they have to build storehouses and government projects, whenever it be necessary to do so.

Rashi’s interpretation of tribute and servitude is the simplest — maas v ‘sheubud. Maas means that the captured are required to pay taxes. And sheubud mean that they’re supposed to do some service for the nation.

And because of the parallel structure in the phrase maas v’sheubud there is an implicit suggestion that the two are connected: how you pay tribute is how you do service. And since taxes –tribute-- means that only a part of that money you earn goes to the government, similarly sheubud means that you serve the government on a part-time basis, several years out of one’s life, akin to the national service operative in Israel society today.

The interpretations of Rashi and Nachmanides make it clear that if two conditions are met, then we can extend legal citizenship (should they desire it) to the Arabs from the territories: first, if they accept a role of responsibility toward us and, I would add, publicly vow fealty to the Government of Israel.

And even more to the point, in the same chapter 6 of Laws of Kings, (but [this time] law 5), Maimonides introduces the concept of the necessity of desisting from actions which desecrate God’s name in the eyes of the Gentile world in the manner in which we treat Gentiles, even in times of warfare against them.

The proper sanctification God’s name must be a necessary factor in every decision of the State of Israel, political as well as military. (see Maimonides, Mishneh Torah, last law of the Laws of Slaves), in which he reminds us that both Jew and Gentile emanate from the “womb” of the same G-d). Proper orchestration between the protection of our security needs and our sanctification of G-d’s Name is the greatest challenge of our time. And I would submit that everything we do to prevent collateral damage – even to the extent of refusing aerial bombing in favor of house-to-house searches despite the concomitant losses we must suffer as a result – give us high marks (and great heartache) in the continuous challenge of forging a State which hopes to be “a light unto the nations.”