The Fog of Holiness and the Fog of War
Shabbat Pekudei
March 8, 2003

Note the calm, clear, deliberate and un-dramatic nature of the description of the construction of the tabernacle contained within our parashah: (Exodus 39:33-43).

Then they brought the Tabernacle to Moses, with the Tent and all its furnishings: its clasps, its planks, its bars, its posts, and its sockets; the covering of tanned ram skins, the covering of dolphin skins, and the curtain for the screen; … Just as the Lord had commanded Moses, so the Israelites had done all the work. And when Moses saw that they had performed all the tasks—as the Lord had commanded, so they had done—Moses blessed them.

Everything was done as it was meant to be done. Precisely as it was meant to be done. And note the sign of divine acceptance that was recounted in the maftir portion: (Exodus 40:33(b)-38). 

When Moses had finished the work, the cloud covered the Tent of Meeting, and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. Moses could not enter the Tent of Meeting because the cloud had settled upon it and the Presence of the Lord filled the Tabernacle. When the cloud lifted from the Tabernacle, the Israelites would set out, on their various journeys; but if the cloud did not lift, they would not set out until such time as it did lift. For over the Tabernacle a cloud of the Lord rested by day, and fire would appear in it by night, in the view of all the house of Israel throughout their journeys.

That cloud filling the Tabernacle is a sign of God's presence. Only when and if the cloud lifts are the Israelites to move on. An echo of this notion is to be found in the description of the conclusion of the construction of the First Temple, which was read as part of our Haftarah this morning: 

“…the priests came out of the sanctuary, for the cloud had filled the House of the Lord and the priests were not able to remain and perform the service because of the cloud, for the Presence of the Lord filled the House of the Lord.”

Then Solomon declared: “The Lord has chosen to abide in a thick cloud.” The Hebrew word arafel—translated as “thick cloud” in that last verse—may also be translated as “fog.” The fog of the Temple, the cloud of the tabernacle—as obscure as they may be—are signs that God is present. 

How stark the contrast is between such a scene—an entire community united in generosity and commitment to achieving a lofty goal, that of serving God; a community in which a cloud or a fog represents the presence of God—and another scene we can imagine: a community in the midst of a very different kind of cloud or fog, namely, war. How stark the contrast is between peace and war; between worship and violence.

War is so uncertain. Many plans are laid for war, but war rarely follows those plans. That's a lesson taught us by the famous Prussian war theorist, Carl von Clausewitz. In his famous work, On War, he writes, “Everything is very simple in war, but the simplest thing is difficult. These difficulties accumulate and produce a friction, which no man can imagine exactly who has not seen war.”

“Activity in war,” he writes, “is movement in a resistant medium. Just as a man in water is unable to perform with ease and regularity the most natural and simplest movement, that of walking, so in war, with ordinary powers, one cannot keep even the line of mediocrity. This is why theorists, who have never plunged in themselves, or who cannot deduce any generalities from their experience, are unpractical and even absurd, because they only teach what everyone knows—how to walk.”

The cliché created by Clausewitz—the “fog” of war—is an accurate metaphor. War marks the breakdown of civil discourse, the breakdown of order, of rational expectations. Using force to accomplish political objectives is extraordinarily risky, for there are always unexpected and unintended consequences as well.

We are—as I’m sure just about everyone knows—on the brink of war. What does that mean? What does it mean to be on the brink of war? It means that we are still living in a world in which soldiers are interviewed on the radio about how much sleep they’re getting, or how much sun screen the Army is distributing or about how difficult it is to pack up and to ship out on short notice. We’re not hearing reports about mass casualties, about body counts and body bags. Those of us who remember the last time our nation was engaged in a long, drawn-out and bloody conflict—the war in Vietnam (which, to young people today is ancient history)—know what that difference is all about.

Israel, on the other hand, is at war, and every Israeli knows it. Israelis know the uncertainty of living through a war: not knowing whether they’ll see their loved ones at the end of the day. That's quite a fog to be living in. Moreover, given the pernicious nature of their enemy, given the deliberate, intentional decision of their enemy not to distinguish between combatants and civilians, Israelis not only do not know if their husbands and fathers will come home at the end of the day, they do not know whether their brothers and sisters, their children, will come home either.

Yuval Mendelevitch is an Israeli boy who became a Bar Mitzvah at the Or Hadash synagogue in Haifa on the first day of Sukkot last fall, the same day on which we too celebrated a bar mitzvah of a young person in our congregation. Last Wednesday, Yuval was on his way home from school—the Reali School in Haifa. He was talking with his father on his cell phone when suddenly the phone went dead. At that moment the bus within which he was riding exploded and Yuval was killed instantly.

Yuval was not collateral damage. Yuval was not an innocent bystander who happened to be injured or killed during a military operation. Yuval and the fourteen others on that bus in Haifa were the deliberate targets of a murderous assault, part of a war being fought by those who would like to annihilate the State of Israel and to replace it with an Arab, Islamic state.

What are the rules of war? What are the guidelines that soldiers and their commanders should follow? Is there no difference between a just war and an unjust war? Is there no vision in the midst of the fog of war? We cannot fully explore this topic this morning, though I hope that we will have several opportunities this spring to hear from scholars in the field and to explore this topic in greater depth. Today I just want to address one issue—that of the deliberate targeting of civilians. This issue confronted us on 9/11 and it confronts Israel each and every day. What is the source, within our own tradition, for distinguishing between soldiers and civilians? The operative Biblical text is Deuteronomy 20: “When you go out to war against your enemies,” the text tells us, there are certain things you must do and certain things you must not do: “When you approach a town to attack it, …you shall offer it terms of peace.” (Deut. 20:10). This is a powerful statement, making clear that the annihilation of the civilian population is by no means to be preferred.

The Midrash on this verse broadens the responsibilities of warriors: “When you approach a city to attack it—[that is to say] not to reduce it through lack of food or water nor to slay its inhabitants through disease—then proclaim peace unto it (20:10) [Piska 199]

This simple passage makes clear that, though a military attack on a town may be permissible, employing chemical or biological agents to contaminate its food or water supply, or to sicken its population, is not. “When you approach a town to attack it,” teaches us, says the Sifre, that we are not permitted to engage in broad-based, indiscriminate violent behavior that terrorizes or dehumanizes the innocent inhabitants of the town. Another passage in Deuteronomy reinforces this message:

When in your war against a city you have to besiege it a long time in order to capture it, you must not destroy its trees, wielding the ax against them. You may eat of them, but you must not cut them down. Are trees of the field human to withdraw before you into the besieged city? Only trees that you know do not yield food may be destroyed; you may cut them down for constructing siegeworks against the city that is waging war on you, until it has been reduced.

The city one is attacking may harbor violent, evil enemies, but it also contains innocent people who need to eat to survive.

One doesn’t wage war against the innocent, or their food supply. One wages war against armed combatants. This principle must be clear, even if things don’t go the way one expects them to—which is entirely predictable. This principle must be clear, even in the midst of the fog of war. There is yet one more principle that must be clear to those who engage in war: its ultimate goal. One should never embark on a war without knowing what one hopes to achieve. The Torah and the Jewish tradition, going back to that verse in Deuteronomy that I quoted earlier, makes it clear that the proper objective is peace. “When you approach a city to attack it—you must [first] proclaim peace unto it.” Why? Simply put, because peace is the desired outcome. Peace is the hope that one day the war will be over. Peace is the clearness that we hope will result when the fog of war lifts.

I would like to conclude with an ode to peace, written in the Sifre (Piska 199) as a commentary on that verse in Deuteronomy. Let us hope and pray that its message is understood by all who would enter the battlefield, or would lead others onto it:

Great is peace, for even the dead require peace.
Great is peace, for even in their war Israel requires peace.
Great is peace, for even those who dwell on high require peace,
As it is said, He maketh peace in His high places (Job 25:2).
Great is peace, for the priestly blessing concludes with it:
May the Lord bless you and keep you.
May the Lord make His countenance to shine upon you and be gracious to you.
May the Lord lift up his countenance toward you, and grant you peace.

Amen.