Peace as War

Rabbi Moshe Pitchon

The famous priestly blessing in Numbers chapter 6, verses 22-27, which forms an integral part of Jewish prayer to this day and is part of Christian liturgy as well, reads:

"May the Lord bless you and watch over you, May the Lord look kindly upon you and deal graciously with you May the Lord look with favor upon you and give you peace."

The Hebrew word “Shalom” is usually translated in English by the word “Peace.” A concept associated with the prophet Isaiah’s equally famous pronouncement:

And they shall beat their swords into plowshares. And their spears into pruning hooks: Nation shall not take up Sword against nation; They shall never again know war.

Isaiah 2:4

Nevertheless, the words of another prophet, Joel, are rarely compared..

Beat your plowshares into swords, And your pruning hooks into spears Let even the weakling say, "I am strong."

Joel 3:10

The prophet Joel is being ironic here. He parodies Isaiah’s utterance. This is because in Israel’s foundational literature, the TaNaKh, “shalom” is not reached by avoiding fighting.

In fact, in many places in the Hebrew Scriptures, the word “shalom” implies Israel’s deterrence over those nations who might threaten her.

“Shalom,” as Israel understands it, begins with diametrically opposed forces unable to prevail one upon the other.

Absence of strife, however, it is still not shalom.

Whereby one is not able to persevere upon the other, equilibrium is attained. By shunning utopian formulations not warranted by human experience, the TaNaKh talks uses realistic concepts.

“Shalom” is a Hebrew word derived from a root that denotes wholeness or completeness. The world desideratum, in Israel’s view, is the harmony resulting from opposing forces in tension, where one does not obtrude upon the other.

The book of Devarim (Deuteronomy) opens by describing how Moses gathered the Israelites on the plains of Moab after conquering the Jordan’s east bank.

Standing near Mount Nebo, Moses recounted the events of the past to the new cohort of Israelites approaching the Promised Land.

This generation was quite different from the one that had left Egypt. They had no firsthand experience with the Exodus or the desert tribulations.

Moses’s account of the previous events centers on the missed opportunities and the repercussions of fear and disobedience.

Not surprisingly, this section of the Torah is read before Tisha B’Av, the annual commemoration of a multitude of calamities in Jewish history, most notably the destruction of Solomon’s Temple by the Neo-Babylonian Empire and the Second Temple by the Roman Empire in Jerusalem.

The causes of the destruction of the Temples—traditionally linked to baseless hatred and the people’s internal corruption—parallel the spiritual mistakes that Moses warned about in Devarim (literally, “remarks”).

The message of Moses here is clear. Building a stable and hopeful future requires facing communal failings and honestly recounting Israel’s past. The whole book of Devarim is dedicated to setting the groundwork for this human project.

Devarim is profoundly worried that social inequality and idolatry are undermining societal unity, so it revises the previous rules in Shemot (Exodus) to provide more rights to the poor and women.

Probably no other book of the Torah would be more relevant, addressing the Jewish people’s present current situation and speaking to a generation that had not witnessed the Holocaust, the creation of the State of Israel, and the consistent rejection of those who cannot see history other than as a zero-sum dynamic and cannot turn failures into the kind of meaning on which the future is built.