[Be-Ahavah U-Be-Emunah – Lech
Lecha 5774 – translated by R. Blumberg]
Part I
Yes, I'm a
fighter! True, that seems bad, but sometimes there's no choice. It's not respectable
nor acceptable, but I don't care. Therefore, I fight.
When
someone is weak and spineless, he gets trampled to no end. The world is full of
naïve people who praise appeasement and then meet a bitter end. Therefore, you
must be serious and responsible, and attack.
I never
attack without cause, spurred by aggressive passions. I, too, love peace and quiet.
Yet as the Latin saying goes, Si vis pacem, para bellum, “If you want
peace, prepare for war.” I attack only the enemy. And obviously I don't wait
for him to attack me in order to defend myself. That's too late. I hasten the
cure before the disease, waging battle in the enemy's gates. The best defense
is a preventative attack.
I enjoyed
seeing what Rabbi Yitzchak Arama wrote in his Akeidat Yitzchak: “Man is
born a fighter. G-d, as well, whose pathways we follow, is a “man of war”, a
warrior, causing salvation to burgeon forth.
Part II
Whom do I
fight against? I'm not a lowlife. I bear no pathological fear of enemies lying
in wait at every turn. I also know how to give in and to put myself aside. I do
not say that anyone who does not belong to my group is an enemy. No, I
investigate and think and bone up on the issue, until I go to war. Yet once I
have made up my mind, I go for the whole stake, waging a life-and-death battle
to the end, until my enemy is totally liquidated, unable to rise. I invest
great energy in this, endangering my own life, because my own life is at stake.
That is
the concept of total war. As the great theoretician Carl von Clausewitz said,
or as the French say, “A la guerre comme a la guerre – “In war as in war”.
Who, then,
is my enemy? Evil! It drives me out of my mind! I hate it and fight it wherever
I encounter it. By such means I perform a good, not just for myself but for everyone.
And please don't tell me, “Who are you and what are you? For a lowlife like you
to hoist up the flag of war against evil.” For I will tell you: True, I'm a lowlife.
I must therefore fight evil. For if I do not fight evil, I shall remain a
lowlife.
Part III
Where do I
find so much evil? The answer to that is the easiest to know and the hardest to
act upon. It's in me. I fight against the evil within me. Not within others. How
brazen it would be of me to fight the evil in others but not in myself! That
itself would constitute a terrible evil.
I do not
want to be evil! I did not say that I would be a saint, but I don't want to be
a sinner. I don't want to be captive to the Devil. I don't want to be a wild
man or a pagan.
It's true
that I'm not worth a lot and I don't dare to claim that I am something special,
or that I will be. All the same, against evil I do not compromise. And I don't
go easy on myself either. I will fight any sin, any negligence regarding a good
trait, any evil trait.
Such is my
quest, and when I succeed, even a little bit, I feel everlasting joy. How happy
I am!
I didn't
make any of this up. I saw it it all in rabbinical treatises on fine behavior.
To be sure,
life is no picnic. It's no playground. It's war, and I am thrilled to go to
battle.
Won't
you join me?
