The peacetime sermon must be peace. And the wartime sermon must be peace.

Note: At Temple Micah, every b’nai mitzvah student gets to ask their rabbi a question of their own choosing to be answered by the rabbi as part of their sermon the morning of the b’nai mitzvah. This is one of those sermons.

Dear Ida,

You’ve asked me, “At what point do we throw away peace for what we believe in?”

Ida- I can not state this strongly enough - Never. We never throw away peace.

I wrote this sentence on October 9th - “The peacetime sermon must be peace. And the wartime sermon must be peace.”

The value of peace, and the pursuit of peace is Judaism’s highest ideal.

In the words of Mordechai Kaplan, “Peace is the aim of human life to which all other aims are secondary. The pursuit of peace evokes compassion which is higher than justice.”

“Peace,” he writes, is the Divine attribute of perfection, and the loftiest ideal of human ethics - [and] peace combined with truth is the highest purpose of human life.”

Our Sages, too, write about the central role of peace -

Peace is precious, they write, because each generation sought peace-

Each built what Torah calls, “a covenant of life and peace”

Great is peace, peace is to the world as leaven is to dough.

We work it - it rises in us. We let it rise in the world.

“Seek peace, and pursue it”- we are commanded, in every place. - Don’t just look for it, make it.

“Gadol Hashalom” -Great is Peace- “Gadol Hashalom”- the midrash teaches -

So great is peace that every prophet in their time is its advocate

So great is peace - that idol worshipers should be left alone so long as they are at peace

So great is peace that even on upon entering a battle you cry out for peace

So great is peace that we pray for its presence for both the living and the dead

So great is peace that it is the reward given to the righteous

So great is peace that every blessing ends with it

So great is peace that one can put a painful truth aside in the service of peace,

So great is peace that even God’s name, is Shalom

Peace is the ultimate goal - ALWAYS ALWAYS, Ida.

We never throw away peace.

And yet - that does not mean that we don’t ever fight - That we do not wage war. That we do not have the right to protect ourselves.

What it does mean - Is that all of our fights must be done in pursuit of peace.

Power for the sake of bringing peace - not power for the sake of bringing more power.

Dr. Tal Becker, a scholar and more notably, a veteran member of successive Israeli peace negotiation teams,

Said this last week, “Power is a force for good in the world but it is also a recognition that there is evil in the world that needs to be confronted. There isn’t a path towards peace that doesn’t involve defeating the enemies of peace.”

He echoes what Kaplan wrote, “It is important not only to stress the need for peace, but also to unmask the raving image of hatred.”

What we must do, Ida - is fight a just war. To defeat the enemies of peace.

I never wanted to give this sermon - I’ll admit that I do not have the stomach for war -

My Judaism is about justice and compassion

My Judaism has always been that each human life is worthy of dignity, protection

And it has created a deep challenge and chasm - well expressed by scholar Yehudah Kurtzer

“The challenge we face is that the dominant moral instincts and biases that define liberal North American Jewry, including an abiding commitment to kindness, compassion, and peace, make it difficult to confront the sad and painful truth that Israel is fighting a just war based on a just cause, and that solidarity with both our fellow Jews and with our values means supporting this war against Hamas, as awful as it will be.”

And yet - and yet - he continues -

“To argue for the moral necessity of war right now is not a betrayal of our core commitments. Instead, it makes our commitments coherent in an imperfect world.

It is precisely the commitment to compassion that helps us understand the villainy that Hamas is committing against both Israel and against the Palestinian people — and that strengthens our resolve to defeat it. Our commitment to compassion should not become an obstacle to seeing that eradicating Hamas is essential to the world we want to help create: a world in which the safety and security of both Jews and Palestinians between the river and the sea is intertwined and guaranteed for both.”

Gadol Hashalom, Ida.

GREAT SO GREAT is peace -

That we will go to war for it.

So great is peace that we will stomach its fog and darkness

Not just because we have to protect ourselves

But because we have to protect our vision for the world

We have to defeat enemies of truth

We have to defeat merchants of hatred

We have to defend peace

And today -that means letting go of it in this moment - But never, never, never forgetting that peace is the goal

That any battle has to be about walking towards peace.

Ida -we must never throw away peace.

This is our moral grounding - our ultimate goal -To be on the side of truth and justice and peace -

And it also means that war should never be glorified

We should not want this -

We should not celebrate it -

But, in Kurtzer’s words, “just wars” are not just because they are easy or victimless. Just wars are just because they are morally necessary, because pacifism in the face of an unfettered evil is an untenable moral position.”

We will not be passive in the face of evil. God was not passive in defeating Pharoah. Haman must die.

Today, defeating evil means fighting a war, But it does not mean fighting it unjustly - this, this is important for me to say

There are Jewish and international laws that MUST be obeyed

There are Jewish ethics and mandates that we MUST hold Israel accountable to

Peace must always be the first choice - we must always, whenever we can, be on the side of life. But we must also accept that sometimes, that is not possible.

That sometimes - fighting a war is morally necessary.

We let go of peace in one moment in order to maintain our vision of a world redeemed, a world at peace.

And pray for that ultimate vision, where swords are turned into plowshares, where we will only study peace, for there is no need to study war.

In partnership, and hope,

Rabbi Crawley