guest post by Mollie Leibowitz

Hebrew Union College- Jewish Institute of Religion

Rabban Gamaliel the son of Rabbi Judah HaNasi once “saw a skull which floated on the face of the water, and he said, ‘Because you drowned others you were drowned; and in the end they who drowned you shall themselves be drowned” (Pirkei Avot 2:6).

Parshat b’Shallach opens with a worry. “Now it was, when Pharaoh had sent the people free, that Gd did not lead them by way of the Philistines, though it was nearer, for Gd said to Gdself, lest the people regret it when they see war, and return to Egypt.” (Exodus 13:17). Over the past four hundred years, the Israelites have acclimated to the certain routine violence of servitude. Why does Gd anticipate that the Israelites will yinachem, feel regret, at the sight of armed violence when oppression is all they know? There is a general consensus amongst our traditional and modern commentators that in some way, the Israelites were not yet physically, emotionally, or spiritually ready to engage in war. Even if Gd strengthened their hearts and swords or made the Philistines amiable to their passage, the Israelites’ reality was still the brutality of the Egyptians. They would not have the ruach to fight until the ambush of the Amalekites at the end of the parsha.

But there is another response posed by the late 19th/early 20th century Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamares, described by Shaul Magid as “a lonely, laconic, and largely unknown talmid hakham and rabbi from a small hamlet in Lithuania, [who]… presented a novel idea of Jewish pacifism born from his reading of classical Judaism.”^[1] Cited in the 1974 Reform Haggadah from a 1905 essay entitled “Herut,” “Liberation,” Tamares writes, “the Blessed Holy One could have given the Israelites the power to avenge themselves upon the Egyptians, but Gd did not want to sanction the use of their fists for self-defense, even at that moment. For while at that moment they might merely have defended themselves against the wicked, by such means the way of the fist spreads through the world, and in the end, defenders become aggressors.”^[2]

Humankind so readily and so easily traps itself into this web of fists. Tamares is concerned with the nechamah, comfort, of cycles of oppression, and the regret the Israelites would later feel for taking part in them. Tamares acknowledges that sometimes self-defense is necessary, such as in the case of the Amalekites, and, one could argue, all of the battles throughout the midbar. In a perfect world, Magid writes, only “Gd would extract vengeance, but Israel would not. The cycle of violence —first oppression and then vengeance—would be disrupted.” Tamares explains in “Herut”: “The Blessed Holy One took great pains to remove Israel completely from any participation in the vengeance upon [Egypt], to such an extent that they were not permitted even to see the [death of the first born].”^[3] Without the opportunity to participate in or witness violence, Aryeh Cohen writes, “Israel would be free to live outside of this cycle, with no need of vengeance. This was the dream.”^[4]

When Gd enacts violence, it is righteous. Though Tamares does not write on it (Rabbi Aryeh Cohen said to me, “he’s a darshan, so he only has to talk about what he wants to talk about”), he might argue that Gd uses violence righteously in the sacred text as a means for the survival of the Israelites. For example, Gd sends the flood in Genesis to rid the earth of debauchery and provide a fresh start for Noah and his family; Gd dispatches disease down amongst the Israelites and lauds Pinchas for killing a man engaging in intercourse with a Midianite woman; in this week’s Haftorah, Judges 4:4 – 5:31, Gd drags Sisera’s army towards Wadi Kishon to deliver them into Barak’s hands; and in this parsha, Gd lures the Egyptians out to the midbar and strengthens Pharaoh’s heart so that Pharaoh can endure his death in the sea. This is a warning to all the people of the land; Gd is the only Gd and only Gd’s violence can liberate the system.

Because we are b’tzelem elohim, violence lives within us. It comes out in our words, in our lack of words, in our thoughts, and sometimes in our fists. Unlike Tamares, I do not believe this aggression is inherently bad or immoral. The world needs conflict to progress; rock needs to strike flint to make a flame. But it is avodah zarah to believe that we can make the world a better place through war. Tamares writes, “The strategy of [vengeful] revolutions, the answering of evil with evil, is questionable…even when it does succeed, it is only a short-lived palliative. This we have seen clearly in every land where freedom was seized forcibly by nationalist revolutions: In no time at all the plague of despotism erupted in the flesh of the body politic—just as before. The only true cure for this despotism, the only remedy which removes the evil at its very roots, is the truly revolutionary activity of the Jewish people, the enactment of the Seder…”^[5] returning to our bondage year after year so that we may never place this struggle on others.

As we approach Tu b’Shvat, I’m thinking about our violence against the environment. As we approach Purim, I’m thinking about our violence against human rights. As we approach Passover, I’m thinking about our violence against the oppressed. As we continue in this week, I’m thinking about the murders of the 32 people kidnapped by ICE in 2025, and the recent executions of Renee Good and Alex Pretti. Tamares acknowledges that pacifism is not usually the easiest, or quickest option. But for us, it is the most righteous. How do we release ourselves from these cycles of violence? As our leadership continues to wage these wars, how might we be menachem and protect each other? Parshat b’Shallach is a warning. In the end, the Egyptians drowned themselves, as they had drowned the Israelites. In our modern world, where we are forced to bear witness to violence time and time again, the closest we can get to Gd is working to break the cycle.

Mollie Leibowitz is an educator, artist, and Master of Educational Leadership student at the Hebrew Union College in Los Angeles.

References

Image credit: Mark Podwal

Bronstein, Herbert, and Leonard Baskin. A Passover Haggadah. New York, N.Y: Grossman Publishers, 1974.

Cohen, Aryeh. “For Passover: 3 Thoughts about Liberation.” Justice in the City, April 10, 2019. http://www.justice-in-the-city.com/for-passover-3-thoughts-about-liberation/.

Magid, Shaul “Was Moshe’s Violence in Egypt Justified? On War, Violence, and Freedom.” Jewschool, February 21, 2024. https://jewschool.com/was-moshes-violence-in-egypt-justified-on-war-violence-and-freedom-174108.

Tamares, Aaron Samuel, Everet Gendler, and Ri J Turner. “Herut.” Essay. In A Passionate

Pacifist: Essential Writings of Aaron Samuel Tamares, 123–26. Teaneck, New Jersey : Ben Yehuda Press, 2020.

^[1]Shaul Magid, “Was Moshe’s Violence in Egypt Justified? On War, Violence, and Freedom,” Jewschool.

^[2]Aaron Samuel Tamares, Everet Gendler, and Ri J Turner, “Herut,” Essay, In A Passionate Pacifist: Essential Writings of Aaron Samuel Tamares, 124.

^[3]Ibid.

^[4]Aryeh Cohen,  For Passover: 3 thoughts about liberation.” Justice in the City.

^[5]Aaron Samuel Tamares, Everet Gendler, and Ri J Turner, “Herut.”