The Jewish Power Blog: Together (?) We Will Win

The Great Troublemaker, Yeshayahu Leibovitz (1903-1994) said:

I don’t understand, I really don’t understand, why war is permitted only between different nations but not between people who are members of the same nation.  If there exists between them a conflict, a huge conflict, such that one sees a particular value as something worth sacrificing one’s life – or even taking a life – for; then they must fight against someone who negates this value and truly wants to take from them that for which it is worth living.  So why does it matter if these two are members of the same nation or different nations?  Unless we say that the nation is the highest value, higher than any other value – but this is the essence of the fascist approach. 

In the months before October 7 2023, Israel was roiled by strident controversy over the judicial reform that the governing coalition sought to enact.  This conflict was not just between different parties or policies, but was essentially over the philosophical basis of the constitution that Israel has, to date, never drafted: does democracy simply mean “majority rules,” or are there limits on the power of the majority; are there unelected authorities loyal to some universal principles, who can ameliorate, delay, or even overrule the raw power of the momentary majority (or of a coalition ostensibly representing a majority).  In other words, a “battle” over the moral principles guiding the state.

And then along came the war, and suddenly the country was festooned with “Together We Will Win” banners; the slogan even made its way into recorded station announcements on public buses.  Against a common foe, unity is essential.  That’s why the Israelites demanded a king (1 Sam. 8), to overcome the fragmentation of the tribes when facing a powerful enemy, the Philistines (note that the latinized form Philistines is Palestinians).  Or as Ben Franklin said in a similar context: “If we don’t all hang together, we’ll all hang separately.”  Questioning the policies that might have caused the war; questioning whether the war, as it is being fought, is the best way to respond to the attack; questioning the war’s goals – all such questions are widely seen as threatening the unity that is so essential to our ultimate victory.

This unity has become a supreme value, with anyone seen as undermining it cancelled, censored, even arrested, leading, of course, to plenty of self-censorship.  And if all this has been true for the Jewish majority, how much the more so has it affected the Palestinian minority, whose very existence is seen by many as a threat to national unity (which is why our lack of a constitution is such an egregious lack).

When Judah rebelled against the Babylonian conquerors, Jeremiah spoke out against the rebellion, arguing that the conquest was God’s punishment for Judah’s sins, and that accepting it would ultimately lead to survival, whereas resistance would bring destruction.  Accused of traitorous defeatism, the prophet barely escaped lynching (chap. 26); his written prophecy was ceremoniously burned by the king (chap. 36); and he experienced the fall of Jerusalem from his prison cell (38:28).  With Jeremiah’s disuniting fulminations shut down, the nation marched, together, united, to destruction.

Jeremiah was fortunate to have survived; other Jewish dissidents were not so lucky, dying for unity:

• The anonymous Jew executed by Mattathias at the beginning of the Hasmonean revolt (1 Maccabees 2:24)
• The victims of the rebel Jewish “sicarii” terrorists in Jerusalem during the great revolt against Rome (Josephus, Antiquities 20:8:10)
• The Irgun underground fighters killed in the sinking of the Altalena in 1949.
• Emil Greenzweig, killed by a grenade at a Peace Now demonstration in 1983.

We like to talk about how the Talmudic schools of Shammai and Hillel disagreed on fundamental issues yet managed to remain united in service of a higher ideal of Jewish unity.  And the aspiration to unity through a culture of civil discourse and respectful listening is certainly a major theme in our tradition.  But the Talmud hints that this idyllic picture may not have been so simple:  Rabbi Joshua Onaya taught: The students of Beit Shammai stood at the bottom [of the stairs], and they killed the students of Beit Hillel. (Jer. Talmud Shabbat 1:4)

Unity is of course a value, certainly a Jewish value: it means commitment to a common goal that overwhelms the petty differences that divide us – so when there is an external threat, we pitch in for the common effort and the common good, risking our lives for the sake of people with whom we disagree and maybe even detest.  However, as Leibovitz and the above examples indicate, it is not the supreme value, but one that must be weighed against others in particular situations.  It is a slippery slope from “Together we will win!” to seeing unity as a uniformity of expression enforced by the power of the community or state, out of the belief that the authority needed to keep the united effort going will be weakened by questions, criticism, and protest.  “Unity” can be a tool used by a group – or by the ruling power – to suppress the power of agency, the conscience, of the individual.

Sometimes unity feels like a warm hug; but sometimes it feels like a truncheon blow.