(Photo: IDF Spokesperson’s Unit)
Who is Holy?
Today’s Modern-Day Maccabees
BY RABBI DORON PEREZ
Who is a holy and pious person today? What is the Jewish view on saintly and holy behavior?
The image many of us have is of a pious, ascetic person, quite separated from normative life, steeped in learning and religious observance on a personal level. This image, though, maintains Rav Kook, is a function of thousands of years of exile, when we were stripped of statehood and collective Jewish living.
During our exile from Jerusalem and wholesome national life, holiness retreated into the precincts of personal life and spiritual intensity – what our sages term “the four cubits of Jewish law” as opposed to the broader realm of societal spiritual life. This, though, says Rav Kook, is not the ideal holiness of the Torah. This is a holiness and piety of exile and statelessness and not one which reflects the full gamut of the spiritual life of sovereignty and statehood. One is a function of exile, the other of redemption.
The ideal holiness – Avraham Avinu
The best place to examine Jewish holiness would be to look at the path blazed by Avraham, the first Jew and founding father of the Jewish people.
The moment Avraham hears of his nephew Lot’s captivity, he takes all 318 of the able-bodied members of his household and immediately pursues the captors. In a daring night mission, he attacks the mighty enemy, chases them to Damascus, and returns all the property and people that had been stolen, including his nephew Lot. The fact that Avraham and his followers, numbering only a few hundred people, could subdue mighty kings implies not only courage and daring but also a preparedness to fight in war. Indeed, Ralbag says that here “חֲנִיךְ, apprentice”, means not only apprentices in following mitzvot (as Rashi says) but also apprentices in courage and battle preparedness. They were trained warriors in order to defend themselves.
It is Avraham’s kindness and sensitivity and love of his family that finds expression in his pursuit of justice. Not only is this not a contradiction to the Jewish view of holiness and G-dliness, but it is its very fulfillment. In the Jewish view, holiness and righteousness are inextricably linked to collective care for society and social justice.
War is not something any moral person craves and desires – it is ugly and every sensitive holy person would love to avoid it. But in a world where there is so much barbarism and brutality, good people are called upon to defend themselves. Evil happens in the world not only because of evildoers but because of the silence and impotence of the good. Avraham, as a source of goodness and blessing, could not stand by the side, certainly not when his own nephew, a family member, had been taken captive. He had to fight for justice and return the hostages.
Rav Kook on holiness
Indeed, says Rav Kook (Orot HaMilchama 2), this is the way of all our great spiritual giants in Tanach.
It was not only Avraham who was both the paragon of kindness and the warrior of justice but also the greatest spiritual giant, Moshe, the very man who brought the Torah down from Sinai and revealed the word of G-d to the people. It was Moshe who directed the battle against Amalek and he who led the people against the mighty kings Og and Sichon. Moshe’s greatest student and successor Yehoshua, about whom it says “he never left the tent” was always engaged in learning, yet was the same one to lead the conquest of the land as commanded by G-d. Was it not David, the sweet singer of Israel and author of the deeply stirring and spiritual Tehillim, who was at the same time the fearless and fearsome warrior who defeated Goliath, becoming head of the army and then King David – monarch of all Israel.
Avraham, as the founding father of our people, was a man of incomparable kindness as well as a warrior for justice. A man of love and peace and a man of war in fighting against oppression. Avraham, Moshe, Yehoshua, and David are towering examples of Jewish holiness – being a scholar and a soldier; a man of morality and the military; to be holy and heroic are seamlessly part of the Torah’s wholesome view of holiness.
Rav Kook says (Orot HaTechiya 8) that when the Jewish people return to full national life, the same holiness which appeared previously predominantly in the form of submission and obedience appears now also in the form of the glory of dignity and heroism. We return to a more full and holistic Jewish life – of both personal and public aspirations of holiness.
The Hasmoneans and the era of post-prophecy
Is perhaps the fusion between Torah and societal life, between the saintly and the soldier, something which perhaps only belongs in the era of prophecy, in the biblical era? Are we lesser mortals, who live in the era of Talmudic scholars and wisdom, as opposed to that of the prophets and seers, on a lower level and perhaps therefore unable to fuse the two together?
The answer to this question is clearly given in the story of Chanukah which took place after the time of Tanach. Here the Hasmoneans, or Maccabim as they became known, clearly highlight the answer.
Matityahu was an elderly kohen of the Hasmonean family and together with his five sons, decided to declare war on the Greek occupation of Eretz Yisrael. They felt this was a situation of pikuach nefesh, affecting the very spiritual existence of the Jewish people and their Torah. The destructive decrees against Torah Judaism threatened to uproot our holy way of traditional Jewish life.
They chose not only to secretly go into the halls of Torah study and the beit midrash but rather to bring the beit midrash to the battlefield – to engage in a necessary milchemet mitzvah and to fight for the future of the Jewish people.
What is transformative about this is that we are no longer in a biblical era. The last of the prophets ceased in the beginning of the Second Temple. The Chashmona’im lived in the time of the Greek Empire, towards the end of the Second Temple when prophecy had long ceased.
Yet, the same very holy and saintly priests understood that if they would not stand up for the future of Jewish destiny, there might not be a future. They took up arms in the most courageous way as described in detail in the “Book of the Chashmona’im” (alternatively known as the “Book of the Maccabees”). A few hundred soldiers against many thousands, then a few thousand soldiers against tens of thousands – always the few against the many, just like Avraham and his 318 soldiers against four kings, and just like Gideon and his 300 men against the mighty army of Midian.
This is the reason we light Chanukah candles in every household today and why Jewish destiny has continued. It is because of the courageous and heroic actions of the saintly priests and scholars who took up arms to defend their people.
It must be pointed out that the decision of the Chashmona’im to take up arms was a controversial one. The Ramban explains this in depth and just how controversial the decision to fight was (Bereishit 49:10). After all, it was halachically contentious for kohanim to take up arms and certainly to take on political leadership. Taking up arms was not within the priests’ regular precinct, and certainly political leadership which they assumed was the clear designation of the tribe of Judah. Additionally, there was little initial support in the nation for the Chashmona’im, as many felt that it was a war that the Jewish people could not win, even after some early victories. Yet as the Maccabees continued to succeed and eventually managed to re-inaugurate the temple, slowly but surely they were accepted, and the festival was embraced for posterity.
The modern-day Maccabees
After 14 months of battling Hamas and Hezbollah, new heroes are emerging for the Jewish people, some of whom we have highlighted in this magazine. One of many is Rabbi Avi Goldberg hy”d, a remarkable Jew – a mensch, exceptional educator and Torah scholar so deeply committed to Torah and kindness and to every detail of halacha, while at the same time spending almost a year in reserve duty, far from his wife and children, fighting for the future of Israel.
Or like my friend and colleague Rabbi Zvi Elon, who should be well ad 120, the head of the World Bnei Akiva movement, who also is an exemplary mensch and Torah scholar and teacher. He heads a global religious youth movement, gives daf yomi shiurim every day and gives countless inspiring shiurim in Israel and around the world. He was on reserve duty for almost 300 days, far from his wife and family, serving as both the rabbi of a brigade as well as a combat fighter as part of the brigade commander’s team.
There are so many others. This is the holiness of our generation, the holiness of sovereignty and statehood, the holiness of Avraham, Moshe, Yehoshua, Gideon, David and the Hasmoneans. The holistic holiness of those who know how to combine the beit midrash with the battlefield, the beauty and sweetness of Torah learning and observance, with the needs and cries of their people.
It was specifically the Chashmona’im who ensured that the light of Jewish destiny would continue. And it is these modern-day Maccabees, so many of whom herald from our Religious Zionist world, that I feel so privileged that our families are counted amongst them.
Who is holier than the students and apprentices of Avraham, Moshe, and David today – those who combine a life of studying Torah and righteousness in their personal lives with heroic selflessness for the defense of their brothers and sisters on the battlefield?
Rabbi Doron Perez is the Executive Chairman of World Mizrachi.