28 Jul WAR–WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR?

War is full of
tragedy. Soldiers,
civilians, society —
nothing remains the
same. People suffer
injury, loss, death
and displacement.
Israelis today are experiencing not just
war but trauma from the horrifically brutal
October 7th attacks and the ongoing
mobilization, as well as the displacement
from the south and the north. Why is there
war? This is not to ask what sins, if any,
caused this war or why some people died
and not others, but something bigger. What
purpose in the divine plan does war play?
Because war is explicitly part of the divine
plan.
I. War Is Destiny
Rambam writes: “If a king will arise from
the House of David who diligently studies
Torah and observes its commandments as
prescribed by the Written Law and the Oral
Law like David, his ancestor, will compel
all of Israel to walk in the way of the Torah
and rectify the breaches in its observance,
and fight the wars of the Lord, he may
be presumed to be Mashiach.” (Mishneh
Torah, Hilchos Melachim 11:4) Part of the

role of Mashiach is fighting the wars of the
Lord. Similarly, the prophets Yechezkel and
Zechariah discuss the messianic war of Gog
and Magog (Eze. 38; Zech. 14).
In discussing the order of blessings in
the weekday Amidah prayer, the Gemara
(Megillah 17b) says: “Why did they
institute the blessing of redemption as the
seventh blessing? Rava said: Since there is a
tradition that the Jewish people are destined
to be redeemed in the seventh year of the
Sabbatical cycle. But doesn’t it say: In the
sixth year, there will be heavenly sounds; in
the seventh year there will be wars; and at the
end of the seventh year Mashiach will come?
The war is the beginning of the redemption
(aschalta di-Ge’ulah).” The idea of a war
before Mashiach is built into the structure of
our daily prayers.
Of what purpose is this war? On the one hand,
it is presumptuous for us to attribute reasons
and purposes to divine handiwork, whether
we are discussing creation, commandments
or prophecies. We can only speculate, not
state with certainty, why anything has
happened or will happen. On the other hand,
we cannot function like unthinking robots,
failing to probe further and attempt to make
sense of our world. War is part of our world.

We would be remiss if we did not try to
understand it to the best of our abilities.
In 1973, the Yom Kippur War caught
Israel by surprise. The country that had
won so quickly and decisively in the Six
Day War faced the realistic threat of total
destruction. The country experienced fear
and depression. Even the eventual victory
felt like a loss, because so many had died
and so much had been lost. The country
lost its pride and self-confidence. During
the war, Rav Menachem Kasher published
a book titled Milchemes Yom Ha-Kippurim,
arguing that the war could be identified as
the prophetic war of Gog and Magog. He
characteristically based himself on a large
number of midrashic texts and commentaries,
but also largely on the work Kol Ha-Tor,
which is controversially attributed to the
Vilna Gaon. According to Rav Kasher, the
disastrous Yom Kippur War, which spread
fear and loss throughout the country, was
part of the divine plan. However, he failed
to explain its purpose beyond its place in the
divine plan.
II. War And Redemption
The Yom Kippur War began on Shabbos,
October 6, 1973. Because Yom Kippur
was on Shabbos, the previous Shabbos
(September 29) had the Torah portion of
Ha’azinu, and the next new Torah portion
of Ve-Zos Ha-Berachah was not read until
Simchas Torah (October 18 in Israel).
Sometime in those 12 days between Yom
Kippur and Simchas Torah, Rav Shaul
Yisraeli gave a speech on Ha’azinu in
which he pondered the difficult elements
of the Yom Kippur War. These include
the unnatural human failings to predict
the attack, to pay attention to the warning
signs, to heed the military intelligence;
the inexplicable complacency and the fact
that the victims were cream of the crop.
Rav Yisraeli says that the take-away has
to be the need “to choose life,” to repent,
to return to good standing in G-d’s graces.
In the divine plan, the war is intended to
spark teshuvah (Siach Shaul, pp. 551-
553).
Rav Chaim David Halevy, later the
Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, expands
on this idea. He steps back somewhat
from Rav Kasher’s identification of the
Yom Kippur War with the war of Gog and
Magog. We do not have to go that far. We
can find a purpose for the pre-messianic
wars even without identifying them with a
specific prophecy (Aseh Lecha Rav 1:21,
4:6). While he does not mention this,
it is worth noting that Rav Yisrael Meir
Kagan, the Chafetz Chaim, repeatedly

said that we live in times of Ikvesa Di-
Meshicha, the footsteps of Mashiach.

His student, Rav Elchanan Wasserman,
published a booklet of that name making

the same claim. They died in 1933 and 1941,
respectively. They detected the footsteps of
Mashiach over 80 to 90 years ago. What’s
the delay? On the one hand, the divine clock
moves slower than we do. G-d is not in a rush
to make things happen in our lifetime. But
there is another element.
Rambam writes that the Jews will not
experience the final redemption until we
repent. Teshuvah is a necessary pre-condition
(Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Teshuvah 7:5).
However, as we saw above, Rambam writes
that Mashiach will compel the Jews to be
Torah observant. Do we have to repent in
order for Mashiach to come or does Mashiach
come before we repent? There are different
ways to answer this apparent contradiction.
I suggest that most people have to repent
first; then Mashiach will come and bring the
remaining minority to Torah observance.
Regardless of the specific order of events,
repentance is part of the redemptive process.
The Gemara (Sanhedrin 97b) quotes a debate
between R. Eliezer and R. Yehoshua whether
the Jews must repent in order for redemption
to come. R. Eliezer (and later Rav) say we
must. R. Yehoshua (and later Shmuel) say
we need not. But even R. Yehoshua says that
G-d will force us to do teshuvah by creating
the circumstances in which we choose to do
so (an oppressive, antisemitic king). The end
goal is teshuvah, a life in harmony with G-d
and observance of His commandments.
Like Rav Yisraeli, Rav Halevy suggests that
these wars — those mentioned in various
texts and those experienced in tragic life (and,
we can add, antisemitism in general) — are
part of the divine plan for repentance. We are
supposed to see that we cannot rely on our
strength, on our armed forces, intelligence
or technology. We need all of those but
we can only succeed with G-d’s help. The
wars of the Amidah, of Gog and Magog,
of our lived reality of the last 80 years, are
supposed to bring us to fear, anxiety, a loss
of self-confidence. The next step, the most
important step, is the realization that we are
not the masters of our fate. As the Mishnah
(end of Sotah) says of the pre-Messianic
period, the key message is: “On whom can
we rely? Only our Father in heaven.” When
enough of us take this accept this reality and
take it to its intended conclusion of teshuvah,
we will reach the final stage of history.