14 Aug 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.