At war with war

Rabbi Ari Shishler

Chabad of Strathavon Jewish Life Centre

Ours is the war against war itself. It is our battle against strife and division and discord. Our battle cry is: “Hashem Echad”, G-d is one and His people ought to be one.

Unity has its enemies, like the Biblical nation Midian and its spiritual counterpart that all too often invades the Jewish community. Midian was the nation who, on the advice of the rancorous prophet Bilam, dispatched their women to seduce the Israelite men.

Midian had hoped to drive a wedge between Jews and G-d, between husbands and wives, and between the various tribes of the Jewish nation. The very name Midian implies disharmony. Moses’ last mission on earth was to launch a battle to destroy Midian. Only once Midian would be defeated, could the Jews enter the Promised Land.

To a Jew, every occurrence should hold a clue to a spiritual message. When an incident impacts our entire nation, and especially when it is recorded for posterity in the Torah, we should examine it for clues into our own spiritual development.

Before the Jews could enter the Holy Land and begin their journey of spiritual discovery, they had to vanquish Midian. To claim Israel, the Children of Israel would still have to conquer seven Canaanite nations, but none of that could happen until Midian was no more.  

Any of us can identify Israel on the map, but we may not realise that each of us also has an “Israel”, a holy essence within us. As our ancestors had to conquer seven nations before they could inherit Israel, each of us has to master seven major facets of our character in order to gain access to our spiritual depth.

Before we can step onto our spiritual path, though, we need to fight to eradicate disharmony. No person can begin their spiritual journey until they are ready to connect and unite with the other members of our Jewish “army”.

In our daily prayers, we ask G-d to bless us all “as one”. That does not only mean that we want G-d to bless all of Israel, it is also an acknowledgement that we know that He will be most prepared to bless us when we stand unified.

Every year, we read the Torah portion of Mattos, which describes the war against Midian during the period of the “Three Weeks”, when we mourn the destruction of ancient Jerusalem and our Temple.

We lost our Temple in Jerusalem when we no longer stood unified. We will regain our Temple in Jerusalem when we reclaim a non-negotiable sense of unity. Jewish unity is not a nice-to-have; it is the single most important component of our heritage.