War–What Is It Good For?
by R. Gil Student

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, Hilkhos Melakhim 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.

II. The Message Of War

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.

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-Berakhah 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 God’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. God 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, Hilkhos 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 God 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 God’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 accept this reality and take it to its intended conclusion of teshuvah, we will reach the final stage of history.