Today’s message: WAR IS HELL. No matter who is winning, no matter whom you are rooting for, it’s not fun and it’s not supposed to be fun. WAR IS NOT A GAME.
And if you are Secretary of Defense, stop calling yourself “Secretary of War.” Stop glorifying it. If you are looking to get your rocks off, get a room and don’t involve the rest of us. Don’t revel in killing thousands at the push of a button. Don’t make fun of your enemies, much less your allies, even less the people whose job is to uncover truths in the fog of battle. This is a serious business.
Don’t pretend this is fun, especially if you are then going to pretend that you are pious, that you are doing it all in the name of God. Onward Christian Fratboys!
US News is calling this Iran thing “The Meme War.” Anne Applebaum is condemning “the war’s memefication.”
What are they responding to?
This:
Applebaum notes how Trump and Hegseth exult in dehumanizing the Other, even those who are not explicitly the enemy. Trump has taken pride in calling foreign immigrants “vermin,” and Hegseth has also denounced the “dumb, politically correct wars of the past,” in favor of “warfighting,” without explaining what he means. Trump has come right out and said that the United States might drop bombs on Iran’s oil industry “for fun.”
It’s all just a video game to them. In his piece, Olivier Knox of US News demonstrates how they actually “spliced real-world explosions with video game footage to exult over the destruction in the language of Internet memes.”
So one early clip blended images from actual strikes with footage from “Call of Duty.” Another spliced footage and icons from “Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas,” while another edited decidedly G-rated footage from “Nintendo Wii Sports” into scenes of explosions.
And then there’s the more-is-more video the White House posted that draws on “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Braveheart,” “Better Call Saul,” the “Halo” games, “John Wick,” “Superman,” “Transformers” and “Deadpool,” among others. It ends with the “Flawless Victory” message players get from the “Mortal Kombat” franchise when they win a round without sustaining any damage.
Here’s the problem, and I know I need to repeat myself because our president has the attention span of a gefilte fish. War is not a video game. And - here’s where my religious tradition comes into play - even our enemies are human beings. While sometimes war is necessary, even when it is, it is a sacrilege not to treat it with the utmost of seriousness.
Trump and his lackeys are simply unserious people, aside from their other significant deficiencies. The proposed new ICE-Meister and Homeland Security Secretary Senator Markwayne Mullin told a Senate committee that he thinks duels are cool (not knowing that they’ve been illegal since the 19th century) and refuses to condemn political violence. And Trump thought it was funny to humiliate his guests by bringing up Pearl Harbor in front of the Japanese Prime Minister. Thank God he didn’t mention Nagasaki. He needed Basil Fawlty there to remind him, Just don’t mention the War!
Our government is being run by a bunch of frat boys and for them it’s All-Spring-Break-All-the-Time.
Memo to you, Hegseth, who deems himself to be such a religious guy: Your memefied war is an affront to God. It is what Jews call a “Hillul ha-Shem,” a desecration of the divine name. Why? Because all human beings, even our enemies, are created in God’s image.
The Talmud actually gets into a debate as to whether God exults or, unlike Galinda’s fellow Ozzians, mourns the death of the wicked. (As an aside, doesn’t “memification” sound like such an Ozzian term?)
Here’s a pertinent passage:
And here’s a parallel source that reinforces the message:
These passages have a direct bearing on the Passover Seder, specifically on the custom of spilling a drop of wine with the recitation of each of the Ten Plagues, something Jews have done since the Middle Ages. As each plague is recited we diminish our joy, one drop at a time, remembering our enemy’s pain.
It should be noted that, as with so many rabbinic debates, there is another side to the conversation. The origins of the wine-spilling may not be purely humanitarian. The custom seems to be very old and could have been instituted as a means to keep the “evil eye” from inflicting those same plagues on us.
See Rejoicing at the Downfall of Enemies: From Ancient Egypt to Modern Israel (The Lehrhaus)
See also: The Original Reason for Spilling Wine: Protection from the Plagues and Spilling Wine While Reciting the Plagues to Diminish Our Joy? (TheTorah.com)
Perhaps the drip-drip-drip of wine/plagues could be an instrument of revenge on enemies other than Pharaoh. Or an imitation - or parody - of Greek and Roman practice of pouring a libation to the gods before drinking wine at a symposium. Or a mystical way of discerning God’s active role (God’s finger) in salvation history.1
The idea of spilling the wine as a means to remind that our salvation required the regrettable suffering of the Egyptians appears to be a relatively recent one, attributed to Rabbi Dr. Eduard Baneth, a well-known German rabbi and scholar, who died in 1930 and to Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch (1808-1888), the founder of neo-Orthodoxy in Germany.
The spilling of the wine lends itself to fascinating debates at Seder tables - especially timely during a war, i.e. this year. (You didn’t really think this war will be over before Passover and Easter, did you? Sure Trump promised “4-5 weeks” at the outset, but he also told us Covid would be over “by Easter” when the outbreak happened - he just forgot to tell us which year).
As the question is posed by Daniel Roth of the Pardes Institute:
So which one is it? Do we spill the wine as a symbol of lessening our cup of salvation and rejoicing as an act of solidarity with our fallen enemies? Or are we praying to one day rejoice over the future complete and utter destruction of our enemies and not just a few drops of plagues?
In the New American Haggadah, edited by Jonathan Safron Foer (with translations by Nathan Englander and scintillating commentaries by other leading literary lights), we find a number of contemporary takes on spilling the wine and rejoicing at the vanquishing of our enemy - each one fits our current situation.2
Do you prefer this explanation?
It is one kind of moral victory to be rescued from wrongs that are done to us. It is another kind of moral victory to rescue ourselves by facing the wrongs that we do. Let some of the drops that we spill be for our own wrongdoing selves, grieving our hurtful mistakes, forgiving ourselves for our lack of moral perfection, remorseful but hopeful that we can learn and go on.
Or this?
Mercy, according to the rabbis, should outweigh justice. The kabbalists go one step further. For them, justice that has been severed from mercy is the root of evil. And that is what the tenth and final plague looks like. Justice severed from mercy. The rabbis also teach us that the Jewish people have the power to ensure that God’s mercy tempers the potential excesses of his justice. After being enslaved and nearly extinguished by the Egyptians, we can understand why our ancestors did not press God to show their oppressors mercy during the ten plagues. But we, their free descendants, must not rejoice over the punishment of the Egyptians. It is not a moment for singing.
That explanation is a perfect rebuttal to the unserious memefying Hegseth and Trump.
Or this?
Why did God harden Pharaoh’s heart against the Jews, even after it seemed Pharaoh was ready to let them go? Did God want to make a point-”Don’t even think of challenging me”? Why did America shower death on Nagasaki, when it seemed that the Japanese were readying themselves to surrender? Was the firebombing of German cities so necessary as to neutralize all moral qualms? The Exodus story ends in freedom for Jews; the Civil War ended with freedom for African-Americans; World War Il ended with fascism utterly vanquished, and the death camps liberated. Can we say that the ends didn’t justify the means?
Fine, but if the Prime Minister of Japan is at your table, just DON’T MENTION THE WAR.
So which one is it? Do we spill the wine as a symbol of lessening our cup of salvation and rejoicing as an act of solidarity with our fallen enemies? Or are we praying to one day rejoice over the future complete and utter destruction of our enemies and not just a few drops of plagues?
Regardless of its association with the plagues and the Seder, the idea of God not mourning the wicked goes all the way back to the Talmud. It is unquestionably a powerful expression of the prevalent Jewish value of never trivializing war and seeing each human being as being created in God’s image.
There’s no easy answer to the wine-spill question, but there is a very easy one to the way Trump and Hegseth are glorifying war and the way this administration has feishized violence, at home and abroad, against the weak and the wily, against women and trans, especially, as well as people of all genders.
It is shameful, It is sinful. And it is wrong.
And oh by the way, it’s stupid politics too.
I don’t know what God did when Pharaoh’s army was drowning, but the God I believe in will have to summon enormous Godly strength to suppress a devine smile when some of these characters meet their inevitable comeuppance.
And I just don’t believe God was dancing on the rooftops singing this when the Ayatollah Khameini was killed a few weeks ago.
Good news! The Witch, she's dead
Come out, come out, she's gone
Good news! She's dead
The Witch of the West is dead
The wickedest witch there ever was
The enemy of all of us here in Oz is dead
Good news! Good news!
There’s a video for you to splice into your clever little memes, you little fake-pious fratboys. Take that to your basement.
Anyone who didn’t have at least a little sadness and regret over the deaths of around 170 Iranian girls at their school is an inhuman boor - and those who gloated over the killing of the wicked ayatollah like they had just sacked the quarterback forgot that there was a younger, potentially meaner ayatollah waiting on the sideline, ready to enter the game.
Oh wait. It’s not a game at all.
From Rabbi Moshe Isserles’s commentary on the Tur, a halachic work, - 16th century.
Binyamin, I am so moved by your comments. And I respect how you can stay connected to your community, even as their perspectives are so different. I also feel that same frustration about people not understanding - particularly fellow Jews who don't see what is so obvious. My father in law also fought in WW2, where most of his platoon was wiped out in the Battle of the Bulge. We need to keep on fighting, for their sake. And I'll keep on writing, for yours!
Shabbat Shalom!
We don't move in exactly the same circles, but even in the relatively modern world I'm in, most of my friends and family think the same as the Lakewood/Boro Park crowd. As much as I want to share Rabbi Hammerman's wonderful posts with them, I know they'd hit the delete button without reading. Most of them are the children and grandchildren of survivors, and I'll never understand their blindness to a later iteration of the monster our parents escaped from 80 years ago. They "learn", but they've learned nothing.
I am so shocked at how few rabbis and other Jewish leaders share my perspectives about Israel (which are nuanced) and Trump (which are decidedly not). That's why I keep on doing this, and with nearly 49,000 followers on Substack, it's good to know that someone is reading my posts. Meanwhile, it may not be so bad to share a quote or two from time to time, or the link, just to remind them that other perspectives are out there. And evidently, given Trump's falling poll numbers, the Lakewood crowd is in the minority.
OK, he’s not a rabbi, but Daniel Biss,who just won the Democratic nomination in the Illinois house race, can offer us some hope for a more nuanced position. See Jen Rubin’s latest Substack post (which I’m too tech illiterate to link to).