By David Klinghoffer, other
MERCER ISLAND (JTA) — As I got to work clearing the house of leaven and preparing for seders, I couldn’t help noticing that the war in Iraq has coincided with the weeks leading up to Passover.
The coincidence is eerily appropriate. Jewish tradition teaches that Passover has its origins in an ancient conflict. It’s the first war in the bible, and it foreshadows key issues confronting America now in this very modern war, offering a source of optimism at a trying time for our country.
Passover celebrates the Israelites’ liberation from bondage, but how did the Jews become slaves in the first place? The Talmud traces a thread of causation backward from the events of the Exodus to the patriarch Abraham.
As Genesis 14 relates, Abram, as he was then called, fought a war of liberation against four kings led by the tyrant of Shinar, located in what today is southern Iraq.
The four kings had abducted Lot, the nephew of Abram, who sought to free him. In the Talmud’s view, Abram erred in arming his disciples, whose time should have been devoted to study.
For this reason, “Abraham, our Father, was punished: His children would be enslaved to Egypt for 210 years,” tradition holds.
Even if I hadn’t recently completed a biography of Abraham, I would be amazed at how his actions in that long-ago war seem to comment, if indirectly, on questions facing America’s armed forces today.
Consider the parallels, starting with the relatively mundane:
• America has been criticized for raising a “blue collar” military, many of whose members entered the armed forces to pay for college. Even if it disapproves of Abram’s choice of troops, the Talmud endorses giving material incentives to warriors. Abram offered his soldiers pay in gold.
• Once America deployed troops, the choice was whether to keep our forces together or divide them, devoting some to the siege of Baghdad and some to subduing Iraq’s southern cities.
As Genesis makes clear, Abram faced a similar decision in his war: “He gave chase as far as Dan. There he divided against [the enemy] at night, and he struck them.”
• Another portion of U.S. forces must keep supply lines safe. Abram knew well the urgency of this task for, the Midrash says, he apportioned half the spoils of war to the soldiers who had guarded his supplies.
• Against the advice of other Pentagon officials, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld felt the Iraq war could be won without overwhelming numbers of troops. Rather, superior technology and planning would carry the day.
Abram, too, assumed that numbers were not the key to victory. The biblical text says he mustered only 318 men, and the Talmud claims that finally it was only Abram and his servant Eliezer who did the fighting.
Before the final, decisive encounter with the enemy, the Talmud recounts that Abram suffered a crisis of confidence, noting that “his strength was enfeebled.” Similarly, Americans grew suddenly nervous when it became clear in the early days of the war that Saddam Hussein’s regime was not going to collapse overnight like a sand castle.
• Abram won without direct combat. As the Midrash relates, he hurled dust and straw that became arrows and spears. The patriarch stood back and watched, not unlike U.S. forces that rely heavily on precision-guided bombs, raining down destruction from afar.
From his crisis, Abram evidently pulled himself together. For now, America seems to have done likewise, but much pain may still lie ahead.
David Klinghoffer’s new book is The Discovery of God: Abraham and the Birth of Monotheism, just published by Doubleday. He lives on Mercer Island.