Pre-Emptive Strategic Decisions

We just experienced a Rosh Hashana like no other in the shadow of what happened last Simchat Torah, on one hand – and, on the other hand, the recent pager, assassination, and missile-defense successes, restoring some sense of optimism back to our usually optimistic emunah-based world view.

The Tashlich we just performed on Rosh Hashana had some added poignancy this year. The Matteh Moshe, as cited by Rabbi Daniel Sherman of the West Side Institutional Synagogue, notes that the fish in the waters of tashlich live a contradictory experience. On one hand, they swim at will in the water, saturated in their freedom, but [assuming fish have awareness and emotions on some level, below sea level – AR] fish near human habitation are also in constant fear of being caught. After what happened October 7^th, people far removed from music festivals, whose music these days is the sound of the shofar, are concerned about the lurking possibility of not only being attacked by terrorists, not necessarily even near a border, but also by worries about being captured by terrorists and turned into hostages, much as fish in the waters are concerned about being caught in nets, no matter how close or far they may be to the shore or to the people who are fishing for them.

Similarly, as we face Yom HaDin, our Judgment Day, we can recall what King Solomon said in Kohelet, “And a man cannot even know his time. As fish are enmeshed in a fatal net…” (9:12).

As clueless as the fish may have been, most of them were still ahead of the head of Hezbollah and his followers, who were sabotaged by Israel by means of the pager attacks and other more conventional but still unanticipated ways. Almost immediately after the detonations, people began to worry about retaliation to cell phones in possession of Israelis or even of anyone outside of the inner Arab world. Now that the anti-Zionists know about the capabilities of such technologies, might they begin to use similar tactics? Would it have been better not to have used this tactic at all, for fear of “copycats” from the other side? This calls to mind the daf yomi that we learned the exact week during which the pagers and walkie-talkies were detonated (Bava Batra 89b).

After discussing what shouldn’t be done in manufacturing receptacles for measuring food or other goods (like, for example, thickening the walls of a measuring cup) and after discussing what shouldn’t be done with even an acceptable receptacle in the measuring process (like how to exactly “fill” the cup) because such actions could render the measurements inaccurate, Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai says, “Woe to me (“oy li”) if I say them [if I point this out in my teachings], and woe to me if I do not say them. If I say them, perhaps unscrupulous people will learn [methods of cheating that they hadn’t thought of on their own] and if I do not say them, then perhaps unscrupulous people will say that Torah scholars are not well versed in our handiwork.”

Rav Shmuel bar Rav Yitzchak notes that Rav Yochanan ben Zakkai ultimately decided to share the information, based on the classic pasuk, “Yesharim darchei Hashem v’tsaddikim yailchu bam uposhim yikashlu bam – For the ways of Hashem are right, and the just walk in them; but transgressors stumble over them” (Hosea 14:10).

The rabbis clearly concluded that if any information gets into the wrong hands, it can cause harm, but that doesn’t mean that devices or information for the benefit of humanity – or for the protection of innocent people – should never be invented, activated, or shared, even if there will be collateral damages. How many more American – and Japanese – soldiers would have died in Japan during World War II had America not had an atom bomb, and had not detonated it, to end the war when it did?

Perhaps it’s like the offer of the coin flipper, “Heads I win, tails you lose.” No matter what happens, the people in the right will always win (whether in an obvious “revealed” way in this world or in an eventual greater way in the next); furthermore, the people with indefensible values will always lose (whether they will stumble and fall or fail in this world, or whether they will not very happily meet their Maker in the next).

On a practical down-to-earth level, sometimes there are actions we can take to reduce the chances of negative consequences or repercussions, short of the dramatic high-tech measures of a couple of weeks ago. To wit, whether terrorists try to enter into Israel through subterranean tunnels at its borders, or whether members of terrorist “cells” try to infiltrate into the United States through its borders that may not be quite as secure as many of us would like to think they are, we must be all the more vigilant in interdicting, processing, vetting, detaining (if need be), and further dealing with uninvited “guests” at the border, and in taking all the more precautions on the ground, while seeking to be worthy of protection by the Shomer Yisrael from above.

May the Mashiach come soon, so we won’t have to worry about life-threatening devices and injudicious information getting into the wrong hands, and then unleashed against innocent people!