The Essential Agus. Steven T. Katz
likely to bring to this effort the impetus of their historic tradition. Also, the wide dispersal of Jews throughout the globe makes them aware of the need of stretching the bonds of fellowship across national boundaries. A residue of the sense of alienation, however weak and muted, remains in the minds of Jewish people, and this feeling serves to immunize them against the temptation to lay down rigid lines either for the character of the nation or for its destiny. Jews are the natural “protestants” against national idolatries and the outcroppings of chauvinism in all ethnic groups.
The young State of Israel has already launched a far-flung foreign aid program, with the object of extending technical assistance to the underdeveloped nations. This program is still in its infancy; yet, already it serves more than fifty nations.
WAR IN THE NUCLEAR AGE
The invention of the A and H bombs poses the question whether there are any contingencies in which a nuclear catastrophe may be ethically justified. It is now fairly certain that nuclear weapons have not been put by the major powers in the category of poison gases, that by common consent were not to be used in the event of war, save possibly in isolated cases. Atomic weapons are now so thoroughly integrated into the armament of the regular forces that a major war, in which both sides would refrain from using atomic weapons, is now scarcely conceivable.
Diplomacy is in part at least the art of using the threat of war as a way of preventing it. For nuclear weapons to serve as a “deterrent,” their employment under certain conditions must be “credible.” If we assume that a full-scale war would result in the obliteration of all human life on earth, can we still conceive a contingency when a nation might be justified in launching that ultimate catastrophe?
The logic of our entire analysis negates any attempt to introduce the Absolute into the ethical equation. No alternative can be so utterly evil as to justify the total destruction of humanity. Suppose Hitler had obtained complete control of the entire globe, and suppose he had proceeded to annihilate the Jews, to decimate other races, and to set up a universal slave system. Even then, he would have died one day, and his followers would have regained by degrees their human sanity and dignity. No evil can be so total or so eternal as to justify the total annihilation of civilized mankind.
Long ago, the rabbis laid it down as a governing principle, “All sins a person may commit if the alternative is the loss of his life, excepting these three—idolatry, sexual immorality, and murder.”26 In other words, a person does not have the right to cause the death of an innocent individual in order to save his own life. By way of explanation, the Talmud adds, “Why should you think that your blood is redder than that of another?”
In the case of nuclear warfare, the victims would be millions of innocent bystanders. Thus, even if we could feel that our own life would be saved, we have no right to take the lives of noncombatants. Moreover, the Talmud recognizes the rights of generations yet unborn. A witness was urged to reflect that his testimony, if false, would bring upon him the guilt of “the blood of the innocent man’s unborn children and descendants to the end of all generations.”27
In the case of atomic warfare, the genetic damage to future generations is itself sufficient cause to bar use of the bomb to “protect” any interest of the nation whatever, not excepting its independence.
As we have pointed out, national independence and even the survival of a nations collective identity are not absolute values. Only God is Absolute, and His image in man is the source and focus of all values.
An ethical principle, such as reverence for the lives of the innocent, should rank higher in our scale of values than our own lives. So the Talmud declared, “If a group of people is told—give us one from among you, and we shall kill him; if not, we shall kill you’—let them all be killed, but they should not yield a person for execution. However, if that one person is specified, like Sheva ben Bichri,28 then they should surrender him, that they might not all be killed. Said Resh Lakish—‘Only when that person is deserving of death, like Sheva ben Bichri.’ Rabbi Yohanan said—’even if he is not deserving of death.’”29
Occasions may arise when a nation might have to swallow its pride and surrender its independence in order to save the lives of its people and preserve their ideals. Jeremiah counseled the people of Jerusalem to lay down their arms and to go into exile in Babylonia, to guard the purity of their faith while bowing to the yoke of national slavery. The reason that resistance to idolatry was ranked so high in rabbinic ethics as to require martyrdom is the perennial tendency of men to deify their collective image. In the Roman Empire, the emperors and the geniuses of Rome were worshipped as if they were Divine. We today are too sophisticated to make use of the old naive terms, but the spirit of national apotheosis is more rampant than in any previous age. In fact, the greatest service religion can render in our day is to keep peoples from absolutizing their temporary selves. The Vision is always ahead of us—not here, not now, not within our grasp.
From a strictly ethical viewpoint, we cannot escape the logic of Absolute Nuclear Pacifism—that is, the non-use of the Bomb, even as retaliation for a direct attack. However, the existing patterns of society would make such a policy illusory and self-defeating. It would be impossible to secure an enforceable and verifiable ban on the production and the possession of nuclear weapons. In the present circumstances, “the balance of terror,” deriving from the possession of such weapons by both sides in the world struggle, is serving more effectively than the balance of power in the past.
In Judaism, we are cautioned to examine ethical questions in the light of their consequences, not merely in terms of their inherent ethical quality. Living in this mundane world, we must not assume that we can suddenly plunge into the perfect world of the future, or act as if we were there already In the present context of international affairs, the cause of peace would not be served by a unilateral renunciation of all nuclear weapons on the part of the United States or the NATO powers. On the other hand, to live in awareness of the tension between the Vision and the Way, means to refuse to stand still, but to be ever-straining toward the ideal. Whatever the necessities of the moment may be, we dare not accept them as the unyielding verdicts of history, but we must move toward the vision of our hearts, a few steps at a time, even if no comparable concessions from our opponents are immediately forthcoming. We must accept the principle of nuclear retaliation for nuclear attacks, refraining from escalating the struggle as much as possible. At the same time, we must inaugurate a race for peace, by seeking out diverse ways in which we can act to reduce the heat of the struggle and provide a fitting example for our opponents.
But the greatest contribution that religious groups can make toward the building of a permanent peace is to remove the aura of the Absolute from the social-political issues of the day. No war is likely to break out in our day, without a prior explosion of the apocalyptic frenzy, which sees the ultimate struggle as the battle between the Children of Light and the Children of Darkness. In the light of the glowing embers of our faith, we should recognize our own shortcomings and the transitory nature of our economic and social patterns. We, too, live under Divine Judgment, and it is not for us to play the role of God, all over the world.
At the same time, our faith should keep us from the sin of distorting the image of our opponents. It is so natural and so seductively easy to portray the opponent in lurid colors, that it might be well for religious groups to concentrate their moral forces on the front of public information. The communists, by their controlled press and their bars against migration, have been the chief offenders on this score. But, on our side, too, there have been failures at communication. We bar our correspondents from visiting China. And the pseudo-patriotism of our editors leads them voluntarily to distort the image of our opponents, as communist editors are persuaded to do, by fear of censorship.
The religious groups in our free society should lavish their resources on the cultivation of the vision of humanity, in the