Veterans

By RABBI JOSEPH H. PROUSER

After God drowned the Egyptian army at the Red Sea, our Israelite ancestors sang their triumphant song, declaring, “The Lord is a man of war.” What does this suggest about the nature of God… or of God’s view of armed conflict?

Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its futility, its stupidity.” William Tecumseh Sherman observed: “I am sick and tired of war…. It is only those who have never fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of those who are wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation.”

Perhaps the God of Israel is described as “a man of war” because, as a seasoned veteran of many battles, He, too, hates war with the warrior’s uniquely intimate insight into its cost in human lives and misery. Yet God, as “a man of war,” also realizes that war is, at times, sadly, tragically necessary: an inescapable moral obligation.

This Veteran’s Day, we gratefully salute all the men and women who have served and sacrificed for our country in the military. May the Divine Commander stand guard over them, and grant them the blessing that all good soldiers seek: a lasting peace.

(Rabbi Joseph H. Prouser is the rabbi of Temple Emanuel of North Jersey and the National Chaplain of the National Jewish Committee on Scouting.)