Tonight we enter the battlefields of our mind.
How many wars are waged right now, today, around the world? Who’s paying for them? How many of those wars are in our name? What’s my responsibility?
The Day of Atonement offers the rare opportunity for public accountability of our role for what’s happening in the world, with hopes for remorse and commitment to repair. But perhaps the most personally critical battle we are asked to consider these next 25 hours is the one that’s happening within each one of us. As Pat sings, love is a battlefield, and so is the ongoing struggle to live by our best and highest virtues, constantly distracted or derailed by inner motives that do not always help us live a noble life.
The Book of Words meets Yom Kippur today on chapter 20, which begins with the instructions for war:
כִּֽי־תֵצֵ֨א לַמִּלְחָמָ֜ה עַל־אֹיְבֶ֗ךָ וְֽרָאִ֜יתָ ס֤וּס וָרֶ֙כֶב֙ עַ֚ם רַ֣ב מִמְּךָ֔ לֹ֥א תִירָ֖א מֵהֶ֑ם כִּֽי־יְהֹוָ֤ה אֱלֹהֶ֙יךָ֙ עִמָּ֔ךְ הַמַּֽעַלְךָ֖ מֵאֶ֥רֶץ מִצְרָֽיִם׃
“When you go out to wage war against your enemies
and you see horses and chariots, fighting-people many-more than you,
do not be overawed by them, for your God is with you, the one who brought you up from the land of Egypt.”
The Hasidic and mystical teachers, often living under rough conditions and persecution, knew a thing or two about being victims of wars. But they often chose to depict this verse in the context of the inner work. My teacher Rabbi Art Green frames this approach beautifully:
“The Hasidic readings almost always take these ‘battlefield’ passages as referring to the inner battle, the person’s ongoing struggle against the evil urge. One is reminded of the way the Sufis speak about jihad, as the constant war within the heart. The human soul is a battlefield, site of an ongoing struggle between good and evil.
This model of the inner life reaches back into the earliest rabbinic sources. But it is first found in the book of Devarim itself, with its great emphasis on moral alternatives, the need to choose good over evil and the results of that choice. It stands in contrast to a different model, one that is perhaps best articulated in the daily morning prayer “My God! The soul You have placed in me is pure.” This becomes more central in the mystical tradition; the pure soul, “a part of God above,” struggling to emerge from behind kelipot, outer shells that it needs to break through in order to become most fully itself.
The second model, that of soul and “shells,” is more optimistic than the first, the sense of ongoing battle within the self, which will defend itself as being more “realistic.” But which of them will be more useful in controlling our behavior, whether on the battlefield or in daily civilian life? Therapists of various schools still debate and struggle with approaches that are essentially modern versions of this question.
Of course, the Hasidic sources had the luxury of being able to read these passages just in a spiritual way.
They did not yet have to think about questions of “purity of arms,” what sort of conduct is to be permitted of soldiers in a real war. We read these passages today with very different eyes. The situation demands that we do. But even when facing the frenzy of real battle, the fighter must ask him or herself “Who am I? How can I be true to myself at this moment?”
Can we ever win the inner struggle against evil without convincing ourselves that both we and the person opposite us, our enemy, are both holy souls, part of the same living God?”
I hope that this coming holy day and all the ones of our lives offer us the courage to face fears, face ourselves and face each other, with more love, with courage and caring— to wage battle on what hurts us and others, as we recommit to lives lived more holy and wholesome, within and beyond.
G’mar Chatima Tova. May we be signed and sealed in this year’s Book of Life.
Below the Bible Belt: 929 chapters, 42 months, daily reflections: Join Rabbi Amichai’s 3+ years interactive online quest to question, queer + re-read between the lines of the entire Hebrew Bible, with daily reflections, weekly videos and monthly learning sessions. January 2022-July 2025
#Deuteronomy #D’vraim #fifthbookoftorah #jihad #holywar #loveisabattlefield #Dvarim20 #innerbattle #atonement #fearless #thetorah #hebrewbible #whowrotethebible? #yomkippur #artgreen #teshuva #hebrewmyth #929 #torah #bible #hiddenbible #sefaria #929english #labshul #myth #belowthebiblebelt #postpatriarchy