From the Rabbi's Study
Thoughts on War, Eden, and Empathy
Rabbi Elizabeth Bolton
May 2003

On the morning following the US and British forces dramatic domination of Baghdad, various new items and photo images of the previous weeks converged in my mind with images from Star Trek.

My recollection is fuzzy, and I may well be altering the plot line, or conflating two episodes, so apologies are tendered in advance to serious Trekkers. The crew of the Enterprise lands on a planet that evokes associations with the Garden of Eden; a woman allows herself to take on the pain of those around her, becomes instantly stricken and disfigured, and dies.

Both of those images tap directly into the wells of cultural and psychological archetypes – an exotic, mythic, barely accessible space, and time, where all is beautiful and perfect; a caring and self-sacrificing figure who can, and does, take on the burdens of those around her, to the point of profound suffering and sacrifice.

I am not able to draw all of the lines of connection for you that led my synapses to fire in this way! But here and now, as I write this message a week before Passover, I can’t help but think about freedom, how it is achieved, and how suffering and sacrifice are the burden of many men, women and children – American, British, and Iraqi – in the precise place a primary source in our tradition identifies as the locale of the Garden of Eden.

To be truthful, there is no “precise place” for the Garden of Eden, though it plays a prominent role in the creation of Jewish, Christian and Islamic eschatology (the “last thing,” or end of time). But Genesis 2:14 names one of the rivers flowing out of the Garden as the Tigris, located in modern-day Iraq.

Yet if we treat Eden not as a geographical destination, but a place of mind, what does it represent – in the Jewish tradition, to us today, and in light of the present events unfolding “there”?

Eden is the place Eve and Adam learned of their awesome power to know, to understand, and to act. Their own actions immediately led to a chain reaction of consequences and suffering, which became a powerful mythos about the human condition. If Eden is Paradise, leaving Eden is Hell.

We have an awesome responsibility to help restore that real-life place to health and safety for its citizens. Yes, there remain many conflicting values and perspectives within Judaism about war itself – the imperative to pursue justice; the right to kill in order to defend life; the preciousness of all human life; the responsibility we all have for one another; the yearning for shalom/peace. Just as the leaders who launched this war often drew a connection between their own sacred ethos and their policies, we too can choose a strand of our tradition upon which we will base our actions. We must choose the most life-affirming, justice-seeking, and shalom-building acts available to us.

Today, celebration and mourning, joy and pain are cohabiting side by side in the fertile land and the devastated cities in and around the Tigris and Euphrates. For the profound humanitarian crisis unfolding in Iraq, I urge all of us to be as generous as possible to those groups and organizations seeking to alleviate civilian suffering.

To our prayers, let us also add special passages of compassion to those serving in the military who have made the ultimate sacrifice, and to their grieving loved ones. May the One who Desires Life/melekh hafetz bachayim be close to those in danger, and may we all soon rejoice on the day when “no nation shall lift a sword against a nation – let them learn no more the ways of war.”