The President Who Cried Locked and Loaded

Last month, I had the pleasure of partaking in a group of thirteen students in a master’s program, most of them from the United States, spending nine days touring the land of Israel. The night before the program was set to begin, many of us got together just to hang out on a friend’s patio in the Old City overlooking the Temple Mount. One of the participants in the program, a veteran of the US military, now works as a civilian contractor on the Iran desk at the Pentagon, and some of us were hoping he’d be able to give us some insight into what’s going on. So when he began with, “Let me tell you something about Iran,” we all leaned in quite eagerly.

And then he said, “It’s not a matter of if the war will restart, it’s a matter of when.”

I’ll admit: I laughed. Because the reality is that he didn’t say anything we didn’t already know. Americans, we explained, who are far removed, might have thought this conflict was over. But Israelis? We know that it’s only a matter of time.

This past Saturday night, then, when I turned my phone back on after Shabbat and caught up on the news, it seemed like the restart might be imminent. Israel had reportedly raised its level of preparedness to the highest level, there were rumors swirling of preparations underway for a joint Israeli-American attack, and the US embassy in Jerusalem had issued a security alert to all US citizens in the Middle East to “exercise caution and heightened vigilance.” I thought it prudent, before I went to bed that night, to put out some clothing to have ready to throw over my pajamas in the event that we had to run down to the building bomb shelter in the middle of the night.

Of course, nothing happened. We were certainly grateful to have gotten a full night’s sleep, and I kind of chuckled at myself for thinking that this time might be the time that something might happen. After all, we’ve been here before. More times than I can count. In spite of previous action against Iran, President Trump has become the boy who cried wolf, or, more accurately, the president who cried locked and loaded. (I wonder, in fact, if there’s a direct link between his use of that particular phrase in his social media posts and his declaring a deal in the works—if he says locked and loaded, it seems like that’s the key to know that a whole lot of nothing is about to happen.)

It’s gotten rather tiresome, but, if I’m honest, it’s also somewhat amusing. I’ve mentioned before in this column that I place my faith in God rather than in politicians, and that allows me to take a step back from what would otherwise be a worrying (okay, borderline terrifying) situation. The strong-man projections, the yo-yoing back and forth, the constant walking back from the edge of the precipice, is one man’s seemingly desperate way of trying to control a situation that is, quite clearly, not within his control.

It’s certainly not in my control either. However, this week’s Torah portion, Re’eh, offers some insight into what we, as Jews, can do.

Moses does not speak about Iran in this week’s portion, to be clear. But he spends a good portion of time speaking about the land that the people are about to conquer and, more particularly, what we can do to ensure that we stay in it. Things like maintaining the sanctity of time and space. Uprooting the idols—and idolatrous practices—of the previous inhabitants. Being particular with what we ingest, including a strong injunction against eating blood which, the Kli Yakar says, is to ensure that we don’t become inured to base cruelty.

Moses opens up the entire portion, though, with a commandment for the people to read out blessings and curses, once they enter the land, on Mt. Gerizim and Mt. Eival. In introducing this commandment, he tells the people, “See that I am placing before you today blessings and curses. The blessings, that you should listen to the commandments of the Lord, your God, which I am commanding you today. And the curses, if you don’t listen to commandments of the Lord, your God, and you stray from the path that I am commanding you today to go after foreign gods whom you do not know” (Deut. 11:26-28). Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch notes that when it comes to the blessings, Moses does not offer an if, as he does with the curses, and Rabbi Hirsch says that was deliberate on Moses’ part. Listening to the commandments, says Rabbi Hirsch, is the blessing in and of itself. Living a life based on the commandments is a blessed life. The blessing is, literally, that we listen to the commandments and that we conduct every aspect of our lives based on those commandments.

That is what we can do right now. We cannot convince the president of the United States to do anything that he does not want to do, and right now, it seems like the thing he wants to do is play chicken with Iran, even if we’d prefer something decisive one way or another. Most of us cannot do much to move the geopolitical needle.

But we can focus on living well, through which we continue to earn this land, we can continue to put our faith in God, and we can trust that whatever happens, Israel will remain standing with God’s chosen people living a blessed life in His chosen land.