Last week my mentor, friend, and Rabbi, David Ellenson, died suddenly. He was an extraordinarily gifted scholar and teacher who touched my life and the lives of countless colleagues and friends in profound and varied ways.
I first had the privilege of studying with him in the spring of 1995 as a student in his “Modern Jewish Thought” class at HUC-JIR in Los Angeles. He taught me about the important contributions of philosophers and thinkers like Baruch Spinoza, Martin Buber, and Judith Plaskow. I studied responsa literature with him the following year in an intimate seminar held in his living room. After I was ordained a rabbi, I had the honor to host him as a scholar-in-residence at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills. I studied with him dozens of times at rabbinic conferences all over America and Israel. Later, I worked for him for three years as the director of HUC’s Year in Israel program in Jerusalem. I cherished the many opportunities to be with him.
Just seven weeks ago, he taught me what would be his final lesson, although neither of us knew it at the time.
In his teaching, Rabbi Ellenson focused on an essay by Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the former Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel, who died in 1994. Rabbi Goren reflects on the halakhic (Jewish legal) implications of besieging a city during a time of war.
In his analysis of Rabbi Goren’s essay, Rabbi Ellenson reflects on the moral tension we feel between the obligations to protect the citizens of Israel from future harm and return the hostages as quickly as possible, while also endeavoring to protect the lives of innocent non-combatants in Gaza.
Rabbi Ellenson begins his analysis by noting that the “obligation of the Israel Defense Forces to defend the People of Israel is absolute from the standpoint of Jewish tradition.” But how, in the brutality and barbarism that is inevitable in war, can we defend ourselves as ethically as possible?
Rabbi Ellenson then shared a fascinating exchange between the great Jewish thinker Martin Buber and Mahatma Gandhi. In their correspondence in 1938, Gandhi suggested that Jews use non-violence to resist the Nazis. Buber – whose own Zionist tendencies were complicated as he rejected the idea of religious states in principle – responded to Gandhi by stating that, while Jews didn’t wish to use violence, “We believe that sometimes a man must use force to save himself or even more his children.”
Buber concluded his letter to Gandhi: “I cannot help withstanding evil when I see that it is about to destroy the good. I am forced to withstand the evil in the world just as the evil within myself. I can only strive not to have to do so by force. But if there is no other way of preventing the evil from destroying the good, I trust I shall use force and give myself into God’s hands.”
Then, Rabbi Ellenson expressed his wish that, in Israel’s current war against Hamas, “only the amount of force necessary to achieve its political and military aim to secure the safety for its citizens will be used and that innocent life – as much as possible – can somehow be spared.”
My rabbi concluded with a prayer inspired by Psalms 122 and 29: “For the sake of our brothers and sisters – Jewish and non-Jewish – I seek your peace. May God bless the People Israel with strength and all peoples with peace, particularly at this time of such horror. Amen.”
His memory is a blessing.
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Yoshi