August 21, 2021
Author(s): Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz,
Parshat Ki Teitzei
August 21, 2021 — 13 Elul 5781
Two Jewish Lenses on the Tragedy of Afghanistan
by Rabbi Wes Gardenswartz
Temple Emanuel, Newton, MA
This week I found myself watching, and rewatching obsessively, 1 minute and 11 seconds of sheer human desperation, a video link on my iPad, of chaos and confusion at the Kabul Hamid Karzai International Airport. Throngs of Afghan citizens were so desperate to flee from the Taliban that they ran onto the tarmac and literally clung to the outside of an American military plane as it was moving. They continued to cling to the wings and to the fuselage as the plane began to take off, causing some of those desperate citizens to fall to their deaths. By all accounts, Afghan citizens who helped the American war effort, who translated for us, who believed in us, who trusted us, who served with us, who walked the minefields and took fire with us, were stranded, unable to board a plane to free them from slaughter at the hands of the Taliban. How are we to understand this heartbreak?
And how are we to understand the pathos of the heroism and idealism of America’s more than 775,000 soldiers who served in Afghanistan, sometimes multiple tours of duty; of America’s more than 20,000 soldiers who were maimed or wounded in Afghanistan; of America’s 2,400 soldiers who were killed in Afghanistan. These soldiers, who gave so much, and their families, rightly ask: what was it all for?
How are we to understand the 83 billion dollars we invested in the war. What was it all for?
What was it all for? On the twenty-year anniversary of 9/11, the Taliban is back in power, moderate Western style democracy is in retreat, the President of Afghanistan literally ran away, the Afghan army that we trained and equipped for two decades crumbled without a fight in about a week, and fundamentalism is ascendant.
What happens when we ask the question what was it all for, and there is no good answer?
There are two Jewish sources that can help us interpret this heartbreak.
The first source is the opening line of Kohelet, Eccesiastes: “Hakol havalim amar Kohelet havel havalim hakol havel. Utter futility! said Kohelet. Utter futility! All is futile!” The root havel occurs four times in the first sentence. Havel means vapor or breath—something ephemeral. It doesn’t last. It doesn’t stick. It is not effective. The larger question that Kohelet raises is what to do about the fact that all of life is havel. All of life is evanescent. We dream dreams, we work towards those dreams, we might even have a moment of accomplishment, but it doesn’t last, and then we are left wondering: what was it all for—and there is no good answer?
That is a question that Javier Mackey is wondering about his time in Afghanistan. An Army Special Forces soldier, Mackey was deployed to Afghanistan seven times. He was shot twice. One of his friends bled to death in his arms. The Times tells his story:
Mackey saw high-ranking Afghan officers selling off equipment for personal
gain and Afghan troops running away during firefights. And he started
wondering what the United States could really achieve by sending thousands
of troops to a distant land that seemed to have never known peace. That was
in 2008.
All that blood, sweat and tears. What was it all for? Hakol havalim. Utter futility.
Then there is Ginger Wallace, a retired Air Force colonel who retrained former Taliban fighters to work in jobs that offered an alternative to combat. At the time, in 2012, she thought maybe this is working. Maybe we can leave the country a better place. When she saw the Taliban take over the country this past week, her heart was so broken that watching the news was too painful. She switched instead to the Food Channel, observing:
It was too hard to watch…I just can’t help thinking about what a waste it is.
I can’t allow myself to think about how after all that blood and treasure, it ends
like this.
Our nation’s soldiers who fought this war over 20 years are wrestling with the problem with which Kohelet wrestles: the futility and failure of human effort. When you ask the question what was it all for, and the answer is, it was for nothing. It was havel. It was vapor. It was mist. It was futility. When that happens, what is the solution? Kohelet offers his answer in chapter 9:
Go, eat your bread in gladness, and drink your wine in joy…Let your clothes
always be freshly washed…Enjoy happiness with a woman you love all the
fleeting days of life…For that alone is what you can get out of life…
In other words, live in the moment. Enjoy the moment. Big plans fail. Big dreams get dashed. What does not fail, what is not vapor and vanity, is the moment before you right now. Eat a good meal. Drink a good glass of wine. Share the moment with somebody you love. All you get is that moment.
Kohelet gets critiqued for being a biblical voice of hedonism. Is that the best he can offer as a response to the failure of human aspiration: enjoy creature comforts? Eat bread? Drink wine? Wear new clothes? Where is the moral aspiration? Where is the building of something large and noble and not about you? Kohelet’s answer is that he is not the voice of hedonism. Rather, he is the voice of humility and restraint. We can’t fix the world. No one can. But we can do a better job of enjoying our world with the ones we love. We cannot build another nation. Let’s do a better job of building our own nation so that more of our own citizens can eat their bread in gladness and drink their wine in joy.
The Kohelet lens is one lens. But there is another lens, and it happens to be the first verse in our portion this morning. Ki tazah lamilchamah al oyvecha, when you go to war against your enemy. The word ki is so important. The word ki does not mean if. Does not mean if you go to war. The word ki means when. When you go to war, because war is an inevitable part of the human condition. We might like to eat our bread in gladness. We might like to drink our wine in joy. But the peace and order that make those daily satisfactions possible are not automatic. They are hard-won. And they are often hard-won through war.
On 9/11, when the airplanes crashed into the Twin Towers, the portion that week was eerily on point:
The Lord will bring a nation against you from afar, from the end of the
earth, which will swoop down like the eagle—a nation whose language
you do not understand, a ruthless nation, that will show the old no
regard and the young no mercy. Chapter 28: 49-50
In a world with such enemies, twenty years ago, and now, we don’t have the luxury of focusing on eating our bread in gladness and drinking our wine with joy. There is evil in the world. That evil is real. That evil will consume us if we don’t fight back. Ki tazah. When we go to war, not if we go to war, because then and now, in Israel and in America, we only get to eat our bread and drink our wine if we are strong and capable of defending ourselves and deterring aggression.
Where do these two Jewish lenses leave us? In the same place that the tragic aftermath of our failed 20-year war leaves us. With tension unresolved. There is no closure.
On the one hand, fighting this war was hakol havalim, utter futility. Not only Kohelet, but also a preponderant voice in America, would say: Avoid military adventurism and nation building. Focus on building a better America.
On the other hand, it cannot be denied that as a result of the Taliban’s victory, as a result of our 20 -year project going up in vapors, fundamentalism, the Taliban, violence, are ascendant. If we think we can eat our bread in gladness and drink our wine with joy by closing ourselves off from the world, and the world will leave us alone, we have another thing coming.
This whole mess has happened during the month of Elul, our season of introspection before the High Holidays. The work of Elul is to look at what went wrong, and what can we learn from it, so that we do not repeat it, so that we grow from it. The work of Elul is also to look at pain and redeem it somehow by making something good come from something bad.
Which leads me to the letter this week from the Governor of Utah, Spencer Cox, to President Biden.
Dear President Biden:
I’m deeply saddened by the human tragedy currently unfolding in Afghanistan. I
recognize Utah plays no direct role in shaping U.S. diplomatic or military policy,
but we have a long history of welcoming refugees from around the world and
helping them restart their lives in a new country. We are eager to continue that
practice and assist with the resettlement of individuals and families fleeing
Afghanistan, especially those who valiantly helped U.S troops, diplomats,
journalists, and other civilians over the past 20 years.
As you may already know, Utah’s history guides our approach to refugees. Our
state was settled by refugees fleeing religious persecution 170 years ago. Their
descendants have a deep understanding of the danger and pain caused by forced
migration and an appreciation for the wonderful contributions of refugees in
our communities.
Please advise us in the coming days and weeks how we can assist.
Sincerely,
Spencer J. Cox
Governor
In the spirit of Elul, may our beloved nation learn and grow from this painful failed twenty-year war. Whatever lessons would emerge from an honest assessment, may we internalize those lessons so that we do not repeat our mistakes. And may we redeem this broken world by keeping faith with the Afghan translators, and their families, who kept faith with us. Shabbat shalom.