008 Judean Fighting Arts- Jew Fu?
Judean Fighting Arts- Jew Fu?
By Jewish Mayhem
“To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven… a time for war and a time for peace… He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
King Solomon in Eccles. 3:1,8,11:
At some point between the time of Joshua and the Twelve Tribe’s entry into the land of Israel three millenia ago and the Roman occupation of Judea in the first hundred years BCE, the leaders of our nation developed and implimented a fighting art and fighting style among the Tribes, very much how Israel’s IDF today has a fighting doctrine. Very little is written about Judean battle theory and fighting theory for circumstantial and historical reasons and it can be presumed lost until further Rabbincal notice.
Judaism was sanitized of it’s militant and fighting spirit and tradition almost entirely during the last 2000 years. Very little is ever mentioned about how a Jew must become tough and how and when to fight and when not to fight, but all is not lost, there are breadcrumbs of authenticity for those who seek it. One classic example of Jewish fighting spirit is located in our Passover Haggada which we read every Passover.
“It happened that Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Elazar Ben Azariah, Rabbi Akiva and Rabbi Tarphon were reclining (at a Seder) in Benei Berak. They were discussing the Exodus all that night, until their students came and told them: “Rabbis! It is time for the morning prayer “Shma!”
From simply reading this paragraph one does not read any allusions to militancy or violence at all and it can be easily and justifibly interpereted to mean all sorts of nice things, that was the point behind how it was written, to satiate the dreamers and the lazy thinkers among the nation. Every letter, sentence and paragraph in Torah and in Rabbinic-traditional-Talmudic Judaism are valuable and deliberate and cannot be taken at simple face value. One must open the Talmud to find the answers to know what a Jew is and how a Jew behaves and what is Jewish and not Jewish, one goes to a yeshiva to learn.
The obvious questions which you may have asked one seder night was: How could the rabbis not have paid attention by themselves that the time for the reading of the “Shma” had arrived? In addition, what were these rabbis doing sitting together on Seder night, when each had a family and a Yeshiva of his own in different parts of the country? Why were they sitting in Bnei Berak, the place of (the student) Rabbi Akiva?
Before giving the answer, some historical background is necessary: Only a few years had passed since the Destruction of the Second Temple, and the Land of Israel was under complete political and military control by the Romans, we were a nation under a suffocating occupation coincidentily much like what the so called Palestinians accuse us Jews of doing to them today; but wait, were there even Palestinains back then? Nope because they are a mythical, fake people created by the Arab League in the nine-teen-fifties, but that is another article for another day.
The answer as to why the Rabbis needed to be notified of the morning prayers was because they were secretly planning a revolution – a violent, militant revolution which saw Rabbi Akiva play a central role as the “armsbearer” of Bar-Cochba (see Rambam, Hilchot Milachim). The rest of the Rabbis were also quite active in the rebellion, as the Rambam writes: “and he (Rabbi Akiva)and ALL THE RABBIS OF HIS GENERATION thought that he (Bar-Cochba) was the Messiah”. The rabbis understood that the purpose of the Seder night was not just to retell a story that once was but rather they sat on the Seder night to plan the tactics and natural stages of the redemption, which they hoped would come through a planned rebellion.
Some of you reading this are probally freaking out at the assertion that violence is acceptable and Jewish and I wage the argument that to not use violence in the proper time is without a doubt immoral and unethical and un-Jewish and by not enforcing justice in situations by means of violence, breeds injustice and contempt, just as much as using violence in the improper time results in the same destructive results.
Furthermore, any assertions that violence and war and being a tough Jew is somehow un-Jewish has no basis in Judaism whatsoever and anyone who makes such absurd, fanatical statements do not have Jewish legal sources to prove their opinion on what is Judaism; because if peace is so important so much as to stop any kind of violent manifestation, we must ask why Scripture recorded all the wars of righteous judges and kings. And in general, why is there a mitzvah, an obligation to go to war, i.e., milchemet mitzvah, the compulsory war?
The answer is provided by wise King Solomon in Eccles. 3:1,8,11: “To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under heaven… a time for war and a time for peace… He has made everything beautiful in its time.”
In Tanchuma, Shoftim 15 it says: “‘When you go forth to battle against your enemies’ (Deut. 20:1)… What is meant by ‘against your enemies‘? G-d said, ‘Confront them as enemies. Just as they show you no mercy, so should you not show them mercy.’” We have to realize that the non-Jew who goes to war against Israel is our enemy and not our friend. How unaware people are nowadays of this simple yet profound principle! Our sages also said (Sifri, Shoftim 192): “You are going to war against your enemies and not against your brethren. It is not Judah against Simeon or Simeon against Judah such that if you fall captive they will have mercy on you… It is against your ENEMIES that you are waging war. If you fall into their hands, they will show you no mercy.”
I would like to introduce you to Rav Yehoshua Sofer. He is one of the few Jews in the world whose family kept some of our fighting traditions from the days of old alive over the millennia in his family’s exile in Yemen. Yehoshua represents a part of authentic Torah Judaism that your parents or your Jewish leaders never knew even existed.
English
HEBREW
To learn more about who your people were and are, go to: