Perpetual War
Even when we resoundingly defeat our internal enemy, we must be poised to fight yet another battle with evil. The battle against one’s internal evil is continuous. In the Messianic Age it will be the struggle to climb to greater heights.
Grammatical Problems
This week’s parsha – Matos – discusses the aftermath of a war waged against the Midianites; a nation that caused the Jewish people to degenerate into gross immorality and idol worship. Elazar the High Priest addresses those who returned from battle concerning the way they had to purge the utensils captured from the Midianites from the nonkosher food substances absorbed in them.
A literal rendition of the introductory verse to the laws concerning the purging of the utensils raises an obvious grammatical question. It says: “Elazar the priest said to the soldiers who were coming “la’milchama- to the war. Should it not have said: “mi’milchama-from the war?” It is quite clear that these were the soldiers who were returning from battle as indeed all the translators put it. Yet the Torah makes it sound as if they were going to war.
A second question is the usage of the present tense: “Those who were coming” and not “those who came.”
War Not Over!
R. Yisachar Dov of Belz, a Chassidic Master, answers the first question by understanding the war against Midian as a metaphor for the struggle against our own vices, negative drives and impulses. Even when one resoundingly defeats the internal enemy, they must realize that they are poised to fight yet another battle with evil.
This premise also answers the second question as to the usage of the present tense: “those who were coming” and not “those who came.” The battle against one’s internal Midian (the root of the word means quarrel, alluding to the way we often seek to quarrel with and antagonize G-d and other people), is not just of the past; it is continuous.
This thought echoes the well-known thesis of the Tanya, the principal work of Chabad Chassidic thought. There it explains that the Benoni-the Intermediate person wedged between the Tzadik-righteous and Rasha-evil is one who shares the struggle with evil as the evil-doer and yet succeeds in resisting it just as the righteous person who does not have the struggle in the first place.
However this premise that the struggle with evil is perennial, and that no sooner that we feel we’ve vanquished our enemy we must go out and fight another battle, is rather disconcerting and depressing. How can we feel that we accomplished something in terms of our personal growth and development if we know that immediately upon our sense of victory we must start to fight all over?
Primary Objective in Life
The Tanya establishes that, on the contrary, the primary objective of life is the struggle and not necessarily the victory. While ultimately in the Messianic Age we will achieve total mastery and victory over evil and all evil will be removed from the face of the earth, nevertheless, the effort and energy we expend now before the Messianic drama unfolds generates the Divine light that makes this world a “dwelling place” for G-d. By inundating the world with the G-dly energy now we make it possible for evil to finally be vanquished and even transformed into goodness.
However, even in the Messianic Age, when evil will cease to exist our struggle will merely change focus. For example, we will not have to resist the temptation to steal another person’s property, but we will struggle to not “steal” time and energy from our involvement in one holy project for another holy project. We will struggle with ourselves not to rest on our laurels but to continuously grow in matters of holiness.
From the book Light from the Future: Parshas Matos-Masei by Rabbi Heschel Greenberg, published by the Jewish Discovery Center.
