In the Rav's Name...

So, again we've been treated to an invocation of Rav Soloveitchik's much bruited opinion on the question of Land for Peace. Last week, the full citation was provided to the membership of the Rabbinical Council of America through its in-house e-mail list. It's really quite famous. Even Nissim Mishal, in his book for Israel's Jubilee, made sure to cite it (along with the Rov's picture).

This is the central portion of the Rov's remarks (in Tishre, 5727), as cited in the above e-mail. The full text is found here ):

But I don't need to rule whether we should give the West Bank back to the Arabs or not to give the West Bank to the Arabs: we Rabbis should not be involved in decisions regarding the safety and security of the population. These are not merely Halakhic rulings : these decisions are a matter of pikuach nefesh for the entire population. And if the government were to rule that the safety of the population requires that specific territories must be returned, whether I issue a halakhic ruling or not, their decision is the deciding factor. If pikuach nefesh supercedes all other mitzvos, it supercedes all prohibitions of the Torah, especially pikuach nefesh of the yishuv in Eretz Yisrael. And all the silly statements I read in the newspapers-- one journalist says that we must give all the territory back, another says that we must give only some territory back, another releases edicts, strictures and warnings not to give anything back. These Jews are playing with 2 million lives. I will say that as dear as the Kotel Hamaarovi is, the 2 million lives of Jews are more important. We have to negotiate with common sense as the security of the yishuv requires. What specifically these security requirements are, I don't know, I don't understand these things. These decisions require a military perspective which one must research assiduously. The borders that must be established should be based upon that which will provide more security. It is not a topic appropriate for which Rabbis should release statements or for Rabbinical conferences.

There are two points to be made here. First, the Rov was opposing rabbinic pronouncements on the issue.

Second, and more important, he was not sayng that it's a mitzvah to hand over parts of Eretz Yisrael. He assumes here that some sort of security consemsus can be reached as to what borders Israel needs. He, himself, took no stand on that point. He had the humility to say that he could not take a position in an area where he had no expertise. That's it. Given that there is no consensus about the security impact of the destruction of Gush Qatif, there is no way of knowing whether the Rov's theoretical discussion applies, or not.

On the contrary, invoking it today is extremely misleading and distorting (as are a host of other, one sided citations of his obiter dicta). Consider this, in 1967 the State of Israel was considering territorial compromise with a sovereign Arab country with whom it had a long history of sub-rosa relations, namely Jordan. Today, we are talking about handing over territory to a terrorist entity which has no cohesion, except its blood lust to wipe out the Zionist entity. There is no Palestine Authority (see the article in the Atlantic cited in my earlier post).

Would the Rov have supported such a move? I personally think not, but there is absolutely no way of knowing. He was a big believer in people making up their own minds. Besides, necromancy is a sin, according to the Torah.

So please, in the name of intellectual honesty and out of deference to the Rov's memory. Please keep him out of this. He said what he said almost forty years ago. If he always critically revisited his shiurim, I am sure that he would have done so in matters of Life and Death. Tragically, he's no longer here.

חבל על דאבדין ולא משתכחין