Q:
Were the Jews correct in beginning the revolt of Beitar?
A:
Were the Jews right when they made the War of Beitar?
And the answer is no. The chachamim were opposed to the war.
All these acts of heroism end up in disaster.
The Sages know that they are futile. Now it’s a style since boys have gained the reins of control of the Jewish affairs – children or adults who have the minds of children, the attitude of children – so heroism is the only thing that counts. And when they talk about the Warsaw Ghetto instead of learning the true lessons that could be gained from it they speak about the heroism of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Now you have to know it’s untrue. The heroism of the Warsaw Ghetto was nothing but a tragedy. It was a mistake. The whole uprising was a mistake. The Germans were not stopped the least bit. They weren’t deterred the least bit. On the contrary, they wiped out all the inhabitants of the ghetto. Otherwise, they would have continued to persecute them like they persecuted all the ghettos – but there were survivors everywhere. For the sake of heroism it doesn’t pay to sacrifice the lives of fellow Jews.
Now that’s not popular today because the voices of the Sages, the voice of calm deliberation, are not heard anymore.
And even what’s taking place in Eretz Yisrael is only the result of the decisions of hotheads who have involved us more and more. And 1850 young people besides all those who have died subsequently, who were incapacitated subsequently, a very big price to pay.
You say what else could they have done? There’s a lot that could have been done but they didn’t listen.
In 1948 there was an emergency meeting; Rav Aharon Kotler zichrono levrachah and all the other gedolei hador in America and there was a decision taking then. But the leaders of the emerging State of Israel ridiculed them and no one was willing to listen and they went ahead and did what they did.
At the time of the War of Beitar the chachamim were opposed. Rabi Yehoshua who died just before the war said it’s like putting your head in the lion’s mouth because there’s no use opposing Rome.
So it means you’ll be a hero. You’ll have a Bar Kochva and for the moment it will lift your spirits. But the end will be a disaster that’s unmatched by any previous catastrophe in Jewish history. Because Rome took the cruelest revenge. They sold men and women and children for slaves and they were so cheap that the purchasers themselves drowned them in the Mediterranean. They were slaughtered to get rid of them! They died like flies. The War of Beitar, the Rambam says, was worse than the churban Beis Hamikdash. And that was the result of hasty action.
Now we can’t blame them too much because those people at that time they didn’t merely get up for histrionics, to show off. They weren’t acting heroics. They had certain pressures on them that didn’t let them rest because the Romans just before the war began persecuting the Torah. They forbade circumcision. They forbade shemiras Shabbos. They even forbade tevilas niddah b’mikveh. And it became so bad that it became almost impossible to keep Yiddishkeit. At that time the people became so aroused that spontaneously a war began.
But even then the Chachamim didn’t agree. The Chachamim follow the system גזירה עבידא דבטלה – a gezeirah will eventually become batul. The truth is even the Romans, as cruel as they were, weren’t always the same. And if you would wait some years, you’d suffer and some people would lose their lives, but after a while you would be able to bribe the right Roman or you could get favor with one of the Roman officials and after a while it would be removed. All the disabilities would finally be removed. But because the people were impetuous and they did not heed the sages that’s what happened.
So the War of Beitar was a catastrophe that resulted from not listening to the words of the Sages.
(November 1973)
