This reflection by Rabbi Shelly Lewis, Vietnam veteran and Rabbi of Congregation Kol Emeth, was delivered in Memorial Church, Stanford on November 11th, 2004 as part of the Envisioning an End to War interfaith service.

ARMISTICE DAY-2004 STANFORD MEMORIAL CHURCH

The Armistice that ended the incalculable savagery and butchery of World War I was encircled by hope that war would no longer be used to solve conflict. The price of armed battle was too much to bear. Of course it was not to be. Scroll forward. My Father-in-law married his wife in 1943, and within hours he was shipped out to Europe for the duration of World War II. In 1970, my wife and I were married, and I was sent to Vietnam as a chaplain 30 days later.

We have not learned. Every generation seems to fight its own wars. My four sons have so far been spared, but how many other young men and women in our country alone are dispatched to war within days of their weddings, missing the birth of their children, or other sacred events where they should have been present, leaving loved ones behind, not knowing if they would be ever be seen again. The same scenarios unfold on the opposing side of every conflict and for those who inevitably are caught in every crossfire.

There is such futility in war. Engraved in memory for me are images of the war I witnessed. In traveling in the countryside in Vietnam, I remember seeing so many civilians disfigured horribly, faces half missing, limbs shattered, bodies distorted forever. And I remember minute by minute one long night when I was summoned urgently to visit one young soldier who had been seriously injured in a night-time patrol. I had met this young man before. He was from New York, a recent college graduate, very bright with a special naïve and irrespressible spirit about him. He was drafted into the Army and simply went as a patriotic American. He was in an infantry platoon which triggered a hidden booby trap. Several of his comrades were killed instantly, and he was rushed to an evacuation hospital to which I was called. I entered his room filled with fear and anxiety because I knew his life hung in the balance. What I saw frankly made me sick to my stomach. Lloyd was conscious. He was missing all four of his limbs. He had lost an eye, and there were other internal injuries. I spent five days and nights with him, listening to his anger and witnessing his despair, crying together. His engaging spirit sagged. It was all so senseless. Incidentally he not only survived but became I believe the first quadrilateral amputee to walk up stairs with four prostheses. He married subsequently, and I am still in touch with him.

I realized then, too, that the innocents terribly hurt by war often, perhaps usually, include those in uniform, They are youngsters who have the strength to fight, but who do not make the decisions to go to war. Moreover they often do not believe in the battle in which they are engaged. They follow orders given by those far from the field of conflict.

The damage done to noncombatants is, of course inevitable. What a contrast there is between an act of kindness and a violent act! When we wish to extend a hand compassionately to someone in need even in a remote part of the world, there are pathways to deliver food, clothing, medicine, housing with precision. We can adopt one particular child or family anywhere on earth and reach out to them. Yet when it comes to wielding a weapon, even so called precision weapons, others inevitably suffer and die. In the narrative of the Book of Genesis in Torah, Abraham argues with God over the fate of Sodom which God intends to destroy because of its wickedness. "What if there are fifty righteous people in the city?", Abraham asks. "Will You destroy the righteous with the wicked?" In Hebrew, the words of his question are: "Ha-af tispeh tzaddik im rashah?" The word "Af" in Hebrew also means anger. Thus the question of Abraham to God becomes even sharper. "Will You allow your anger to consume the righteous along with the wicked?" Anger, by its nature, strikes out wildly, often causing untold and unintended damage. Even Divine anger is imprecise. Violence is imprecise, even in a just cause. Violence will strike down bystanders. Why should we be shocked when we learn that an estimated 100,000 civilians have so far been killed in Iraq?

In the face of this ongoing terrible toll which continues to this very moment, we are not helpless. We carry inspiring age-old dreams of a better peaceful world. Our religious traditions, even when they themselves have engaged in war-making, carry inspiring messages of peaceful, non-violent conflict resolution. We must recover those precious teachings, learn them by heart, set them to music, dance to their sentiments, meditate and pray over them, teach them diligently to our children, and lobby for them in the public arena. We must not allow the unceasing calls for war to erode these softer values which are bedrock in our faith traditions. And we must choose to center our own lives upon these values so that the way we are with each other even in the midst of conflict reflects our commitment to peaceful resolution.

Rabbi Aaron Samuel Tamaret who lived a century ago in the Ukraine wrote these moving words:

We are created in God's image. That just might mean that how we choose to live fashions others in our own image. We are image makers just as is God. The world itself is malleable and ready to be molded in accordance with the choices we make. We must not despair. We have the power to act to make this a world at peace.