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Confronting Omnicide

Jewish Reflections on Weapons Mass Destruction

Daniel Landes

Today, humankind stands at a crossroads. In the past decades, technological advancements have transformed societies, giving us extraordinary capabilities. Our achievements, however, prove to be a double-edges sword, for the genius that enables is to enhance the quality and length of life has also put into our hands the means with which to destroy ourselves.
How will we respond to the ultimate and absolute responsibility of preserving humanity? How will countries balance their need for self-defense and their desire for power? Where will societies turn for guidance as they grapple with the questions of survival? In Confronting Omnicide: Jewish Reflections on Weapons of Mass Destruction¸ Rabbi Daniel Landes has collected essays, by fifteen prominent Jewish thinkers and leaders, that address these issues.
The authors of these essays represent a broad spectrum of religious and political ideologies and include Reuven Kimelman, Irving Greenberg, Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, Pinchas H. Peli, and Maurice Friedman. They share the basic assumptions that the threat of global destruction through nuclear and chemical warfare is a real possibility against which humans have no “fail-safe” mechanism; that we must search for solutions while avoiding apathetic fatalism and false optimism; and that the Jewish people have a special responsibility, because of their history and their culture, to respond to this crisis.
Drawing on a rich variety of Jewish literary sources, including the Bible, rabbinic literature, and Jewish law and thought, the contributors to Confronting Omnicide explore different facets of the nuclear threat. For example, does Jewish law distinguish between civilians and combatants in the struggle to defeat an enemy, and if so, how does this affect military decisions? In Jewish law, owning wild dogs is prohibited as a violation of the biblical verse, “Thou shalt not bring blood upon thy house,” because of the seeming inevitability of the dog attacking the innocent. Is the very possession of a nuclear and chemical arsenal wrong, then, if its existence enables us to bring blood upon the collective house of humankind? Jewish tradition has classically required a just order before agreeing to peace with an enemy. But is that a realistic requirement in an age when peace is merely the absence of overt hostilities?
Many of these essays also examine the Holocaust and the parallels and distinctions that can be made between it and absolute destruction. The paradox of power, the threat of its concentration and the vulnerability of its absence, is also discussed in this volume.
Confronting Omnicide does “advocate specific strategic and political positions,” Rabbi Landes states. “It rather attempts to create a vocabulary and language for confronting the difficult decisions that will need to be made by both policy makers and an informed citizenry.” Its perspectives provide insightful guidance and encourage the development of a sense of individual and communal responsibility as we navigate our perilous journey into the twenty-first century.

Jason Aronson, Inc.

Pages: 293 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-0-87668-851-9 • Hardback • February 1991 • $114.00 • (£88.00)

978-1-4616-6242-6 • eBook • February 1991 • $108.00 • (£83.00)

Subjects: Religion / Reference, Political Science / History & Theory

Confronting Omnicide

Jewish Reflections on Weapons Mass Destruction

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Today, humankind stands at a crossroads. In the past decades, technological advancements have transformed societies, giving us extraordinary capabilities. Our achievements, however, prove to be a double-edges sword, for the genius that enables is to enhance the quality and length of life has also put into our hands the means with which to destroy ourselves.
How will we respond to the ultimate and absolute responsibility of preserving humanity? How will countries balance their need for self-defense and their desire for power? Where will societies turn for guidance as they grapple with the questions of survival? In Confronting Omnicide: Jewish Reflections on Weapons of Mass Destruction¸ Rabbi Daniel Landes has collected essays, by fifteen prominent Jewish thinkers and leaders, that address these issues.
The authors of these essays represent a broad spectrum of religious and political ideologies and include Reuven Kimelman, Irving Greenberg, Lord Immanuel Jakobovits, Pinchas H. Peli, and Maurice Friedman. They share the basic assumptions that the threat of global destruction through nuclear and chemical warfare is a real possibility against which humans have no “fail-safe” mechanism; that we must search for solutions while avoiding apathetic fatalism and false optimism; and that the Jewish people have a special responsibility, because of their history and their culture, to respond to this crisis.
Drawing on a rich variety of Jewish literary sources, including the Bible, rabbinic literature, and Jewish law and thought, the contributors to Confronting Omnicide explore different facets of the nuclear threat. For example, does Jewish law distinguish between civilians and combatants in the struggle to defeat an enemy, and if so, how does this affect military decisions? In Jewish law, owning wild dogs is prohibited as a violation of the biblical verse, “Thou shalt not bring blood upon thy house,” because of the seeming inevitability of the dog attacking the innocent. Is the very possession of a nuclear and chemical arsenal wrong, then, if its existence enables us to bring blood upon the collective house of humankind? Jewish tradition has classically required a just order before agreeing to peace with an enemy. But is that a realistic requirement in an age when peace is merely the absence of overt hostilities?
Many of these essays also examine the Holocaust and the parallels and distinctions that can be made between it and absolute destruction. The paradox of power, the threat of its concentration and the vulnerability of its absence, is also discussed in this volume.
Confronting Omnicide does “advocate specific strategic and political positions,” Rabbi Landes states. “It rather attempts to create a vocabulary and language for confronting the difficult decisions that will need to be made by both policy makers and an informed citizenry.” Its perspectives provide insightful guidance and encourage the development of a sense of individual and communal responsibility as we navigate our perilous journey into the twenty-first century.

Details

Jason Aronson, Inc.

Pages: 293 • Trim: 6½ x 9¼

978-0-87668-851-9 • Hardback • February 1991 • $114.00 • (£88.00)

978-1-4616-6242-6 • eBook • February 1991 • $108.00 • (£83.00)

Subjects: Religion / Reference, Political Science / History & Theory

Author

Rabbi Daniel Landes is a founding faculty member of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, California, where he is Director of National Educational Projects. His articles have been published in several magazines, including Tikkun, and he is the co-editor of Genocide: Critical Issues of the Holocaust.

Table of Contents

Contents

Preface

Can the World Survive it Again? Reuvan Kimelman

OUR SITUATION
1 A Vow of DeathDaniel Landes
2 The Dialectics of Power: Reflections in the Light of the Holocaust Irving Greenberg

BIBLICAL AND RABBINIC STUDIES
3 Cataclysm, Survival, and Regeneration in the Hebrew BibleJon D. Levenson
4 Torah and Weapons of Mass Destruction: A View from IsraelPinchas H. Peli
5 A Jewish Understanding of War and Its LimitsReuven Kimelman
6 Nuclear War and the Prohibition of Wanton DestructionDavid Novak

DIALOGIC REFLECTION
7 The Human Situation and the Nuclear ThreatMaurice Friedman
8 A Theology of Fear: The Search for a Liberal Jewish ParadigmDavid Ellenson
9 Bishops, Rabbis, and BombsElliot N. Dorff

JEWISH LAW
10 Confronting OmnicideLord Immanuel Jakobovits
11 Nuclear War through the Prism of Jewish Law:
The Nature of Man and WarJ. David Bleich
12 Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear WarWalter S. Wurzburger

WITNESS
13 From Genocide to Omnicide: The Jewish Imperative to
Save the EarthLouis René Beres
14 Mortality and Nuclear WeaponsEdward Teller
15 Final Solution – Universal?Eliezer Berkovits

Appendix of Rabbinic Scholars and Terminology
Contributors
Index

Reviews

“This book is by a very able Jewish scholar who assembled and edited contributions from some of the outstanding Jewish thinkers of our day on a topic that is vital to every human being already born and still unborn. It is a must for everyone’s library.”
- Rabbi Emanuel Rackman

— Rabbi Emanuel Rackman, Bar-Ilan University

“This book does not belong in the library, at least not on the shelf. It belongs in the minds and hearts of every aware person, and everyone who should be made aware. This book addresses the age old question, “To be or not to be?” in an all-encompassing manner. For the first time in human history, we are all at risk, with the real capacity to commit global suicide (omnicide).
“In this volume we learn the full extent of the human capacity to be inhuman and the lurking danger that must be eliminated. Jewish tradition, Jewish history, and Jewish sensitivity speak with common alarm and concern about the human future. If we care about tomorrow, we must read this book today.”
- Rabbi Reuven P. Bulka

— Reuven P. Bulka

“Confronting Omnicide is not only for the theologian and the political decision maker and the military strategist – it is for every thinking, feeling person who shares concerns for the possibility that humanity may be on the verge of self-destructing. These essays, almost uniformly brilliant, shed new light on ancient values as they attempt to provide a distinctively Jewish perspective on a radically new possibility of ultimate evil.”
-Rabbi Saul J. Berman

— Saul J Berman

Confronting Omnicide

Jewish Reflections on Weapons Mass Destruction

Daniel Landes

Confronting Omnicide

Jewish Reflections on Weapons Mass Destruction

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