Battle-ready

“All you need in this life is ignorance and confidence; then success is sure.” Mark Twain

The army marches across the field. Boots stomp indiscriminately on newborn sheaves of wheat. The advancing troops see the walled city in the distance, with the torches and boiling pitch ready to be used on them. This promises to be a difficult siege.

The engineering unit armed with axes and saws, starts foraging for wood and trees, to build the siege engines. One of the soldiers from the unit finds a strong, unusually tall olive tree that he knows will make an excellent battering ram. He starts hacking away at the tree. The unit commander runs to the soldier and starts yelling:

“Hey Shmeril! Stop!! We can’t chop down fruit trees! Weren’t you listening to the orders!?”

Shmeril dutifully stops cutting down the tree, apologizes and goes on to look for other suitable non-fruit bearing trees.

As the Israelite campaign to conquer the land of Canaan commences, one of the unusual commands they have to deal with is:

“When you besiege a city for many days to wage war against it, do not destroy its trees by swinging an axe against them, for from it you will eat, and you shall not cut it down; is the tree of the field a man that it should enter the siege before you? Only a tree that you know is not a food tree, it you may destroy and cut down, and build a bulwark against the city that makes war with you, until it is conquered.”

[Deuteronomy 20:19-20]

Rabbi Ovadia Sforno, present in Italy during the period of the great wars between its city-states, draws military strategy from the verse.

Sforno contends that cutting down a fruit tree is a particularly destructive act. It is often done by an army that wants to starve a city under siege after it leaves the theater of combat.

In other words, it is an act of desperation done by an army that doesn’t really believe it will conquer the city. Cutting down fruit trees will actually signal to the defending city, that the attacking army doesn’t have the confidence to win. The battle is lost, before it has begun.

May we employ confidence in all our worthy battles — and thereby achieve success.

Shabbat Shalom and Chodesh Tov,

Bentzi

Dedication

To my son, Akiva Moshe, on the occasion of his Bar-Mitzvah. His confidence and fearlessness is inspiring — especially his bravery when climbing trees.

May he continue to be a source of ‘nachas’ for the family, especially now as he takes on “The Commandments”.

Speaking of commandments, and in Akiva’s honor, we’ve launched a new website (in construction mode now), that will reduce and categorize the commandments to more manageable numbers. Check out the work-in-progress and give us your feedback and suggestions at: www.mycommandments.com