From Jerusalem to America: The Moral Case for Compromise

In his latest book, Jews vs. Rome, classical historian Barry Strauss writes: “Hard work, maturity, and realism are necessary to make compromise succeed, and those qualities are rarely found in adequate supply.”

The context of his remark was the leadup to the Great Revolt of Judea against Rome that began in the year 66 and ended with the destruction of the Second Temple and the crushing of all armed resistance. Strauss was explaining the difficulties of living under Roman rule for an independently minded people striving to be true to a God who was not subservient to any other power.

Why should compromise be sought? Does God not demand uncompromising allegiance? Is the duty owed to God not of higher priority than the duty owed any human government?

Do we believe that national laws should have the last word?

By any rational use of our common language, one cannot apply the term ‘genocide’ to a country which has sent millions of tons of food to sustain an enemy population …

The victorious Allies did not accept the excuse offered by the Nazis tried at the Nuremberg war crimes trial that since they were following the orders of their own government, they could not be criminals. The Allied tribunals rejected that, convicting them of “crimes against humanity,” offenses against a law superior to that of any government, a law to which all are subject. Nuremberg’s precedent is that we can be held accountable with our lives for not disobeying our government if its laws would be like those of Nazi Germany.

Why, then, is compromise a good thing?

Today’s debased political rhetoric gives the answer. To give the most egregious example, look at how calling Israel’s war against Iran’s exterminationist program ‘genocide’ has become a shibboleth of the Left and of today’s Democrats (pace John Fetterman and a few others whose bravery and candor are not as visible).

By any rational use of our common language, one cannot apply the term ‘genocide’ to a country which has sent millions of tons of food to sustain an enemy population, whose military chose tactics that deliberately exposed their own forces to greater casualties by notifying civilians to evacuate buildings where attacks were planned, sometimes moving hundreds of thousands via safe corridors to get them out of the way of combat.

And there is, of course, the fact that Gaza’s population has increased since Israel gave it autonomy.

If one is interested in destroying a people — what genocide means — then your actions would be the opposite of the actions Israel has taken. The Nazis concentrated Jews and others slated for annihilation in ghettos and in camps prior to their systematic mass murder, by bullets or by gas. Putin deliberately levelled Grozny in his suppression of the Chechens — no notice was given nor was there the removal of the population out of harm’s way. He meant to kill and terrorize them. ISIS’s attack on the Yazidis made no exceptions — its goal was to murder the men and make the women sex slaves.

The difference between those latter actors and Israel is categorical. So why do so many who take up the Palestinian cause undertake this violent assault on human conversation? It is exactly for the reasons that Strauss identifies: a lack of commitment to hard work, maturity, and realism. Instead, they jump to extreme assertions, held onto with ever-increasing ferocity and ever-diminishing rationality. It is a race to the bottom in thinking that the most effective politics is one that believes that people will choose anything at all as long as it requires no hard work, maturity, or rationality on their part. They are counting on most people being as immature, lazy, and addicted to fabulism as they are.

The problem this race to the bottom is that the bottom keeps getting lower. The more that throw themselves into the abyss, the more the abyss deepens and the more its maw opens wide.

The rabbis saw the abyss and learned. They saved the core of Jewish life and culture and have been preserving it ever since, even under abysmal conditions. They identified the core issue and taught that the Jews’ ancient disaster at the hands of Rome stemmed from baseless hatred. Jerusalem had been stocked with enough food to withstand years of siege, but Jewish factions warring with each other within the city destroyed the supplies.

But national events are rooted in the kind of culture individuals embrace. The Talmud tells the story of two people whose personal feud set loose a chain of events which led to the Roman suppression — and at every step, an uncompromising and irrational choice greased the skids to disaster.

The rabbis conclusion was the only way to counter such irrational hatred is with superrational love. The love that goes beyond prudential interest, that is secondary to nothing else. Only by internalizing that lesson could the people of the rabbis withstand centuries of exile and ever-new emergence of venomous hate, up to and including this very time and place.

The compromises that Strauss speaks of are clearly not compromises of convenience. Those require neither maturity nor realism and least of all hard work. Those are compromises to evade principle, though principles are often plastered on top of the evasions to conceal the moral rot.

Strauss’ compromises are, rather, the compromises one makes when the humanity of the other can still be addressed. Then compromise offers the one thing necessary for the true settling of any human conflict — the buy-in of both sides to the solution.

This idea takes on the form of law in the rabbinic discussion. Here is the key text (Sanhedrin 6b):

Rabbi Yehoshua ben Korcha says: It is a mitzva to mediate a dispute, as it is stated: “Execute the judgment of truth and peace in your gates” (Zechariah 8:16). Is it not that in the place where there is strict judgment there is no true peace, and in a place where there is true peace, there is no strict judgment? Rather, which is the judgment that has peace within it? You must say: This is mediation, as both sides are satisfied with the result.

The idea is not the fool’s choice between, on the one hand, a solution so perfect all we need to do is enforce it on the other or a peace so weak that only by completely withholding criticism can it be sustained. It is rather implicit in the God at the center of all things, in whom peace and truth are one, and in whom love and order are equally in abundance.

The angry gods of the modern-day Jacobins (or of today’s Mosleys or Lindberghs) have no vision of such wholeness and so no vision of why persuasion is even necessary. They are increasingly clear that they wish to cut to the chase and force their vision upon everyone so stupid or evil as not to agree with them. And increasingly, they call their enemy the people whose central motivating vision is that love and liberty must be at the core, even when the law and the doctrine is from God Himself.

James Carville recently advised his party not to talk any more about its aims — just get power back by saying whatever you need to, and then when it’s in your hands go to it: pack the Court, make three new states, end the filibuster — you name it.

Here in Ohio, the gubernatorial candidate who led the country to follow the Fauci line into total shutdown — she now refuses to debate her opponent, Vivek Ramaswami. And both in Ohio and elsewhere, the genocide lie’s advocates think their day has come, for very few in the party that chose to host them will stand against it.

They believe life is only a power game, and that morality is just a fake construct by which to control people without them knowing it. Or, as someone said, someone whose chief hatred they have been mimicking: “Conscience is a Jewish invention. It is a blemish, like circumcision.”

To internalize someone else’s rules is to be a slave — unless that someone is devoted selflessly to you. Then it is that healthy and powerful relationship as only free people can forge.

The One who calls us into existence, who makes His image within us the core of our lasting identity, is alone worthy of complete service. For all existence, all consciousness is His and he has shared it with us continuously as a free gift.

With that knowledge, we joyfully internalize order and become self-governing. We seek true compromise, wading into all its difficulties, because we seek the godly in the other as well. We strive to be living examples of chosen shared sacrifice, and work for it to be the brilliant emblem of our society.

We seek not the imperium of fallen Rome of old, but the renewed covenant in which we actively govern by the light of the divine within us, the living source of liberty.

READ MORE from Shmuel Klatzkin:

Remembering Wendell Berry: Friendship, Faith, and a Love of the Land

Wendell Berry’s Warning for the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Michigan AG Dana Nessel to Jewish Democrats: Sacrifice Yourself for the Cause