Rabbi Zvika Krieger, Chochmat HaLev
March 6, 2026

One week ago, I turned my phone on after Shabbat and was immediately confronted with the shocking news that the US and Israel had launched a massive bombing campaign on Iran, killing its 87-year old leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and 40 top government officials. I guess I shouldn’t have been shocked: Trump has been teasing such a maneuver for months, even while disingenuously pursuing a diplomatic resolution with the Iranians. But what was shocking was the casualness with which he seemed to have made the decision, the lack of clear objectives, and any sense vision for what comes next.

The ethics of war had already been on my mind last week. Some of you may know that I used to be the Head of Ethics at Meta, formerly known as Facebook. Since coming to Chochmat four years ago, I’ve continued advising a number of tech companies part-time, one of them being Anthropic, one of the leading AI companies, which some of you might know from its chatbot Claude. They were in the news this week because Trump’s Department of War refused to abide by Anthropic’s condition that their technology not be used for lethal autonomous weapons or surveillance of civilian populations.

While I can’t share the specifics of my discussions with Anthropic over the past few weeks, I can say that this is an issue I’ve thought a lot about from my time working at the Department of Defense, where I helped write the US government’s policies about the ethical use of lethal autonomous weapons such as drones.

There’s not many times when my rabbi life coincides with my tech life, let alone with my former life as a Pentagon ethicist. I don’t think it’s my job as a rabbi to talk to you about politics – but the line between the political and spiritual is increasingly thin these days. And so as often happens, when I opened this week’s Torah portion to decide what to talk about tonight, the answer jumped out at me in the first line. The Israelites have received the Ten Commandments, directly encountering the Divine for the first time, and start building their elaborate desert sanctuary, the Mishkan. The God character interrupts that sacred work and says:

כִּ֣י תִשָּׂ֞א אֶת־רֹ֥אשׁ בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל֮ לִפְקֻדֵיהֶם֒ 

Take a census of the Israelites according to their military role

This week’s Torah portion instructs us how to prepare for war. So I think it might be valuable to explore what lessons this seemingly simple text might have to offer us when we’re grappling with the complexities of war in our own time.

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The first thing a nation does to prepare for war is to count. In the Pentagon, we called this “troop to task.” War begins with numbers: Numbers of troops. Numbers of weapons. Numbers of allies. Numbers of projected casualties.

And yet the Torah immediately complicates this logic. The people themselves may not be counted directly. Instead, each person must give an offering, a “Terumah,” and Moses counts the offerings rather than the people. The Torah adds a warning: if the people are counted directly, there will be a plague.
Why would counting people cause a plague? The Torah is trying to shape the moral consciousness of a nation about to go to war. When human beings become numbers, something dangerous happens. War becomes a calculation, people become data.

But the Torah insists that before you count an army, you must remember that what you are counting are not bodies but souls – as the Torah says, kofer nafsho. Each person has a terumah, a unique gift that they offer the world, that can’t be quantified in raw numbers. The census becomes a ritual reminder that every number in the calculation represents a precious and irreplaceable human life.
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Next, the Torah offers a peculiar instruction as part of this census: Every person of military age must give a half shekel in order to be counted. Why specifically a half-shekel, why not a full shekel?

The great Hassidic mystic Reb Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev answers that anyone heading into war has to make complex calculations and weigh challenging trade-offs. Nothing in war is black-and-white. Each soldier is commanded to give a half-shekel as a reminder that they must weigh each decision from multiple angles, recognizing that our initial instincts are often an incomplete picture. Reb Levi Yitzchak, playing on the word shekel, says that this ritual is meant to invite in “shikul ha’da’at,” a balanced perspective.

A war can be justified and still be terrible. We can condemn Iran’s murderous, theocratic regime that has waged proxy wars on the US and Israel for decades, spread extremism across the region, and killed thousands of its own pro-democracy activists and innocent bystanders just in the last few months. And at the same time, we can condemn the US and Israeli attacks that violated international law and arguably our own laws here in the US. We can grieve and condemn the deaths of hundreds of innocent schoolgirls and teachers amidst the bombings in the Iranian city of Minab, as well as the Israelis killed in a missile attack on a synagogue and homes in Beit Shemesh. The half shekel reminds us that any single narrative is inherently incomplete, and we must be able to hold multiple perspectives at once, particularly as we head into war.

In the Talmud, Rabbi Shimon ben Lakish teaches that the half-shekel we gave in preparation for war in this week’s Torah portion actually served to counter the shekels that Haman was collecting to wage war against the Jews. This is the root of the tradition that we each give a half-shekel coin on Purim. Haman’s war of total genocidal elimination – the full shekel – is countered by our aspirations of moral war, where we complexify the line between victim and aggressor, and take a more nuanced approach to the inherent trade-offs of violence.

Every story we tell ourselves about conflict is partial. Why did we bomb Iran? Was it to delay Iran’s nuclear program? To protect America and Israel from Iran and its proxies?

Was it perhaps to sway the 2026 midterm elections in the US and upcoming elections in Israel? To distract from the Epstein files? To secure Iranian oil, counter China, weaken Russia? To enact the End Times theology of Christian Nationalist messianism? All of these – and many other motivations – probably played a role in the US and Israel’s decision to attack.

We’re wired to search for simple stories: one cause, one villain, one explanation. But reality rarely works that way. Complex systems—whether geopolitics, climate change, or social injustice—are shaped by many overlapping forces. When we flatten those forces into a single narrative, we may gain the comfort of certainty, but we lose the ability to see clearly.

As my friend Rabbi Jay Michaelson wrote about understanding this week’s attack, “Oversimplification is a species of anti-intellectualism, and anti-intellectualism is the handmaiden of dogmatism — usually from the Right, but sometimes from the Left as well… It is the kind of bad thinking that leads to… scapegoating, conspiracy theorizing… extremism, fascism” and even worse.

So as we head to war, The Torah’s half-shekel reminds us that our understanding is always partial. We hold only half the coin.
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The last lesson I want to draw from this week’s Torah portion also comes from Reb Levi Yitzchak, who points out an interesting word double-entendre in the opening line of this week’s Torah portion:

כִּ֣י תִשָּׂ֞א אֶת־רֹ֥אשׁ בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל֮ לִפְקֻדֵיהֶם֒
When you take a census of the Israelites according to their number

Reb Levi Yitzchak points out that that word for “their number” – פְקֻדֵיהֶם֒ – is used elsewhere to the Torah to refer to something that is missing or absent. So he reads the verse differently. When you count the people, he says, do so according to what they are missing. According to their not-knowing.

It is a powerful teaching about the psychology of war. Our leaders today, both here and in Israel are and projecting an air of certainty. They want to seem strong, confident, sure. But Reb Levi Yitzchak reminds us that war is fundamentally unknowable. You can count soldiers, but you cannot count consequences. You can predict how a conflict will begin, but you cannot predict how it will unfold or how it will end. We learned the hard way in Iraq and Afghanistan, and are learning now in Venezuela, that we can’t just decapitate a country’s leadership and assume democracy or pro-Western sentiments will flourish in the wake. The Torah’s census is meant to remind a nation of its limitations – to cultivate humility at precisely the moment when leaders are most tempted by confidence.

There is a reason Torah says that each soldier must give the half-shekel as kofer nafsho – an atonement for their soul. Even when a war is necessary, the Torah implies, it always carries a moral cost. This ritual is a collective acknowledgment that when human beings take up arms against one another, something in the fabric of the world has been torn. Even necessary violence leaves a spiritual wound that must be recognized and repaired.
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So as our country barrels deeper and deeper into a poorly conceived and potentially calamitous war, it is worth heeding the advice of our tradition:

• Casualties are not just numbers; count every life.
• Wars tend to flatten complexity; resist the temptation to over-simplify. Remember that you only have one half of the coin.
• And stay humble – count your Pekudeihem, your no-knowing. No one knows how wars are going to end. History teaches that the road to victory is riddled with unintended consequences and often leads to outcomes worse than where you started.

 

So now I’d like to invite you to turn to someone next to you and share your opinions about the attacks on Iran. Just kidding.

You know I don’t love talking about geopolitics on Shabbat, so let’s bring these ideas into our own lives. The Jewish mystics teach that the lessons of the census are not just for military war, but also for the battles we face in our own lives. I think this is particularly relevant with Reb Levi Yitzchack’s concept of “shikul ha’d’aat,” a balanced perspective. I invite you to close your eyes or soften your gaze and consider where you find yourself slipping into certainty, maybe even self-righteousness. This could be in your personal life, in your relationships, at home, at work, with family or friends.

Where in your life have you reduced someone else to a symbol or a category rather than seeing them as a soul?

Where have you convinced yourself that your story is the whole story, rather than just one half of the coin?

And where might you be clinging to the illusion that you know exactly what is going to happen next?

Take a moment to notice what it might feel like to hold that situation with a little more humility… a little more curiosity… and a little more compassion for the messy, precious human lives involved.

Now I invite you to turn to someone sitting next to you, and share: Where could you bring more “shikul ha’da’at,” a balanced perspective, into your relationships?
***

I’d like to share a closing thought about that opening line of this week’s Torah portion that I’ve quoted a few times today:
כִּ֣י תִשָּׂ֞א אֶת־רֹ֥אשׁ בְּנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵל֮ לִפְקֻדֵיהֶם֒

I’ve been translating that way it’s translated by most traditional translators:

Take a census of the Israelites according to their military role

But the Hebrew speakers here might notice that the literal translation is not, “take a census,” but “lift the minds” of the Israelites.

To prepare for war, the Torah seems to say, a nation must lift its head – not in pride, but in awareness. It must wake up to the gravity of what it is about to do. War cannot be approached casually, or cynically, or with the illusion that it is merely a strategic game.

The Torah asks us to enter that moment with a heightened moral consciousness. Remember that every number is a soul. Remember that every conflict has more than one side. Remember that the future cannot be fully known. And remember that even when a war is justified, it carries a spiritual cost that demands humility and atonement.

As we watch events unfolding in the world around us this week, these teachings feel particularly urgent. Before nations count their strength, the Torah asks them to pause and remember their humanity. Before leaders calculate victory, the Torah asks them to acknowledge uncertainty. Before armies march, the Torah asks them to hold a small half-coin in their hands and remember that every decision about war touches the lives of human beings made in the image of God.

I’d like to bless us all in this sacred work.

Mi Sheberach Avoteinu VImoteinu VHoreinu, May the sacred Oneness that blessed our ancestors bless us with the wisdom to lift our heads and see the Divine spark in every precious and irreplaceable human life.

May we be blessed with shikul ha’da’at, a balanced heart and mind, the courage to hold complexity, to remember that our story is only half the coin, and to meet one another with curiosity and compassion.

And may we be blessed with the humility of pekudeinu, our not-knowing – to walk through the fog of uncertainty with tenderness, restraint, and a deep reverence for the fragility of life in these precarious times.

Amen. Shabbat Shalom.

 

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Rabbi Zvika Krieger is the spiritual leader of Chochmat HaLev. You can read more of his teachings here.