Moral Complexity, Not Moral Confusion

Last week’s targeted and unprecedented Israeli strike against Iranian military infrastructure and senior leadership was not an act of revenge. It was not an act of aggression. It was an act of self-defense, aligned with the deep moral tradition of the Jewish people.

This moment invites us to revisit an ancient and enduring tension in Jewish ethics: the sacred obligation to pursue peace, and the equally sacred obligation to defend life — even when it requires force.

A useful lens for understanding this tension is the Hebrew root (reish–dalet–peh), which gives us two very different—but deeply connected—categories in Jewish thought: the rodef and the rodef shalom.

In Talmudic tradition, a rodef is a pursuer — specifically, someone who is actively trying to harm or kill another person. In Sanhedrin 73a, the rabbis ask: “From where is it derived that if someone is pursuing another to kill them, the pursued may be saved even at the cost of the pursuer’s life?” They answer by quoting Leviticus 19:16: “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor.”

The Talmud expands this to a broader principle in Sanhedrin 72a: “If someone comes to kill you, rise early and kill him first.”

This teaching does not celebrate violence. Instead, it confronts a painful truth: when faced with a clear and imminent threat, protecting innocent life is a moral imperative.

Iran — with its decades-long sponsorship of terrorism, its calls for the annihilation of Israel, its funding of Hamas and Hezbollah and, most recently, its direct missile assault on Israeli cities — fits squarely within the category of a rodef. Israel’s response was not only justified — it was required by the values embedded in our tradition.

But Judaism also insists on nuance. The same root that gives us rodef appears in the inspiring call from the Book of Psalms: “Bakeish shalom v’rodfeihu” — “Seek peace and pursue it” (Psalms 34:15).

This is more than a lofty ideal. It is a demand—a mitzvah. Peace is not something we wait for. It is something we actively chase. To be rodfei shalom — pursuers of peace — means we engage in diplomacy. We build coalitions. We negotiate. We listen. We compromise — often with people we do not trust — because the dream of peace is too important to abandon.

This is more than a lofty ideal. It is a demand—a mitzvah. Peace is not something we wait for. It is something we actively chase.

We are obligated to do everything imaginable to avoid war. But — and this is crucial — though we are commanded to seek peace, we are not instructed to be pacifists. Judaism does not ask us to choose between peace and survival. It demands that we pursue both. And sometimes, in tragic moments like this one, that pursuit requires painful decisions.

This is the moral complexity of being a Jew in the real world. But we must not confuse moral complexity with moral confusion. The presence of difficult trade-offs does not paralyze us. When lives are on the line, we are called to act — with clarity and conviction.

As people of conscience, we must acknowledge the cost. Careful as Israel’s military strives to be, surgical as its operations are designed, there is inevitably a human toll. Civilians suffer. Families mourn. What is antiseptically called “collateral damage” is real damage. And we should never stop grieving for that loss.

But that grief must not cloud our judgment. It is not always possible to achieve peace peacefully. Sometimes — tragically — being a pursuer of peace requires the resolve to strike against those who pursue war.

In moments like these, we must hold both truths: that we are committed to peace — and that we will never surrender our right or our obligation to defend life.

This is not a contradiction—it is instead the burden and the power of moral responsibility.

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is the Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, California.