Today, Jewish views on violence and peace are usually deeply influenced by the horrors of the Holocaust, when Nazi Germany systematically murdered six million Jews in an attempt to completely exterminate the Jewish people. Around one third of European Jews were killed in the concentration camps in the genocide.
During the Holocaust, many Jews fled to the US. Several of these refugees were the world’s top physicists, and the US government employed many to work on the Manhattan Project—the military research project to build the first atomic bomb. These refugees played key roles in the Project’s success, including Hans Bethe, Leo Szilard, and Joseph Rotblat.
Rotblat was one of the first physicists to discover that splitting an atom could cause a huge explosion. He did not want his discovery to be made into a weapon, but he agreed to work for the Project, as he feared that the Nazis would invent an atomic bomb first, win the war, and expand the Holocaust. Rotblat’s fears were deeply personal; his wife did not escape occupied Poland and was killed in the Belzec concentration camp. But in 1944, when he discovered Germany had abandoned their atomic research, he left the Manhattan Project, making him the only conscientious objector among Project scientists. He devoted the rest of his life to fighting for complete nuclear disarmament. In 1995, Rotblat was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his anti-nuclear campaigns, which laid the groundwork for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).
The NPT is a global agreement signed by nearly every nation to stop the spread of nuclear weapons. Since its ratification in 1970 only four countries have never signed, and three have atomic weapons today: India, Pakistan, and the Jewish state of Israel. Israel, home to nearly half of the world’s Jews, was created in 1948 following the Holocaust. Since then, Israel’s neighbors have declared war on the state several times for complex reasons that include Israel’s occupation of Palestine and anti-Semitism. Thus, haunted by memories of the Holocaust and surrounded by hostile neighbors, Israel refused to sign the NPT and began their own project to build an atomic bomb. With help from France, they did so in the 1960s. Israel has always refused to confirm or deny the existence of their stockpile, but it is widely known that by 2014 they had at least 80 nuclear warheads.
Today, while the vast majority of Jews agree that using nuclear weapons should be a last resort, many Jews, especially in Israel, have religiously justified possessing them. Surrounded by hostile neighbors, Israeli Jews often believe that the survival of the Jewish state is dependent upon having the bombs as deterrents. They cite Jewish law in the book of Exodus which prohibits Jews from allowing oneself to be killed, arguing that eliminating atomic bombs would be tantamount to committing suicide as their antagonistic neighbors would take advantage of their weakness. With strong social memories of the Holocaust, they believe that the fear of nuclear retaliation will ensure that a genocide of the Jews will never happen again. In fact, Israeli rabbi Pinchas Peli has argued that, “if anyone has the right to possess nuclear weapons… Israel is the country that should irrefutably have that right. It is, after all, the only state that is threatened openly and constantly with total destruction.” However, other Jews have argued that while Israel should keep their nuclear arsenal, it is still clearly immoral, so Jews must “choose the lesser evil,” between having the bombs and being destroyed. In short, many Israeli Jews believe that if they were pacifists, “they would have long since been dead.”
In fact, Israel’s stockpile itself is often described in religious terms. For example, in the Six Days War in 1967, a secret plan was drawn up—though not executed—to detonate an atom bomb in Egypt if Israel seemed poised to lose the war. It was named “Operation Samson” after the character in the Biblical book of Judges who pushed over the support columns of a temple, killing himself and his enemies. Similarly, an Israeli system to intercept incoming warheads is called “David’s Sling” after the weapon King David used to kill Goliath in the book of Samuel.
However, while some Jews believe having atomic bombs will deter the next Holocaust, many other Jews, particularly in the United States, worry that these weapons will cause the next Holocaust. Therefore, for these Jews, “never again” means advocating for complete nuclear disarmament. Many of them believe that the Jewish experience in the Holocaust give Jews a “special responsibility to prevent nuclear war” since they understand the devastation of annihilation. Some also cite the Jewish concept of Bal Tash’hit—a prohibition on “wanton destruction”—to claim that the complete ruin of humanity that would occur in nuclear war makes atomic weaponry impermissible for Jews to even possess. In 1983, the Synagogue Council of America, which represents a diverse coalition of US Jews, declared its opposition to nuclear weapons, stating that it was their “religious duty” to try to stop nuclear war. Many of these Jews adopted the rainbow as the symbol of this movement, recalling the flood story in the book of Genesis, in which God creates a rainbow as a sign to Noah and his descendants that the world will never be completely destroyed again.
Additional Resources
Primary Sources:
- Interview with Jewish nuclear scientist and 1995 Noble Peace Prize winner Joseph Rotblat: http://bit.ly/2Bu27UU
- Recording of Joseph Rotblat from the Smithsonian: http://bit.ly/2jrJTer
- Transcript of an interview with Joseph Rotblat from the National Security Archive of George Washington University: http://bit.ly/2zKkho7
- Home videos of the top-secret Los Alamos National Lab from 1943-1945—featuring several of the Project’s Jewish physicists—during the construction of the first atomic bomb: http://bit.ly/20asMwR
Secondary Sources:
- NYT report on the Synagogue Council of America’s call for nuclear disarmament in 1983: http://nyti.ms/2hWEP17
- Al Jazeera report on Israel’s nuclear arsenal (2009): http://bit.ly/2AfPyMu
- The Atlantic explains the secrecy surrounding Israel’s nuclear program (2014): http://theatln.tc/2oDtKWU
Discussion Questions
- Jewish views on violence and peace changed significantly after the Holocaust. Why do you think this happened? How did their cultural context impact these views?
- How do different Jewish views on the ethical implications of creating and possessing nuclear weapons show the internal diversity of Judaism?
- While Jews of differing opinions can be found in all parts of the world, Jews in Israel are more likely to support nuclear arsenals, and Jews in the US are more likely to support total disarmament. What about their cultural context might explain the difference between these two Jewish groups?
- How do different Jews use the Bible to express their beliefs regarding nuclear weapons? Why do they sometimes have such different interpretations?
- Watch the home videos from Los Alamos National Lab. What impressions do you get from these images? Is there anything you find surprising about the images? Why or why not?
- Listen to or read one of the interviews with Jospeh Rotblat. Why did he change his mind about the morality of the Manhattan Project? Why do you think he devoted his life to total disarmament?