"To be a teacher in the right sense is to be a learner.  I am not a teacher, only a fellow student."  (Soren Kierkegaard)

• Home
• Professional Staff
• Board of Directors
• Calendar
• Ritual Events
• Education
  • Religious School
  • Adult Education
• Auxiliary Organizations
  • Youth Groups
  • Old Enough To Know Better
  • 50 is the New 30
  • Sisterhood
  • Men's Club
• Tikkun Olam
• Cemetery
• Volunteer Opportunities
• Donations & Payments
• Beth Sholom News
• Contact Us

A FEW PRE-SHABBAT WORDS FROM RABBI AARON

Collateral Damage

On the Shabbat of Chol HaMo'ed pesach, we read from Exodus chapter 12. The dramatic scene juxtaposes the hasty paschal sacrifice and feast with the Slaying of Egypt's firstborn. This juxtaposition heightens the tension between the joy of deliverance and the pain that accompanies the knowledge that people all around you are dying. 

At midnight the Lord struck down all the firstborn in Egypt, from the firstborn of Pharaoh, who sat on the throne, to the firstborn of the prisoner, who was in the dungeon, and the firstborn of all the livestock as well. Pharaoh and all his officials and all the Egyptians got up during the night, and there was loud wailing in Egypt, for there was not a house without someone dead.

Collateral
The word "collateral" comes from medieval Latin: collateralis, from col-, "together with" + lateralis (from latus, later-, "side" ) and is usually used as a synonym for "parallel" or "additional" in certain expressions ("collateral veins" run parallel to each other and "collateral security" means additional security to the main obligation in a contract). "Collateral" may also mean "additional but subordinate," i.e., "secondary" ("collateral meanings of a word"), and that specific meaning of a rather obscure word in the English language seems to have been picked up and broadened by the military in the expression "collateral damage.”

Collateral Damage
The USAF Intelligence Targeting Guide defines the term "[the] unintentional damage or incidental damage affecting facilities, equipment, or personnel, occurring as a result of military actions directed against targeted enemy forces or facilities. Such damage can occur to friendly, neutral, and even enemy forces.” Another U.S. Dept. of Defense document uses "Unintentional or incidental injury or damage to persons or objects that would not be lawful military targets in the circumstances ruling at the time. Such damage is not unlawful so long as it is not excessive in light of the overall military advantage anticipated from the attack."

Intent is the key element in understanding the military definition as it relates to target selection and prosecution. Collateral damage is damage aside from that which was intended. Since the dawn of precision guided munitions, military "targeteers" and operations personnel are often considered to have gone to great lengths to minimize collateral damage.

Rubinstein's 2 - Cent Commentary
Regarding intent, note the assertion in the above definition. If we're calling something "collateral damage," we're claiming that the military did not want to target the buildings/people we're describing as "collateral damage." Watch closely, as the slope gets treacherously slippery...The following excerpt is from a September 2009 NYT article by Thomas Friedman:

Israel’s counterstrategy was to use its Air Force to pummel Hezbollah and, while not directly targeting the Lebanese civilians with whom Hezbollah was intertwined, to inflict substantial property damage and collateral casualties on Lebanon at large. It was not pretty, but it was logical. Israel basically said that when dealing with a nonstate actor, Hezbollah, nested among civilians, the only long-term source of deterrence was to exact enough pain on the civilians — the families and employers of the militants — to restrain Hezbollah in the future.

What is Friedman saying? Is he telling us that as long as the Israeli Air Force strategy wasn't directly targeting  civilians, the certain knowledge that the strikes would throw a wide net of pain was a legitimate expression of deterrence? I'm not in any way taking up the cause for terrorists who routinely hide behind civilians. But I am calling attention to the alarming tendency to [essentially] reply to the terrorists: "Okay, if you want to use innocents as pawns, we can make those same people suffer. Perhaps they'll turn on you if we seriously up the ante."

Euphemisms - Looking Away From the Elephant In the Middle of the Room
Throughout history, cultures find a way of gingerly avoiding references to something painful, to something we don't really want to mention - even though we can't entirely avoid it. "Collateral damage" lets us talk about innocent victims in the abstract. We don't have to mention their names, look at the photos, rummage through the debris, clean up the blood.  Check out the pictures on the Rabbi page of the shul website. The pdf is composed mainly of paintings depicting the final plague - Slaying of the Firstborn. Looking at the pictures is a bit like hearing a person's story. The pictures are meant to be an antidote to the euphemisms we routinely employ to lessen the sense of moral embarrassment.

Symbolically Lowering the Celebratory Level at the Seder
Why do we spoon out [or pinkie out] a drop of wine as we recite each plague? A famous midrash reminds us that God hushed the angelic choir as it prepared to extoll God for delivering the Israelites at the Sea. "How can you sing to Me when My children are drowning?" God [thank God!] is not so callous as to ignore "collateral damage."

Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Aaron