If your life expectancy is forty five years, is it worth dying over fig trees? In the Kibale national park in Uganda large groups of males strike out in silent single file patrols to expand the number of fig trees under their control. Between 1999 and 2008 eighteen were killed in violent attacks during these patrols. Most of the victims were teens and children and mothers were beaten as the raiders snatched and killed their offspring. No one on either side was starving – but the raiders managed to increase their lands in the fig tree containing area by more than a fifth.
You might ask how could human beings be so cruel as to fight like this over a luxury? The answer – in this case they are not.
The single file patrols, the raiders, the killers and the victims are all chimpanzees. The study which witnessed this violent behaviour was conducted by John Mitani of the University of Michigan over a decade and what he found might tell us more about ourselves than we find comfortable.[i]
Hunter gatherer societies among humans are the most violent in the world, not city societies. According to Steven Pinker, Professor of Psychology at Harvard[ii], If you live as a hunter-gatherer in Papua New Guinea today then you have a more than one in six chance of dying at the hands of another man, as disputes erupt over territories. Studying current hunter-gatherer tribes, the percent of male adults who die in violence is extraordinary – from 20 to 60% of all males. Even during the violent 20th century, with two World Wars, less than 2% of males worldwide died in warfare.
The Ngogo group of Chimpanzees in the Kibale National Park are even more violent than Hunter-Gatherers. A chimpanzee is even more likely to die in violence between chimp and chimp.
Does the Chimpanzee society tell us that for humans to be violent is just a natural drive? There is another key finding of the University of Michigan study – that is that Chimpanzees do not fight alone. Like the tribes of Israel about whom we heard in our Torah portion today they maintain “complex, collaborative social networks – suggesting that only by bonding within groups can chimps engage in violence between such groups.”
John Mitani suggests that it may be that our ability to bond with strangers was forged originally by the demands of war – of fighting to defend or extend our territory. He also suggests that the “human tendency to coalesce around abstract concepts such as religion or nation, which underpins civilisation, may well be an evolutionary legacy of a violent past. After all this is what brings chimpanzees together and somehow to be able to communicate with each other enough to go on patrol and expand their territories with respect to other chimpanzee groups.”
In evolutionary terms the line leading to chimpanzees or to humans split 5 million years ago. Humans have continued to bond with strangers – look at us here in Synagogue. Humans have also continued to come together for a purpose – consider Judaism.
How did we leave the violent impulse behind? Indeed have we? In this week’s Sedra of Ekev Cantor Tamara and I started our portion with these chilling words beginning with the same Shema Yisrael that starts the prayer on the lips of every observant Jew twice a day:
“Hear, O Israel; You are to pass over the Jordan this day, to go in to possess nations greater and mightier than yourself, cities great and fortified up to heaven … Understand therefore this day, that the Lord your God is he who goes over before you; as a consuming fire he shall destroy them.[iii]”
These passages and others like them which we will hear in the coming weeks from the Book of Deuteronomy are not the direction which Judaism took in the millennia which followed. Whilst our founding ethos in the Torah is undoubtedly one of a people struggling like the Ngogo chimps to establish its territory with all the means at its disposal. Judaism developed away from this ethos. The Prophet Isaiah, whose words we hear today and for most of the Haftarot until Rosh Hashanah, told us that the Jewish dream was not of becoming great warriors but rather of peace – of a day when “swords shall be beaten into ploughshares and spears into pruning hooks.” [iv] When “They shall not hurt not destroy in all my holy mountain”[v].
Peace not strength became the greatest blessing. As Rabbi Simeon Bar Yohai said[vi] “Great is peace for all blessings and prayers Great is peace, for all benedictions and prayers conclude with [an invocation for] peace. In the case of the reading of Shema’, the prayers in that section of the service end with: “We praise You, O God, may your sheltering peace descend’; in the case of the Tefillah, the final prayer in that section of the service is , “We praise You, O God, the source of peace”; in the case of the Priestly Benediction, one concludes, “May God reach out to You in tenderness, and give you peace (Num. 6:26).”
The wars in commanded in the Torah – the fighting against the Jebusites, the Perrizites, Hitites and others were categorized by our Rabbis in the Mishnah[vii] – 2000 years ago as something entirely exceptional – milchemet mitzvah. Uniquely commanded wars- not to be repeated. As Rabbi Reuven Firestone writes, these Rabbis were suffering from the results of those who had started war in the Jewish revolt of 66ce and the Hadrianic revolt of 135CE, saying that they were doing so for a holy cause, both of which had devastating consequences for Jews and Judaism.
But there is a small section of the Jewish people who are trying to revive the idea that there can be a Jewish war which is a religious obligation.
The war–and it may now be accurately called a war between Israel and the Palestinians–is defined by many religiously observant settlers and their supporters as a divine obligation to reclaim the whole of the Land of Israel as either a prelude to or as actually part of the messianic awakening, basing themselves on a statement of Nachmanides from the 12th Century.[viii]
When they do this, Jewish warmongers are on the level of the Chimpanzees of the Ugandan National Park with disastrous consequences for the society around them – making it impossible for Israel to find the just and secure peace that we all need.
Today’s Jews in the Diaspora and Israel need to pursue that essential direction of Judaism towards peace – and away from violence. How should we do so?
Rabbi Rene Pfertzel, Rabbi of Maidenhead Synagogue, wrote this after witnessing the prevention of Rabbis Josh Levy and Charley Baginsky from delivering a Progressive Jewish message of hope for Israel at last Sunday’s ‘March for the Hostages’ (11/08/25), essentially with the same principles as espoused week by week in Tel Aviv’s hostage square, by the families of the hostages in Gaza.
He wrote that a positive Jewish future in Israel as in the diaspora has to follow Jewish and not tribal principles – these are five which he puts at the front of the work we have to do:
B’Tzelem Elohim bara oto (Genesis 1:27): Every person, created in the image of God, bears the divine image, a truth that anchors our ethics. To dehumanise Israelis, denying their grief or right to safety, is to erase this divine spark. To dehumanise Palestinians, ignoring their suffering or displacement, is equally a betrayal. In a crisis where rhetoric often vilifies one side, this principle of creation b’tzelem Elohim demands we recognise the humanity in both, rejecting language that reduces either to unworthy of human dignity. This principle, ignored when Rabbis Baginsky and Levy were booed off stage, calls us to hold both truths, however hard.
Lo Ta‘amod al Dam Re‘ekha (Leviticus 19:16): “Do not stand idly by the blood of your neighbour”. It compels us to act when lives are at stake. Jewish blood, spilt on 7 October, threatened by ongoing violence, demands our advocacy for safety and justice. Palestinian blood, shed in Gaza’s devastation and lost to settler violence, equally calls us to speak out. This principle challenges us: whose blood do we see? Whose suffering do we prioritise? It demands active engagement, not silence, to protect all lives as sacred, rejecting the binary that plays one side’s pain against the other’s.
Emet u’ Misphat Shalom (Zechariah 8:16): Truth and peace must go hand in hand. Speaking truth means naming the abomination of 7 October and the devastation in Gaza without hesitation. Yet truth alone can wound if not paired with a pursuit of peace. This principle asks: How do we speak harsh truths without fuelling hatred? It calls us to foster dialogue that seeks shalom, not a distant ideal, but a commitment to reducing harm and building understanding.
Mishpat va-Chesed (Micah 6:8): Justice (mishpat) and compassion (chesed) must balance security and mercy. Israel’s need for self-defence is undeniable, rooted in our history of survival. Yet compassion requires us to consider the cost of that security on innocent lives in Gaza and beyond. This principle challenges us: how do we protect our people without losing our humanity? It calls for actions that uphold justice whilst extending mercy to the stranger, challenging the binary view that equates criticism with disloyalty.
Teshuvah (Yoma 86b): Repentance is the path of growth, requiring us to correct our errors openly. In this crisis, we may err by speaking too harshly, overlooking a perspective, or failing to act. Teshuvah asks: where have I fallen short? It demands public accountability to rebuild trust and align our community with our values. After incidents like the London rally, where division overshadowed unity, this principle calls us to reflect and recommit to a Judaism that embraces complexity and compassion.[ix]
We must raise ourselves and help to raise Israel so that in her peace we too will have peace. And we must not be scared to call those who try to build Israel through caring nothing for the needs of her non-Jewish citizens and neighbours effectively destructive to Zionism. For their version of Zionism will just send us on a path of unending violence.
[i] Study from Current Biology quoted in The Economist, June 26th 2010
[ii] Steven Pinker Ted Talks – A History of Violence 2007
[iii] Deuteronomy 9
[iv] Isaiah 2:2
[v] Isaiah 11:9
[vi] Leviticus Rabbah 9:9
[vii] Mishnah Sotah 8:7
[viii] in his gloss on Maimonides’ Book of Commandments (positive commandment 4), who teaches that the conquest and settlement of the Land of Israel lies in the category of obligatory war (milhemet mitzvah). “It is a positive commandment for all generations obligating every individual, even during the period of exile.”
[ix] Accessed on 15/08/25 https://rabbirenepfertzel.co.uk/2025/08/14/neither-side-nor-silence-a-rabbinic-ethic-in-a-time-of-moral-crisis/?fbclid=IwY2xjawMNF5BleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHtmfb3Q8v92ilVul5fpD5iiyBvgagK51AOq_1AdtbYlC6N1Y93jCWMcmKMEN_aem_XrkeEaX3EgHYbp2Y3O2TZQ
