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Good shabis. When parents give their child a name, they are giving a gift of a connection to generations past, but also an aspirational blessing for the future. My parents blessed me with the name Aharon Shalom. Peace is literally my middle name. My first name is Aharon, after my great-grandfather, and also after the biblical Aharon. I know many of you and most people in the world, including my parents, call me Ari. That's my nickname. The name on my New Jersey driver's license, my United States passport, my W-2 is Aaron. Because my parents were moved by the teaching of our tradition that Aaron, the high priest, the first Kohain, was an Ohev Shalom Virod Shalom, a lover of peace and a pursuer of peace, loving all people and bringing them closer to the Torah, say our rabbis. And they wanted me to live up to that aspiration. I try in my conduct to do just that. And I'm grateful to my parents for this gift. Peace is at the center of everything we do. We conclude every prayer in Judaism with a prayer for peace. Oseh, Shalom Bim Rmav. One of God's names indeed is Shalom, is peace. So it's with a bit of cognitive dissonance and discomfort that we read the lines of the opening of Parshat Bimidbar, and we encounter a paradox which is at the center of the census that we read about this morning. We are organizing for war. Make no mistake about it. The Torah commands: count every male able to bear arms, organize everyone in a military formation to march through the desert on the way to the conquest of the land of Israel, every person on his standard and his banner, ready to march, ready to move forward, ready to bear arms. And yet, as we read this morning, the Torah excludes the Leviim from the census. The Levitical priests were not counted in the military census. Ah et Matelevi Lotifkod, Hafked et Alvi'im Al-Mishkan Haidut. Don't count the Levi'im for this purpose. Put them in charge of my home, says God, of the tabernacle. The Leviim, it seems, have a higher calling than the important and necessary function of mobilizing for war. They are in charge of caring for the sacred space. Ramban Nachmanides points out that the Levites were not counted as part of the military force because they were to camp on the inside of the encampment around the tabernacle in the heart of the Israelite camp. Their job was to keep the religious space, the sacred space, and the two functions are considered incompatible. It seems, according to this reading, that there is something that doesn't jive between service of God in the holy space and the task of defending the nation. Neither is sufficient alone. The Levites, of course, can't do their work without the rest of the nation protecting them and keeping them safe. And yet, in order to come near to God and make it possible for God to dwell among us, the people doing the work cannot be engaged in military conquest. They cannot have blood on their hands. At least not the blood of war, that is. Think about the famous instruction or pronouncement about King David, that he could not build the temple in Jerusalem because he had blood on his hands. It would fall to Shlomo, Solomon, a king whose name was Shalom, peace, to perform that task. And therein lies the tension that so many of us have felt as Jews from the time of the Torah and until now. War, violence is antithetical to our vision of holiness. And yet, it is a necessary function to protect our people. There is no spiritual pursuit without a body intact. And so forevermore, leaders of our people have done what they needed to do to protect us by fighting wars, defending our nation with violence if necessary, but always reluctantly, never reveling in the violence, never beating our chest, never beating the drumbeat of war. Always looking over our shoulders at the Levites, as the Kohanim, who are calling us to a higher purpose, to a more peaceful purpose. Kings who wanted to conquer and expand the nation had to answer to prophets who reminded them of our moral foundation, who reminded them that Zion will be redeemed through justice, not by might, not by power, but by my spirit alone, says the Lord of hosts. Now the New Testament teaches that if a person slaps you on one cheek, you should turn the other cheek and let them hit you again. By the way, Christianity does not always have the greatest track record of living up to that teaching. But nevertheless, that's not the way Jews talk. Jews don't say turn the other cheek. Jewish tradition teaches that if an enemy rises up to kill you, kill him first. We have a right and even a responsibility to defend ourselves, to protect ourselves. But we never glorify violence. We never indulge it. We know that violence and power can be an all-consuming fire. We know that it keeps us separate from our vision of holiness even as we recognize its necessity. When you think of American fighters, you think of big, strong men, you think of John Wayne and Rambo. Yes, sir, mission accomplished, sir. Rock and roll, lock and loaded. But the Jewish idea of a soldier is different. It's Khanasenesh, who's a poet and a warrior. It's King David, who is a small shepherd, who uses his smarts and technology to defeat the brute and avoid as much violence as possible to save the nation. It's any number of Israeli leaders who I've always admired for being soft-spoken, reluctant warriors who will fight and fight well if they have to, but who believe in the purity of arms and abide by a deep moral code that distinguishes them from among all other nations. Now that is who we are. That is who we aspire to be. In America, we might talk about being either a hawk or a dove. But I think Jews are a different kind of bird. And as I was trying to think of a good example of which bird it was, I thought about an owl. Usually associated with wisdom, they sit contemplatively. Some say the world will never accept us no matter how morally we behave, so we don't owe anybody anything. They hate us, and so it's okay to hate. They pick on us, so it's okay to pick on them. This is wrong thinking. It's dangerous. It's dangerous. And those who would say that it's naive to act with restraint, I would ask, where has acting without restraint gotten us? Jews abide by a moral code, not because we seek the acceptance or the approval of the rest of the world. If you're waiting for that, you'll be waiting for a really long time. But we abide by a moral code because of our vision of holiness and purity. We do it because it's the right thing to do. And to give in to that urge for violence and retribution is a failure of our mission and our calling as a people. We are a people that protect that which is sacred. But always with an eye and a heart towards peace. Now, most of us in this room are not soldiers, at least not now. Some of us may have been. Not me. My middle name is Peace. We may know some soldiers, but I think Parshat Bamidbar offers us all an opportunity to consider how the balance of these two important moral impulses coexist in tension with each other. The need for readiness and military might on one hand, and the core belief in peace and nonviolence at the center and the heart of Jewish life. I'm not here to reconcile that tension. I'm here to lift it up as a core tension that exists within our sacred Torah and I hope exists within each of us. You see, peace starts with me. How can I be an agent of peace this week? Kohela tells us there's a time for war and there's a time for peace. Be ready and prepared for the former, but love and pursue the latter. And may God give us the wisdom and strength to bring holiness into the world through our actions in the days and weeks ahead. Shabbat shalom.