Thoughts on the Fall of Kabul

[joshuazelinsky]

 During the ongoing COVID crisis, my family has been doing Zoom meetings on Saturday nights with Havdalah, the Jewish ritual ending the Shabbat. For most of those weeks, I, and occasionally other family members have shared thoughts about that week's Torah portion in an email with the Zoom link.  This week, I sent out that email early, and am including a slightly modified version of what I wrote for public consumption here. 

 

This week's Torah portion is Ki Teitzei, כִּי־תֵצֵא . The portion includes a broad variety of civil laws and related commandments. Two areas of note are the laws of war and laws of how to treat laborers.

 

The section on the laws of war, unlike the section in the previous portion concerning not doing environmental damage during war, is by modern standards at best antiquated and, to be blunt, repugnant. However, in the context when it was written, it seems there is an attempt to at least add some small amount of morality around  horrific practices.

 

The laws concerning laborers are easier for us moderns to sympathize and agree with. This week includes a commandment for the prompt payment of wages for labor. If one hires a person for a day, the wages must be paid that day, before sundown.   While the later Rabbis did allow for people to pay employees weekly or monthly, for example, they strongly endorsed the central message about paying wages on time.

 

Both of these notions together are particularly and sadly relevant as I write this. The United States employed hundreds, if not thousands of Afghans. And Afghanistan has fallen. We are doing little to help these people who are facing likely retribution at the hands of the Taliban. From both a perspective of ethical warfare, and a perspective of prompt compensation for those who worked for you, there is an obligation to help these people, to help get them out of Afghanistan and resettle them. One does not need the guidance of this week's Torah portion to see both the moral and pragmatic benefits to assisting these people who helped the US so much.

 

There is also a personally important aspect here. My grandfather Jakob Dronski  helped the Allies during World War II and its aftermath. Aaron has a letter he keeps on his desk, written by a member of the US military, testifying to Jakob Dronski's assistance, which he used to gain entry to the US, and eventual citizenship. At least at one point, the US seemed to know how to meet its moral obligations.

 

Unfortunately, the US government is doing little now, and what it is doing is slow. While the US federal government seems to be right now sadly lacking in support there are steps we as individuals can take. I have made a donation to Keeping Our Promise https://www.keepingourpromise.org/  which works to help resettle allies of the US from war-torn areas. They are right now focused on assisting people from Afghanistan.  Kabul has fallen, and it is past sundown of the day of that fall. If anything this makes our obligation all the more pressing. I encourage everyone to donate to Keeping Our Promise or similar groups.