The call of memory, the call to memory, reaches us from the very dawn of history. No commandment figures so frequently, so insistently, in the Bible. It is incumbent upon us to remember the good we have received, and the evil we have suffered. New Year's Day, Rash Hashana , is also called Yom Hazikaron , the day of memory. Thus, the rejection of memory becomes a divine curse, one that would doom us to repeat past disasters, past wars.
Nothing provokes so much horror and opposition within the Jewish tradition as war.
Our abhorrence of war is reflected in the paucity of our literature of warfare. After all, God created the Torah to do away with iniquity, to do away with war. Of course some wars may have been necessary or inevitable, but none was ever regarded as holy. For us, a holy war is a contradiction in terms. War dehumanizes, war diminishes, war debases all those who wage it.