The One Word That Defines the Jewish People

The Jewish People have always wanted peace. We just refuse to die for it.

photo: Matthew L/Unsplash

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If you had to pick just one word to describe the Jewish People — our values, our story, our mission in the world — it would be shalom.

Shalom means peace.

It’s how we say hello. It’s how we say goodbye. It’s how we bless, how we pray, how we dream.

But this isn’t just semantics; it’s history.

Long before peace became a bumper sticker slogan or a pageant answer, the ancient Hebrews — the ancestors of today’s Jewish People — were among the first civilizations in human history to promote the idea of universal peace as a divine ideal.

In a brutal world of conquest, slavery, and tribal warfare, this tiny people emerged with radical ideas: that every human being was created b’tzelem Elohim (in the image of God). That war should never be glorified. That peace is not weakness; peace is holiness.

“Seek peace and pursue it,” according to the Book of Psalms. “Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall beat their swords into plowshares,” said the prophet Isaiah. And there’s plenty more:

• “Great is peace, for even in times of war, peace is the desired outcome.” (Deuteronomy Rabbah 5:15)

• “The entire Torah is for the sake of the ways of peace.” (Kol haTorah k’ula l’shem darchei shalom) (Talmud Bavli, Gittin 59b)

• “The world endures only for the sake of peace.” (Tanna D’vei Eliyahu Rabba 13)

• “God did not find a vessel to contain blessing for Israel other than peace.” (Talmud Uktzin 3:12)

Even then, it wasn’t just ancient prophets dreaming of peace. It wasn’t just the sages of the Talmud crafting lofty ideals. It was the builders of modern Israel themselves.

The early Zionist pioneers — the kibbutzniks, farmers and socialists who drained the swamps and tilled the rocky soil of the Galilee and Negev — were obsessed with peace.

They didn’t arrive in the Land of Israel looking to conquer anyone. They came to revive Jewish life after some 2,000 years in exile, to build an egalitarian society, to farm, to sing songs around the campfire, to build a workers’ utopia.

Their heroes weren’t warriors. Their heroes were poets, teachers, agronomists, and philosophers. They planted trees, dug wells, and raised barns — not walls.

Many of them refused to carry weapons for years, even as violence from angry Arab mobs rose around them. They believed, sometimes naively, that their peaceful intentions would shield them.

A famous Israeli folk song from the early kibbutz movement captured the soul of this generation:

“We come not with weapons of war,
But with plowshares and labor.
We come to build and to be built.”

Their dream was simple and impossibly beautiful: that the Jewish People could return to their ancestral homeland after being endlessly persecuted across Europe and the Middle East.

But history had other plans.

The Arab rejection of any Jewish presence in our indigenous homeland — no matter how peaceful, no matter how small — shattered that dream again and again.

When Jewish villages were attacked, when unarmed kibbutzim¹ were raided, when families were massacred in Hebron and elsewhere, even the most idealistic pioneers understood what the ancient rabbis had long known: Peace is the ideal, but defense is the necessity.

As Golda Meir, the prime minister of Israel from 1969 to 1974, once said with heartbreaking clarity:

“We can forgive the Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill theirs.”

And since then, nothing has changed. Most Israelis today — from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, from Haifa to Be’er Sheva — want peace. They want quiet mornings. Safe schools. Late-night cafés. Beach sunsets without sirens. They want what every normal human being wants: to live.

But they are not fools. Israelis have learned, time and again, that peace cannot be built on fantasy. Not when Hamas rules Gaza with genocidal ambitions. Not when Hezbollah arms itself in Lebanon with Iranian rockets. Not when the chant from Tehran to London is “From the River to the Sea” — anything but a declaration for coexistence, and really a call for the annihilation of the world’s only Jewish state.

Israelis know peace requires partners, not predators. They know peace requires security, not slogans. They know peace requires truth, not delusion. As the Babylonian Talmud instructs us: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.”²

This isn’t a catchphrase. It’s Jewish law.

Known as din rodef — the law of the pursuer — this principle teaches that when someone is actively trying to kill another person, it is not just morally permissible but morally required to stop them. Even if that means preemptive force. Even if that means killing them first.

This is not about revenge. This is not about savagery. This is about pikuach nefesh (the preservation of human life), one of the highest commandments in all of Judaism, overriding almost every other religious law.

The Jewish obsession with peace does not mean passivity. It means doing everything possible to avoid violence, until violence becomes unavoidable. And then, when forced to choose between life and death, between victimhood and survival, Judaism is very clear: Choose life.

Modern Israel has had to live this tension more visibly than any Jewish community in history. A nation built on dreams of peace … forced to become a master of war.

Since its founding, Israel has adopted the din rodef principle as a matter of national survival. Preemptive self-defense is not a luxury when you live in a neighborhood where your enemies habitually call for your extermination.

This principle has shaped Israeli military strategy — targeted assassinations of terrorists, preemptive strikes on nuclear facilities, eliminating Hamas commanders, intercepting weapons convoys from Iran.

As Israeli journalist Ronen Bergman documented in his book, “Rise and Kill First,” Israel has likely carried out more targeted assassinations than any country in the Western world — not out of bloodlust, but out of necessity.

“If you are an enemy of Israel,” Bergman wrote, “we will find you.”

In the past few months alone, Israel has eliminated more terrorists from the U.S. most-wanted lists than the United States managed to neutralize in the last two decades.

This is not bravado; it is survival strategy, born from a tradition that prizes peace above all, but understands that peace without defense is not peace at all.

Critics, of course, object. They argue about proportionality, about ethics, about the risk of blurring the line between defense and aggression. But what critics often miss is that this Jewish philosophy, this Israeli strategy, is not rooted in a love of violence. It is rooted in a love of life.

This vision has shaped Jewish life for thousands of years — not just as wishful thinking, but as civilizational DNA. It’s why to this day, in every Jewish prayer service around the world, the final blessing is the same: oseh shalom bimromav — May the One who makes peace in the heavens bring peace upon us and upon all Israel.

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Of course, peace is not the whole story.

The Jews, like every nation, have had their violent chapters. The Sicarii rebels in Roman-occupied Judea, famous for their dagger assassinations. The Maccabees, who led a guerrilla war for religious freedom. Modern Israel, born in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has fought multiple wars to survive.

But here’s the difference: Violence was never the Jewish ideal. It was never the goal. It was never what we, the Jewish People, aspired to.

Israel did not become militarized because it wanted to be Sparta. Israel became militarized because the Jewish People — stateless and hunted for centuries — learned the hard way that peace without defense is suicide.

The world often forgets this. They accuse Israel of warmongering while ignoring 3,000 years of Jewish teachings on peace. They demand Jewish passivity while turning a blind eye to Jewish graves and hostages.

And then came October 7, 2023.

That day was not a surprise to those who understand Jewish history. It was a brutal reminder of what happens when Jews trust in the world’s promises of peace while lowering their guard. Palestinian terrorists didn’t just attack soldiers; they slaughtered babies, raped women, burned families alive. It wasn’t a war. It was an Islamist pogrom.

And yet, despite the unbearable grief, despite the calls for vengeance, Israel’s response was not indiscriminate rage. It was targeted war against a genocidal terror regime — not out of hatred for Palestinians, but out of love for life, for security, for the possibility that one day, there might actually be peace.

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This is what so many armchair critics of Israel will never understand.

Jews are not perfect. Israel is not perfect. But we are a people who never stopped believing in peace — even when history made it virtually impossible.

We say shalom when we meet because we hope every encounter is a peaceful one. We say shalom when we part because we hope our journey forward is safe. We pray for peace not because it is easy, but because it is sacred.

As the prophet Isaiah declared, envisioning a world redeemed:

“And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb… they shall not hurt nor destroy in all My holy mountain, for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” (Isaiah 11:6–9)

And if history has forced us to fight for our survival, so be it.

But never mistake Jewish strength for Jewish cruelty. Never mistake Jewish defense for Jewish aggression. And never forget that behind every Israeli soldier, behind every Jewish prayer, behind every hard-earned breath of freedom, there is still the same ancient word, still the same ancient hope: Shalom.

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1. Plural for kibbutz

2. Sanhedrin 72a