Here comes a New Year, Rosh Hashanah 5772. The Torah calls Rosh Hashanah “yom t’ruah” — the day of the Shofar call. A sound we look forward to all year long.

For all my readers, I hope and pray that this will be a good year.

Whatever High Holiday services you attend, you will hear some classic passages from the Torah. Of all of them, I believe the Akeyda – the story of the sacrifice of Isaac — is the most dramatic. We see our father Abraham tested. We watch him pass the test. We dread the moment when Isaac could lose his life. And then we hear the Voice from on high stopping Abraham when he is holding the knife in his hand. “Do not put your hand on the boy, do nothing to him!”

What about Isaac? Can we imagine the thoughts going through his mind as his father binds him on the altar, on top of the firewood?

The Torah gives us an inkling of the depth of Isaac’s faith. When they first arrive at Mount Moriah, they dismount from their donkeys. Abraham takes the firewood and puts it on Isaac’s shoulder while he carries the flame and the knife. “And the two of them walked together.”

On the way, Isaac asks where is the lamb for the offering — he sees all the other requirements but no animal to sacrifice. Abraham cannot give him a straight answer, so he just says “G0d will provide the lamb.” And again we read, “The two of them walked together.”

That refrain is profound. No more needs to be said between them. The two of them walk together in silence. The Torah narrative does not say as much, but the fact that Isaac does not pursue the point, added to Abraham’s putting him off, tells us that Isaac knows the real answer. What’s more, he accepts it. Human sacrifice was common in his time, and young Isaac fully expects to give up his life for G0d, and probably to receive some mysterious eternal reward for his self-sacrifice. He walked with his father; he felt his father’s feelings. He shares them. Yes, the two of them walked together, on a grim and fatal errand.

But Isaac is spared. He lives to propagate a race that still looks back to him as ending the heathen practice of parents committing sacred murder of their children. When Abraham is stopped, he looks around and sees a ram caught in a thicket by his horns. In gratitude for his son’s life, he grabs the ram and offers it as a sacrifice instead of Isaac.

So the ram caught by his horns becomes a symbol of freedom from human sacrifice. And the horn that caught that ram becomes our shofar. Our prayerbook calls us to “blow the great shofar for our freedom!” The

New Year should find parents and children joined in the happy experience of “Yom T’ruah,” the day of the shofar call, the call to freedom, the call to family unity and trust.

Have a Shanah Tovah, a really good year.

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This week’s Torah reading in Deuteronomy 21-25 starts with the words Kee Tey-tzey – “When you go out.”

 In the course of the Sedrah we find many different laws, dealing with situations as different as family discipline, punishment of crime, and treatment of animals. Truly a summary of standards for human behavior. Any and all of them are worth discussing.

But this time around, let’s just consider the rest of the first sentence quoted above: “When you go out to war against your enemies…” Notice that nowhere does the Torah say that you must make war, nor does it forbid war. It does not even say “IF you go out to war.” Just “when.” War happens. It is a grim fact of human life. What the Torah does tell us is how we should conduct ourselves in war.

The first category occurred just once. It was Joshua’s war to conquer the Land of Israel. The second category consists of wars of self-defense against an attacking enemy, and can be fought against an immediate danger or a distant danger — as in preemptive strikes. As to the third category, the Talmud confines it to the wars David and Solomon waged to expand their kingdoms. In all such military action, the Torah sets up definite rules for who serves and how, including deferments and exemptions. It also sets standards, in this very Sedrah, for the army camp. “Keep a spade with your weapons… cover up your waste.” That’s right, they dug latrines. The camp had to be clean ritually as well as physically, because the Divine spirit accompanied the Jewish fighters.

Here we also learn about treatment of prisoners. A conquering army of Israelites was not released to rape and plunder. In fact, this very section sets up specific rules for how a victorious soldier is to treat a female POW. “If you see among the prisoners a beautiful woman, and you desire her, you can take her for a wife.” Not a concubine. Not a “one-night stand.” A wife. But first you have to give her a month to mourn her parents. That includes shaving off her hair, pairing her fingernails, putting away the fancy clothes in which she was captured, and presumably wearing sackcloth. All of which cannot increase her sex appeal, of course. Then, at the end of the month, the soldier can take possession of her. But after that if he no longer wants her, he must release her. He may not sell her as a slave. “You may not exploit her, because you have humbled her.”

Hardly Attila’s rules of warfare. Or Assad’s.

Our world still does not know how to prevent war. Perhaps we never will. But we can learn some great lessons about wartime conduct from the Torah.

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