LIVING, NOT DYING

(For the SoundCloud audio, scroll down)

Iran’s increasingly reckless attacks across the Middle East have reached a new level. This week, debris from an Iranian missile struck the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem’s Old City, just yards from the Al-Aqsa Mosque—Islam’s third holiest site.

The assumption was that this proximity would protect Christianity’s holiest site. Instead, the incident highlights a disturbing shift: Iran’s hostility toward Israel now seems to include a disregard for the holy sites of other faiths, and even Islamic holy sites.

The same disregard is evident elsewhere. In the Arab town of Beit Awwa near Hebron, a makeshift beauty parlor — a converted caravan — was filled with women preparing to celebrate the end of Ramadan. It was reduced to rubble by an Iranian missile, and three women were killed. So much for solidarity with the Palestinians.

Meanwhile, missiles continue to streak across the Gulf, slamming into energy infrastructure in Qatar, Kuwait, and Saudi Arabia. Gas fields are burning, refineries are ablaze, and the Strait of Hormuz is effectively impassable.

Oil prices are surging, sending shockwaves through the global economy. And behind it all, the Iranian regime — now increasingly opaque, guided by shadowy figures claiming to act in the name of both nation and God — promises “zero restraint.”

This, despite the fact that Iran itself is already teetering on the brink. Its economy is shattered, its infrastructure is battered, and its leadership has been irreparably weakened by targeted assasinations and sustained military pressure from the United States and Israel.

And yet, they fight on. At a certain point, this stops looking like strategy and looks like something else entirely. Wars are usually fought for territory, security, economic gains, or – pointedly – for survival.

Even brutal wars tend to follow a basic logic: preserve what you have, weaken your enemy, and live to fight another day. Even when nations act ruthlessly, they are still, at some level, trying to ensure that there is a tomorrow. But what we are witnessing now feels different.

When a government targets global energy infrastructure, knowing it could cripple entire economies — including its own — when it risks sacred sites and civilian lives while claiming religious legitimacy, you have to ask: what is the endgame? What if survival is no longer the primary goal? What if the objective is something else entirely — something closer to sacrifice than strategy?

Not all Iranians share this trajectory. Voices like Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi — along with many Iranians inside and outside the country — have long argued for a future defined by stability and openness, the very opposite of the path the current regime seems determined to pursue.

There is a dangerous idea that surfaces from time to time in human history — often cloaked in religious language — that elevates destruction, even self-destruction, into an act of devotion. Not everywhere, and not in every interpretation.

But in certain ideological strands, including within the worldview of Iran’s ruling elite, conflict and chaos are more than political tools. They are seen as redemptive — even apocalyptic. And once you start thinking that way, the line between serving God and sacrificing everything — your people, your future — begins to blur.

We’ve seen this before. Movements like these stop trying to build anything lasting; instead, they become intoxicated by their own vision: an idealized world that must either be realized in full or swept away entirely. The present moment becomes everything. The aftermath is an afterthought.

All this makes the third book of the Torah, Sefer Vayikra, all the more striking. On the surface, Vayikra reads like a manual of ritual sacrifice. Animals and birds are brought to the altar, slaughtered, their blood sprinkled, their lives offered back to God.

It is easy — almost instinctive — to see it as a theology of death. But that is a profound misunderstanding. The sacrificial system was never meant to glorify death. Quite the opposite. As Maimonides explains, its purpose was to transform the living.

A sacrifice is not about annihilation – it is about encounter. The Torah’s word for it is korban, from the root meaning to ‘draw close.’ It is about proximity — kirvah — about narrowing the distance between human beings and God.

The ritual sacrifice experience was meant to be unsettling – to shake a person out of complacency and force a confrontation with the fragility of life and the weight of existence. After that, a person would walk away changed. The animal remains behind, but the human being surges ahead.

Yes, there are moments in Jewish history when one is called to give up life for Kiddush Hashem. Those moments are real and sacred. But Judaism never built its identity around dying for God—or destroying in His name. Instead, the Jewish people built a civilization around living for Him.

Dying for God is a single, dramatic act. Living for God is relentless. It means waking up every day and choosing discipline over impulse, responsibility over instinct, and purpose over comfort. It means biting your tongue instead of lashing out, acting with integrity when no one is watching, and showing up—again and again—long after inspiration fades.

It means sustaining a relationship not through intensity but through the quiet consistency of daily life. And that, as anyone who has tried it knows, is far harder. Grand gestures are easy. Consistency is exhausting.

That is why Vayikra is not just a book about sacrifices. It is the Torah’s handbook for sustained holiness. As it tells us, clearly (Lev. 19:2): קדושים תהיו—you shall be holy. Not just once, for show, or to make a point. Not only in a moment of crisis. And certainly not in a surge of religious passion.

Holiness, in the Torah’s vision, is continuous. Like the Shema, recited quietly every morning and every night, it is about keeping the connection alive. Like acts of charity, given not as a one-off gesture but whenever they are needed.

Relationships — real ones — are not built on intensity or bursts of devotion that fade quickly. They are built on constancy. Anyone can make a grand gesture. Maintaining a relationship — with another person or with God — demands something far more difficult: presence, patience, and persistence.

That is what makes the current moment so unsettling. When a regime that claims to represent God’s will begins to romanticize destruction — even self-destruction — and escalation becomes an end in itself, chaos is embraced rather than avoided. It reveals a worldview where dying for God has eclipsed living for Him.

Judaism rejects that idea at its core. God does not ask us to destroy the world in His name. He asks us to build it, and to build within it. In particular, He asks us to build in a way that will endure beyond us. To create families and nurture them. To form communities and care for them. To pursue justice, even for those with whom we disagree. Above all, He asks us to take a flawed, imperfect world and elevate it — not to burn it down, but to engage with it.

The altar in Vayikra was never meant to be a destination. It is a starting point. It is a place where a person confronts what could be lost — and then recommits to what must be lived. It reminds us that what God truly wants is not the life that ends in sacrifice, but the life that continues — day after day — in relationship, in responsibility, and in quiet, stubborn faithfulness.

The real test of faith is not whether you are willing to die for God. It is whether you are willing to live for Him.

Image: fragments of an Iranian missile on a rooftop adjacent to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem on March 16, 2026. | Credit: Government of Israel, Ministry of Foreign Affairs.