Of heroes and wars
The first chapter of The Lord of the Rings starts piano piano. Like many epics, it starts by telling us about the genealogy of the hero. Who is the main character, and where does he come from?
Anyone who knows a little bit about the story knows it starts with Frodo, a hobbit, a tiny creature with a surprising strong will, who will save the day against all odds. Nothing too surprising here: this is the archetype of many such stories.
Narrating the story of a war by following one (or a few) characters is also almost required by the very art form of storytelling. Stories focus on individuals. They create characters we can identify with, characters who become our proxies in the universe they go explore.
But anyone who has lived through a war, or even studied wars in an academic context, knows that wars are not centered on individuals. They are collective events. Wars unify the many into one and create a reality where masses clash against each other. It’s Germany against France, it’s the Americans against the British, it’s the Roman Empire against the Kingdom of Judea.
In wars, individuals are almost nothing. Only a few know; most people are left in the fog of war. Only a few decide; most people follow order, whether they are military or civilians. Only a few will be remembered; most people will remain anonymous.
There is room for some individuals: for the generals, for the leaders, for the heroes and the villains. But they are secondary; they are subordinated to the collective dimension, to this dimension that takes over and agitates violence and wreckage. And they are part of a larger game, a game that completely overwhelms them, and on which they have little grip.
When one knows this, all the stories about heroes in times of war become strange. They are nice stories of epic adventures, but they seem almost wrong. What, the acts of just a few isolated individuals are going to decide the outcome of a war? After two world wars, this seems like a very naïve view.
So reading The Lord of the Rings in times of war, we may think: is it really going to tell us something about our experience?
Tolkien lived through two world wars; he was not naïve. He saw firsthand this compression of the individual. And yet, he chooses to start with this, with the account of the family of Frodo, the halfling who is going to bear the ring until the end of the world.
Here, I need to stop for a little while to tell a story that, apparently, has no link to our topic.
In the 19th century, there was a great Rabbi, in Marocco, by the name of Yaakov Abuhatzeira. He decided to go to erets Israel, but died on its way there, in Egypt. His disciples tried to have him buried in the land of Israel, but many obstacles stopped them, and, in the end, he was buried in Damanhur, not far from Alexandria.
A few decades later, During World War II, erets Israel was under British occupation. German troops had taken over Libya and were fighting in Egypt; the outcome of this series of battles would be extremely important for the war as a whole and for the future of the Jewish people. If the Germans were to enter erets Israel, they would be in a completely different strategic position.
In Jerusalem, lived at that time a great Rabbi, Rabbi Itzhaq Alfaya, who was from Alep. In the year of 1942, he dreamed about a man, a great tzadik, who came visit him and seemed very surprised. The great tzaddik asked: “you keep praying on the tombs of tzadikim, but you don’t pray on mine?” Rabbi Alfaya replied that he would be happy to go and pray there, but that he didn’t know who the man was and where he was buried. The man revealed himself to be Rabbi Abuhatzeira, who was buried in the Nile Delta, in Damanhur.
Rabbi Alfaya went to see the British man in charge of governing Jerusalem. Against all odds, he was received. He explained that he had to go to Cairo and was granted a permit to travel by military train. After a long trip, he finally reached his destination, only to discover that the tomb of Rabbi Abuhatzeira has been destroyed and that the sefer Torah that was there had been desecrated. In spite of this, Rabbi Alfaya went to the site with a few Jews from Cairo, while the battles were raging in the area, and they started praying there, day in, and day out.
After a few days, they heard that the British troops had won a great victory: the German troops were barred from pursuing their route towards erets Israel. They were defeated about one hundred miles away from Damanhur, at El Alamein, the battle that modern historians consider the decisive moment of the war. (Churchill: “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat”).
Chances are that you have never heard this story before. It seems like the footnote of a footnote, a strange story lost in a sea of facts and figures and maneuvers.
But a few hundred years from now, if someone writes an epic story of these times, starting this specific chapter with the story of Rabbi Alfaya and his dream may be a very powerful way to tell the story. Not only because it makes it more personal, but because it shows one of the layers at work in this type of war: its spiritual dimension. Tanks, and bombs, and planes, and missiles, are only the external aspect of the conflict. In a deeper way, in a more discreet way, there is a spiritual component: a battle for meaning, for truth, and for justice.
It is in this dimension that the individual can shine. It is the field that, in a sense, really matters, where bold acts can snowball and make a difference everywhere else. Where a seemingly impossible trip to the tomb of a tzadik may be remembered decades later.
This is why The Lord of the Rings starts with Frodo. His action is very small. He takes a piece of metal, carries it with him on a long trek, and destroys it. The end. It seems almost farcical, and yet it is the most important action of the war. Without this spiritual quest, without this meaningful act, everything else would be meaningless. What would they fight for, if evil was not pushed away from this world? Hundreds of thousands of deaths for what? For a few years of respite? To push back a force that would come back to haunt the next generation?
And yet, destroying the ring is not enough: the rest must also happen. The soldiers must fight, the battles must be carried out, the king must return. Politics needs to play its part. It is not just a spiritual war; but without its spiritual dimension, the war cannot be really won.
And so the story of this long war starts with one person, one hero who doesn’t know who he is yet and what he is capable of, and the stories of where he comes from. Because of the exceptional act he will do, we want to hear everything about him. Frodo Baggins, son of Drogo Baggins and Primula Brandybuck. Let the curtain rise.