The Sacred Dance of War and Peace

I stood among the guests at my cousin’s wedding as the sun dipped below the horizon, watching the chuppah (wedding canopy) stand silhouetted against the amber Israeli sky. Young men in uniform mingled with guests, their rifles slung across their shoulders. Yesterday, they were stationed in hostile territory. Tonight they will dance at their friend’s wedding. Tomorrow they would return to their posts, standing guard while their nation carries on with ordinary life. This jarring juxtaposition—soldiers celebrating love while carrying instruments of war—might seem contradictory to those who view conflict and peace as opposing forces.

Watching these young warriors celebrate the union of two souls, seeing the bride and groom standing beneath that sacred chuppah, a troubling question emerges: How can the same hands that grip a rifle in defense of the homeland also hold a wine glass in celebration of new life? How do we reconcile the apparent contradiction between the violence necessary to preserve our people and the joy we seek to protect?

The Bible offers a startling answer through the prophet Isaiah’s messianic vision:

This verse, carved into monuments and quoted by peace activists worldwide, seems to suggest that war and peace exist in eternal opposition. Yet the Hebrew text reveals a more complex truth.

The verse talks about pounding or hammering metal into a new shape. The prophet describes a process of transformation, not elimination. The sword doesn’t disappear—it becomes something else entirely. The spear doesn’t vanish—it serves a different purpose. This transformation requires the original tool to exist first. You cannot beat swords into plowshares without first having swords.

The young soldiers who danced at the wedding understand something that ivory-tower philosophers often miss: peace isn’t the absence of conflict but the presence of justice protected by strength. The rifles on their shoulders don’t contradict the joy in their hearts—it makes that joy possible.

The Bible demonstrates this truth repeatedly. King David, the sweet singer of Israel who composed the most beautiful psalms of longing for God, was also a warrior who conquered Jerusalem and established Israel’s borders. The same hands that strummed the harp also wielded the sword. The same heart that poured out devotional poetry also strategized military campaigns. David wasn’t living a contradiction—he was fulfilling his complete calling.

David’s military victories weren’t separate from his spiritual accomplishments but foundational to them. Without securing the land, there could be no Temple. Without defeating Israel’s enemies, there could be no peace in which to serve God properly. David’s wars weren’t obstacles to holiness—they were prerequisites for it.

This understanding transforms our perspective on those young soldiers at the wedding. They weren’t abandoning their military duties to celebrate—they were demonstrating exactly what they fight to preserve.

The tradition of breaking a glass at Jewish weddings reinforces this connection between joy and remembrance of conflict. The broken glass itself represents the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Even in our greatest moments of personal happiness, we remember that our national redemption remains incomplete. We remember that somewhere, soldiers still have to stand guard so that weddings can continue.

Yet the broken glass also points toward something else. The Sages taught that the destruction contained within it the seeds of rebuilding. The Temple will be reconstructed, they promised, and when that day comes, the same energy that now goes into defending our people will be channeled into serving God in perfect peace. The soldier’s rifle will indeed be transformed—not discarded, but reshaped into tools of cultivation and growth.

This isn’t naive pacifism but mature realism. The prophet Isaiah’s vision of swords beaten into plowshares doesn’t describe the elimination of strength but its redirection. In the messianic age, human power won’t disappear—it will find its proper purpose. Instead of defending against enemies, that power will be used to build and create. The same determination that drives a soldier to stand watch through a cold night will drive farmers to work their fields and scholars to study Torah.

Those young warriors dancing at the wedding embodied this future while living in the present. Their celebration wasn’t an escape from duty but a glimpse of what duty ultimately serves. They fight not because they love war but because they love what peace makes possible—weddings, children, study, prayer, the building of families and communities under God’s protective canopy.

The chuppah and the battlefield aren’t opposites—they’re partners in the same divine plan. One protects what the other celebrates. One defends what the other creates. The soldier who dances at a wedding and returns to his post the next morning isn’t living a contradiction but embodying a truth that transcends simplistic categories.

In the end, both the wedding canopy and the military uniform serve the same Master. Both shelter the same people. Both work toward the same goal: a world where God’s presence dwells openly among His people, where justice flows like water and righteousness like a mighty stream, where young men can indeed beat their swords into plowshares because there will be no more need for swords.

Until that day arrives, the dance continues—between battlefield and wedding hall, between sword and plowshare, between the protection of today and the promise of tomorrow.