parshat ekev
In a recent op-ed in the NY Times, Israel’s Fair-Weather Fans, Shmuel Rosner references an Israeli song “Ein Li Eretz Acheret” “I have no other country,”. Writes Rosner:
“I was reminded of the song in recent days as I read a string of articles by smart, savvy, knowledgeable, non-Israeli Jews, who say that the brutal war in Gaza has made them question their Zionism.
What unites these writers, of course, is that all of them do have another country. And that’s why, when push comes to shove, the Israeli government doesn’t — and shouldn’t — listen to them.”
It’s a powerful op-ed and it should be read in full. This is not the first time a social commentator has identified the profound difference in perspective that living in or out of the land of Israel can have on one’s Judaism or opinion of the Jews.
In popular culture, the term Am Ha-Aretz” is used to refer to an ignorant Jew. Since this derogatory label translates as “People of the Land” it makes sense that this pejorative actually refers to Jews who had a special connection to the land of Israel. Writes Aharon Oppenheimer in his classic: The Am Ha-Aretz: A Study in the Social History of the Jewish People in the Hellenistic-Roman Period, 1997 (note to page83):
The Jews in Babylonia, led by Ezra and Nechemia had changed the face of Judaism. When the first temple was standing, washing and purification before eating food was relegated to the priests and Levites and to eating temple sanctified food. The returning Babylonian Jews had extended this requirement to every Jew and for all foodstuff. Similarly tithing was continued by the Babylonian Jews, even though the priests, who benefited from such tithing, no longer had a Temple to work in. The Jews who had remained in Israel, known as the Amei Ha-aretz had not gotten this memo and probably thought that the Babylonian Jews were living in denial… there was no longer any reason to ritually wash nor tithe.
The point is not which of these groups was in the right.. the point is that Jews in Israel see things in a unique perspective which can, and maybe should unnerve outsiders.
This is not the last time that Jews living outside of the land of Israel looked down upon the religious practice of indigenous Israelis. How many Jews (both religious and non-religious) come to Israel expecting Israelis to be more observant and are disappointed that they are not.
After the destruction of the Second Temple, the Rabbis were equally critical of Jews and Judaism outside of the land of Israel.
The second paragraph of the Shema (Deuteronomy 11 13-21) is a repetition of the first (Deuteronomy 6: 5-9) in terms of providing that Jews teach their children the Torah and put on Tefillin and mezuzot. The difference is that the second paragraph admonishes the Jews to: “Take heed to yourselves, lest your heart be deceived, and ye turn aside… and ye perish quickly from off the good land which the LORD giveth you.” (Deuteronomy 11: 16-17)
Rashi, commenting on Deuteronomy 11: 18 is bothered by why the commandment to put on tefillin is repeated in this second commandment and quotes the Sifrei.
Therefore shall ye lay up these My words in your heart and in your soul; and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes. (Deuteronomy 11:18)
וְשַׂמְתֶּם אֶת-דְּבָרַי אֵלֶּה, עַל-לְבַבְכֶם וְעַל-נַפְשְׁכֶם; וּקְשַׁרְתֶּם אֹתָם לְאוֹת עַל-יֶדְכֶם, וְהָיוּ לְטוֹטָפֹת בֵּין עֵינֵיכֶם
And you shall set these words of Mine: Even after you have been exiled, make yourselves distinctive with My commandments: Put on tefillin and make mezuzoth , so that these will not be new to you when you return. Similarly, it is said, “Set up markers for yourself” (Jer. 31:20). – [Sifrei]
ושמתם את דברי אף לאחר שתגלו היו מצויינים במצות, הניחו תפילין, עשו מזוזות כדי שלא יהיו לכם חדשים כשתחזרו. וכן הוא אומר (ירמיה לא, כ) הציבי לך ציונים [2]2
This is a remarkable text, because what it is saying is that Judaism outside of the Land of Israel is just a rehearsal… just for practice. Israel is not the main stage, it is the only stage. I have written about this text, including the opinions of the classical commentaries and the double meaning of “Zion” ציונ in another post: the hiker’s guide to zionism
But here’s my question. If you practice something for 2,000 years doesn’t it get a little stale? Practice may make perfect, but too much practice leads at best to an empty shell of robotic activity and at worst אם an overacted and overgrown perversion.
Salt can preserve meat and fowl and refrigeration can preserve perishables, but ultimately the salt must be washed away and frozen food must be thawed. The great Zionist thinkers all observed in one way or another that, the return to Zion would not only provide a refuge for a persecuted people, but just as importantly would provide for the rejuvenation of a people that had lived an anemic existence for 2,000 years.
By way of example, A. D. Gordon the great labor Zionist wrote:
The Jewish people has been completely cut off from nature and imprisoned within city walls for two thousand years. We have been accustomed to every form of life, except a life of labor- of labor done at our behalf and for its own sake. It will require the greatest effort of will for such a people to become normal again. We lack the principal ingredient for national life. We lack the habit of labor… for it is labor which binds a people to its soil and to its national culture, which in its turn is an outgrowth of the people’s toil and the people’s labor. … We, the Jews, were the first in history to say: “For all the nations shall go each in the name of its God” and “Nations shall not lift up sword against nation” – and then we proceed to cease being a nation ourselves. (see)
Similarly, Ben Yehuda, the father of modern Hebrew writes:
“True literature can emerge only in a social environment speaking the language in which that literature is being written. Haskala literature in Russia is artificial, alienated from the sources of true artistic creativity – life itself. (see The Making of Modern Zionism, Shlomo Avineri p 85)
For each Zionist thinker, there was another vision for what the new Jew would be and for what 2,000 years of life without a land, language, army or economy had done to the Jewish People.
But 2,000 years of Jewish life produced more than just an oversized religion. Two thousand years of a sterile existence in exile also produced an overgrown moral and ethical sense, divorced from the responsibilities of land, government, politics and defense. If the Jews greatest gift to Western thought was our fine-tuned morality and social activism, it may also be our most questionable gift. Certainly our gift of morality divorced from political life is one that has come back to bite.
If one is willing to question a Jewish Religion that developed in such an artificial and sterile existence, certainly one needs to question the other intellectual legacies of the Jewish People brewed in the same petri dish of exile.
This is the question that Jewish thinkers and Western thinkers who have been so influenced by the best of Jewish thought ought ask.
As for Israelis, it’s a little more simple… they have nowhere else to go.
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[1] for more recent scholarship on this subject see Daniel Boyarin , Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity p. 251 note 122
[2] Here is the complete text of the Sifrei Deuteronomy 43…
Another thing “and ye perish quickly from off the good land.. and ye shall bind them for a sign upon your hand” Even though I exile you from the land to exile, you are still commanded in the commandments so that when you return they will not be like new. Analogous to a king of flesh and blood that is angry with his wife and casts her to the house of her father. Says he, you should adorn yourself with your jewelry so that when you return they should not be like new. So said the Holy One to Israel:
Set thee up waymarks, make thee guide-posts; set thy heart toward the high-way, even the way by which thou wentest; return, O virgin of Israel, return to these thy cities.
ow long wilt thou turn away coyly, O thou backsliding daughter? For the LORD hath created a new thing in the earth: a woman shall court a man.
Thus saith the LORD of hosts, the God of Israel: yet again shall they use this speech in the land of Judah and in the cities thereof, when I shall turn their captivity: ‘The LORD bless thee, O habitation of righteousness, O mountain of holiness. (Jeremiah 31:20)
“waymarks” these are the commandments that Israel was commanded, “guide-posts” this is the destruction of the Temple. And also as it says “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not; if I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy” (Psalms 137:5).
“even the way by which thou wentest” (Jeremiah 31:20) Says The Holy One to Israel “See in these ways you walked and have repented, immediately you will return to your cities as it is said: “Return O virgins of Israel, return to your cities.”
