God in Exile

Well, Rabbi, talking about exile, I just got back from China last night.

You were in Mexico.

We are the returnees!

AM: But we’re back for Clubhouse, because this is it, because next week, it’s going to be before Rosh Hashanah. It’s going to be Rosh Hashanah, so there’s no Clubhouse. The following week, there’s no parsha, because Shabbos is Yom Kippur, and then the following two weeks, it’s also, it’s the Chag.

So we’re going to have a few weeks off, so we have to make this one really good.

GS: So we have a few weeks off, and we might even come back with some big changes. Like we might be doing this on YouTube. We might be sharing it as video also.

AM: You never know what we can do. Amazing stuff that we can do here.

GS: Two chavuses with spare time in their hands. You never know what we can cook up.

Okay, well, it’s great to be back.

And let’s just get right into it.

We are in Deuteronomy 31.

And again, Moses is giving his last words of advice, direction to the children of Israel.

And it says, “When all these things before you, the blessing and the curse that I have set before you, and you take them to heart amidst the various nations to which your God has banished you, and you return to your God, and you and your children heed God’s command with all your heart and soul, just as I enjoin you this day, then your God will restore your fortunes, will bring you together again from all the peoples where your God has scattered you”, but as I read it, Rabbi, it dawned on me that we could have always thought that when God said the bad things that could happen to you if you sinned, He wasn’t saying that you have to sin and these things will happen to you.

But here, the way this goes, it says, so I’ve given you the blessing and the curse, and when all these things will befall you, meaning you are going to have the blessing, and you are going to have the curse.

It’s the first time that ever dawned on me.

But in light of that, we get to the verse 3, and that the translation is a little misleading, or I should say it misses a lot.

It says, in my translation, “then your God will restore, your fortunes will bring you together again from all the peoples where God has scattered you.

In the Hebrew, it says, Veshav Hashem Elokecha, et shuvu otcha, veri chamcha, Veshav, ve kibetzcha, me kol ha’amim. וְשָׁ֨ב ה׳ אֱלֹקֶ֛יךָ אֶת־שְׁבוּתְךָ֖ וְרִחֲמֶ֑ךָ וְשָׁ֗ב וְקִבֶּצְךָ֙ מִכׇּל־הָ֣עַמִּ֔ים

So it uses a word that we should be thinking about during this Elul season, Veshav, we all know what teshuvah means.

It means to return.

So God will return you et shuvu otcha, from where you will be returned.

He will return you, bringing you back together.

The verse is clearly using, playing with the word to return.

In the Fox translation, he says, Restore your fortunes, shav … shevutekha; continuing the use of the root shuv (“return”) that echoes throughout the chapter..

So there is this sense of returning, but if that wasn’t enough, meaning to say this kind of emphasis on returning the returnees, Rashi adds a new nuance.

And Rashi says, To express this idea, it ought to have said, v’heshiv etshivu altchah. הָיָה לוֹ לִכְתֹּב “וְהֵשִׁיב” אֶת שְׁבוּתְךָ

If God was saying that he was going to return those who were in captivity, it sort of said, v’heshiv, that God will return.

But our rabbis learn from this.

If one can say so of God, his divine presence dwells with Israel in all the misery of the exile.

Because what the rabbis read into v’heshiv is God is saying, I will return, not that I will return you.

So just a very minor grammatical inflection here raises this concept that I talked about in the introduction, this concept that God goes with the Jewish people into exile…. And that God is redeemed [only] with Israel.

And Rashi continues, so that when they are redeemed, he speaks of their being redeemed.

He makes Scripture write “Redemption” of Himself (i.e. He makes it state that He will be redeemed) — that He will return with them. And Rashi references Megillah 29a.

Rashi has a second commentary as well.

And he says, furthermore, following may be said in explaining the strange form of the Shav-et, that I will bring to.

That the day of the gathering of the exiles is so important and is attended with such difficulty that it is as though he, God himself, must actually seize hold of each individual’s hand, dragging him from his place, so that God himself returns with them.

Using the participle et, it means God says, I will return you and you and you, as it is said in Isaiah, and ye shall be gathered one by one, O ye children of Israel.

O chesbiadom mamash, ish ish mim komo.  כְּאִלּוּ הוּא עַצְמוֹ צָרִיךְ לִהְיוֹת אוֹחֵז בְּיָדָיו מַמָּשׁ אִישׁ אִישׁ מִמְּקוֹמוֹ

And we find, however, that Rashi adds, we find, however, that the same expression in connection with the gathering of the exiles of other nations also.

So it says in Jeremiah, and I shall bring back the exiles of Moab, v’shavti shvut Moab. וְשַׁבְתִּי שְׁבוּת מוֹאָב

So Rashi kind of adds at the end a little hook.

He gives this beautiful explanation of how God goes into exile with the Jews, and that’s why it says v’shav and not v’heshiv.

And then he goes on to say in the fact that it says v’shav et, that he will return that, it means that he actually will, if you can possibly say this, go and grab each one.

But then he ends by saying, but by the way, God kind of uses the same language when he brings back the exiles of Moav to Moav.

So this is a fascinating, rich Rashi, is it not, Rabbi?

AM: It’s amazing.

The whole, every idea here is so interesting.

So let’s unpack it one at a time.

GS: Well, as we unpack it, I think we should look at some other commentaries on the same verse.

Because every one of them, and we’ll go back to, we’ll look into the Talmud that Rashi quotes and the other original sources.

But each one of these medieval commentaries adds something a little bit more and more interesting.

So the Bechor Shor says as following,

Bekhor Shor

Commentary

Author:Yosef Bekhor Shor

An independent and original commentary on the Torah focused on the simple understanding (peshat) by one of the Tosafist masters. This work would become influential among subsequent Ashkenazi commentators, such as Chizukuni.

Composed: Middle-Age

Then the Lord thy God will return thee from captivity.

That first use of the word Shav is from the Babylonian exile.

Then God will bring you together again from the BIG exile.

So the medieval commentaries were reflective on themselves, and they knew they were living in the big exile.

The exile to Babylonia was 70 years.

So here you have a people that nowadays we count wars in Israel, unfortunately.

They were counting exiles, and they were in the big one.

So that’s the first thing that struck me when I read this.

And of course, the Bechor Shor is dealing with the same issue that Rashi did, which is this repetition of the word return, Vashav and Vashav.

He goes on even further.

And he says, From the big exile, this long one where we are scattered around the entire world, and our rabbis learned from here that the Holy One, blessed be He, He suffered in the suffering, literally became narrow in your narrowness.

Shehakadosh bachu tzar b’tzarotem shal yisrael.  שהקב”ה צר בצרתם של ישראל

So we talk a lot about tzoros.

And tzoros comes from the Hebrew word tzar, and tzar means narrow.

And of course, Mitzrayim, as we study at the Seder, is that narrow place.

So again, you have this now metaphor of God being Mitzamtzem, God making himself small.

We’ve encountered this before with small to become part of our temple.

Now we’re getting small and narrow and painful with the Jewish people in exile.

We’re not using, we’re not studying Kabbalistic texts, Rabbi.

These are classical texts and that’s the…

AM: These are great, right.

This is Rashti, that’s correct.

This idea of God going into exile, believe it or not, is kind of a traditional idea.

It’s not just Kabbalistic.

GS: But I love the fact that without saying the word, this word Tzimtzum, and we’ll get to it later, which is when God contracts himself to be a part of our world, here you get it in terms of he comes joins us even in the narrow place of exile.

He kind of combines these two concepts of the the Shechina, the divine presence going into exile with the Jewish people, and the Shechina, God’s presence going into the narrow places and being with us wherever we are.

I just kind of love it.

So let’s go to the older sources, not the medieval sources, but the older sources.

In the Sefre Bamidbar, it says, and thus you find that as long as Israel was subjugated in Egypt, the Shechina was with them in their servitude, and they saw the God of Israel and under his feet, the likeness of sapphire bricks.

So, he quotes from Shemot, and he says, and thus it is written in Isaiah, in all their afflictions he suffered, Bechol tzaretem lo tzar.  בכל צרתם לו צר

He goes on, this tells me only of communal afflictions.

So, how do we know that God also goes into the narrow places and the alienated, exiled individual?

Whence do I derive the same for individual afflictions?

The Sifre says from Psalm 91, When he calls me, I will answer with him, will I be in affliction?

Imo onochib tzara.  עמו אנכי בצרה

So, similar to second part of Rashi said, that God not only goes into exile with the community, but he goes with the individual, the Sifre comes to that theme as well, and talks about exile from an individual point of view, in addition to a community point of view.

I just think it’s a fascinating metaphor, and adds a whole level to the exile experience, which again is so part and parcel of the Jewish experience.

Right.

AM: Well, the idea that God goes into exile with us is really the idea that we need God, that exile is so scary, that the only guarantee that we’re going to return is the fact that God is with us in exile.

It’s to make us feel better.

It absolutely is.

GS: You’re not alone is the most important thing that you can say to somebody who’s suffering.

But I think from a theological point of view, it is still something that we Jews, I think, would find very radical.

I mean, if I had to go to the extreme, we’d look at our Christian brothers and sisters, where God comes down and inhabits the body of an individual, and we go, that’s just strange.

But here we have God going down and being part of our exile, both as a community and as an individual, of being with the Suffering Jew.

So it is a radical idea, and that’s why I quoted the second part of the Sefre, which is Rabbi Akiva says, Ilmule Mikrash HaKatuv I Efshalom R’oh. אלמלא מקרא שכתוב אי אפשר לאומרו

If it were not explicitly written, it would be impossible to say before the Lord, you have redeemed yourself.

You find that wherever they were exiled, the Shekhinah was exiled with them.

So Akiva is literally saying, this is radical.

What I find fascinating, Rabbi, is he says, Ilmule Mikras HaKatuv. אלמלא מקרא שכתוב

It’s as though, if he’s talking about our verse, that’s kind of a stretch.

It’s not exactly written in our verse.

AM: That’s correct.

GS: But of course, Akiva could explain Mount Hills of Torah on single (Crown of a letter) words.

So this is an example of exactly that.

So the Gemora in Megillah, actually in 29a, it picks up on this, and it goes to use proof texts to prove that God was with us in every one of our exiles.

Interestingly enough, the first exile is the exile in Egypt.

So it says, it said in the Berait DeRabbi, Shimon ben Yochai says, Come and see how beloved the Jewish people are to the Holy One, blessed be he, as every place they were exiled, the divine presence went with them.

They were exiled in Egypt and the divine presence went with them.

As it is stated, did I reveal myself to the house of your father when you were in Egypt?

This is Samuel.

They were exiled in Babylonia from Isaiah.

For your sake, I have sent to Babylonia.

Again, we can argue back and forth how strong these proof texts are.

So too, when in the future they will be redeemed, the Divine Presence will be with them as it is stated, then the Lord your God will return with your captivity, that quoting our verse.

It does not say, he will bring back.

It rather says, he will return, which teaches that the Holy One, blessed be he, will return together with them from among the various exiles.

Here’s where it gets even more interesting, because we’re going to be spending a lot of time in shul in the next few weeks.

The Gemora asks, where in Babylonia does the Divine Presence reside?

Abaye, our old friend Abaye said, in the ancient synagogue of Huzal, and in the synagogue that was destroyed and rebuilt in Nahardai.

Then they go on to tell stories.

They discuss whether he can be in two shuls at the same time, or is it in different times and different places.

But, bottom line, Abaye says that he used to study Torah in his home and pray in the synagogue.

Once he heard and understood that which King David says, Lord, I love the habitation of your house, then he started not only praying in the synagogue, but also studying in it.

So, that’s the old Ahat Sha’alti, one thing I’ve asked from God, that you are in the house.

So, here we have it, Rabbi.

Not only is the Shekhinah, does God presence come to every Jew individually, come to us as a community in exile, but he also has not only left the Temple when the Temple has been destroyed, but comes into our local Beit Knesset, into our house of study.

Pretty amazing learning from just the use of the word Veshav, is it not?

AM: They’re pretty remarkable.

I mean, you see how seriously they took this idea, right?

I mean, they put so much emphasis on it, you see how seriously they took it, which is great.

It is.

GS: And again, it does, I was kind of, you know, trying to make a connection between this concept of the Shekhinah in exile and this concept of God being, making himself part of our lives and being part of the material world.

When we studied the Mishkan, the tabernacle being complete, and we came across another strange grammatical expression, when God says, make me a temple, and I will dwell within you.

That I think I would venture to say most Jews know, that its profound meaning is that God is in every Jew as his temple.

God dwells within us, not within brick and mortar.

But I think the teaching that we’re looking at tonight is exactly the same and just as powerful.

And for the Jews that read it, they were as knowledgeable with it.

That just like they understood that God maybe made himself small and came into our Temple, he also made himself small and came into our exile, came into with us no matter where we were.

In one of the sources that I quote, it talks about Mikdash Ma’at, that even when we are scattered around and we have those small temples, whether they are local synagogues or whether they are the heart of each Jew, God comes into it.

I think this was a very powerful message that worked well for the Jews as they were dispersed and on their journey.

AM: You know, that last thing you said might be the most important thing of all.

It worked well for the Jews.

That’s why it was such an important message.

It was something that we always wanted to hear.

Wherever we were, we wanted to hear that message.

Yeah, there’s no question about that, and therefore, it resonated.

And I think that it again was a strong message.

And again, I don’t want to make the connection too great, but this idea that in Christianity, that God could come into the body of a person and be amongst you, hear this idea that God could come down and be with the Jewish people no matter where they are.

It’s tangible, you can touch it, you can feel it, and it was necessary.

And I think it really resonated with them.

The first time I ever heard the expression of the Shachinta Begalut,  שְׁכִינְתָּא בְּגָלוּתָא

was I think from Rabbi Riskin, and the Aramaic I found only in the Zohar.

The actual expression Shachinta Begalut, I looked up and found.

And so it definitely is another example of where people always ask me if I’m interested in Jewish mysticism.

And I said, you know, I have my fill with the Peshat before I get to the Remez and the Sod.

But that’s not to say that much of Jewish mysticism comes from these core classical texts and even the medieval commentaries.

It’s not an island in and of itself.

And to get to some of these profound teachings, one doesn’t have to leave the world of the Talmud and the Midrash and the Sifre and the Tanhuma.

So one fascinating thing that I saw was a Gur-Arye, which is actually the Maharal of Prague, also focuses on our verse.

But he, like many of the commentaries, is a little bothered by the end of Rashi, where Rashi says after waxing poetic about how God came back with the exile Jews, he says, and by the way, it uses a kind of similar language when Moab and Edom are returned to their land.

So, the Maharal says something that I found fascinating.

And what he says is that the essence of creation, if you go back to Genesis, we’re going to be there in a few weeks, is that everything has its place.

There is an order to the world.

God made order out of chaos, out of Tohu and v’Vohu.

And one of the rules of order is that every nation, every people belongs in its land and in its place.

And he says, and that’s why God returns Moab and Adom to their home, because it is bringing us back to the most basic order.

I just love this, like he was almost endorsing, I would say nationalities.

He was endorsing nationalism, having your own country, the importance of belonging and having your own country.

I thought it was wonderful.

Then he explains that with regard to Israel, however, it’s at a different level, because God takes it personally, since he calls himself the “God of Israel”.

So when Israel is out of its order, it is that much more important to God to bring them back to establish His order.

And that’s why he goes with them into exile.

But I love the fact that the Maharal took so much time to explain how any nation can be exiled and how important it is to come back to your own land.

I just was struck by that.

AM: And you see, you have to, I think we have to appreciate the fact that most of these commentaries are written at a time.

We’re returning to our own land was an impossibility.

Meaning we’re learning it now that we’re returning to Israel, right?

It’s ours and we can go back to Israel.

But when the Maharaul m’Prague wrote it in the 1600s, nobody was going back to Israel.

When Rashi wrote it, when the Midrash wrote it, people were in exile.

They weren’t going back to Israel.

So this was all, it was a dream as much as a hope.

Yeah.

GS: Yeah, the Maharal was certainly before the whole rise in nationalism and that sort of thing.

AM: I mean, the Maharal lives in 1600 in Prague.

I mean, living in Israel is as far as much of a dream as the most distant dream in the world.

It’s like going to Mars.

GS: But I still think that he lived in a country and lands that the people were very happy in their own land, but that he could understand that for every nation, being in your own land, and he could have that sympathy and that simpatico with them, as you say, even when it seemed like it was something so far-fetched and away from reality.

So I want to go into contemporary theology and contemporary thought.

And we’re going to go, Itz Greenberg wrote a book called The Triumph of Life.

And we’re going to get into his philosophy.

But before we go there, I want to show how the prism that we’ve been looking through this evening changes the way I can read even Elie Wiesel.

So in Night, one of the most impactful moments is when a young child, a boy is hanging from the gallows.

And because of his weight is just writhing in pain, he’s not dying.

And because the Nazis were so barbaric, they had everybody stand at attention in the parade ground and watch all this happen.

And there’s a famous part of night where Elie Wiesel, it would seem, the person narrating, hears from behind him, as they were looking at this young boy, where is God?

Where is he?

And finally, Wiesel writes, Where is God now?

I heard a voice within me answer him.

Where is he?

Here he is.

He is hanging here on this gallows.

And I always read that as a statement of the Death of God, that if this child is dying, then God (or the idea of God) is dead.

But looking at it from the perspective of Schinkta b’galutar (the Shechina is in exile), what he could easily be saying is, that child is in pain, God is in pain with him.

It’s a fascinating switch in terms of how we look at not only the way that Elie Wiesel is trying to portray that moment, but also in how we have a response to the Holocaust.

What do you think?

How did you read that part of Wiesel?

AM: Yeah, I mean, I think, you know, I think that that’s what Wiesel, I think that’s what he’s getting at.

I think that that’s a good read.

And you know, we see we’re jumping, you know, it’s so amazing.

You jump from the Maharal to Wiesel and then to Yitz Greenberg.

And they’re really talking about three different things.

And that is the Maharal lives in Prague, Wiesel is Holocaust and Yitz Greenberg is post-Holocaust is really state of Israel.

So they’re looking at the same idea of exile in, you know, but in three different historical and religious perspectives.

I love that.

I love that.

GS: So, but what the way I read Wiesel was different than I had read him before.

Where I had read him before God was dying on the gallows.

And what I’m reading it looking through the lens of the Shekhinah is with us in exile, it was more that God is suffering and here with us in the gallows.

And to move, we don’t have much time, but to move to Yitz Greenberg, what Yitz Greenberg did, and in this book he talks about how he struggled to come up with this philosophy, is he talked about Judaism in the Third Age.

And by the Third Age, he meant after the Holocaust.

So, it’s not only how we react to the Holocaust, but how we react to the State of Israel, as you say, taking history into our own hands.

And he writes, he uses Tzimtzum as his main, I think, modality.

And what he says is that God made himself small after the Holocaust and during the Holocaust, meaning to say that it was now up to man to bring redemption.

It was up to man to make scientific discoveries.

It was up to man to engage in diplomacy and politics and statecraft.

So he writes, divine self-limitation was designed to call the Jews to a more active role in the Covenant.

The divine was more hidden, but the divine presence could be experienced everywhere.

So he too, like our texts, is talking about where the fact that God had to come into exile and make himself small within each of us has two effects.

One is that it empowers us, and two, it means that God can be found everywhere.

And so God becomes totally hidden, not to distance from humanity, but to come closer yet again.

This means becoming totally immanent, ever present, binding the outcome of God’s vision totally to humanity.

So this is what Yitz Greenberg does.

He talks about God coming down and down and smaller and smaller and closer and more immanent to the point where ultimately it is man that becomes empowered.

Miracles will not represent changes of natural law by an outside or divine mind.

Rather, they will represent human actions and understandings of God-given nature that trigger remarkable outcomes using natural phenomenon and directing them consciously to needs, results, and cures.

God has invited humanity to become the managing partner.

So here, what Yitz Greenberg does is he combines this with this concept of the Covenant, where as the Covenant starts, where God creates the world and God is the managing partner, it ends in this Third Age that we live in, where we are ultimately the managing partner.

AM: Which is amazing, and of course, that’s just what Rabbinic Judaism does, right?

It says that life is a partnership, that Judaism is a partnership between God and man.

GS: Absolutely, and I think that has always been there, but I think what Greenberg does is he changes the emphasis.

AM: And by changing the emphasis, in a sense, he changes pretty much everything.

I’m going to end with this last  paragraph, and he says of the rabbis that we studied.

He say, they expanded the zone of holiness immensely by teaching Jewry to seek out the hidden Shechina in every area of life, guiding behaviors towards heightened life.

They uncovered the presence of the hidden God in every aspect of living.

In synagogues everywhere, the Shechina joined the congregation.

The people matured spiritually, internalized covenantal values.

He talks about God coming between a man and his human beings and their sexual partners and therefore expanding the way we can look at that partnership.

It’s a book that I totally recommend you all buy, The Triumph of Life by Irving Greenberg.

But he truly takes the concept that we see in our verse today about God going into exile, going down into the material world of each and every one of us, going into the narrow place as, in a radical way, as ultimately where we are today in a secular world, which again, and this is where Greenberg almost sounds like Rav Kook sometimes, the secular world becomes the place where God’s miracles occur, if you can say that.

AM: That’s remarkable.

Thanks so much for introducing us to Yitz Greenberg’s work and to everything.

We want to wish everybody a Shabbat Shalom, a Shana Tova, and we look forward to learning with you and to introducing some great innovations in our Parshah Podcast starting very, very soon.

Shana Tova, Geoffrey, Shana Tova to everybody.

GS: Shana Tova, everybody.

I’ve been writing Shana Yoter Tova.

We should definitely have a better year.

For all of our listeners, thank you for being part of last year and we look forward to seeing you next year.

Shabbat Shalom and Shana Tova.