The Land of Israel v. The Torah

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, August 2, 2008

We all know that the Torah is important and holy, but what is its ultimate purpose?

In our tradition, there is a controversy between those who see the purpose of the Torah as tying the Jewish people to the land of Israel, and those who see the Torah primarily as a religious teaching. The famous medieval Biblical commentator Rashi seems to have sided with the first group and seen the land of Israel as central to the purpose of the Torah. He notes that if what we needed from the Torah was just religious instruction, the Torah could have started in the middle of the book of Exodus where the laws begins. Why have the book of Genesis at all? he asks. To provide proof that the land of Israel belongs to the Jews, he explains, and that God as Creator had the right to give it.

This attitude comes up also in the writings of many Jewish historians, who dwell on ancient history. The write about the years when the Israelites were an independent nation living on their own soil, and then skip more or less from the destruction of the temple in the year 70 to the rise of Zionism in the 19th century. They portray everything in between as a dark age of persecution, expulsions and disaster, ignoring the great masterpieces of Jewish religious culture that developed in those centuries.

This controversy is brought up in many of the commentaries on this week’s Torah portion, Parashat Masei, the last portion in the book of Numbers whose reading always takes place in the period leading up to Tisha B’Av, the holiday which commemorates the destruction of the first and second Temples in Jerusalem. In this week’s Torah portion we are told ”And you shall conquer the land and settle there because unto you have I given the land as a possession.” (Numbers 33:53). This is understood by the medieval philosopher Nachmanides, but not by his more famous contemporary Maimonides, as meaning that it is a mitzvah, a commandment, for all Jews to live in Israel. Yet the upcoming holiday of Tisha B’av, mourning the destruction of the Temple, is also a reminder that Judaism continued even without national sovereignty, and even when the Jewish people were scattered all over the globe.

The champion of the view that the Torah is more important than the land of Israel is Rabbi Yochanah ben Zakkai, who lived in Jerusalem during the great Roman siege. When it became clear to him that the Romans would be victorious, he did not adopt the slogan,” live free or die.” Instead, he had his students pretend that he was ill and then that he had died. They put him in a coffin and took him out of the city for burial. Only as a corpse would the Zealots, who controlled the city, allow him to exit Jerusalem. Once out of the city, he humbled himself before the Roman general, Vespasian, soon to be emperor, recognizing his power. He asked only for the survival of the small city of Yavneh and the scholars he would gather there.

For those of us who grew up in the Diaspora, Rabbi Yochanan was our hero: after all, we are not the descendents of those who died at Masada. But recently in an article by a modern Orthodox rabbi I found another interpretation. Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, who left his successful congregation in Manhattan, and made aliyah to Israel, argues that Rabbi Yochanan, to his dying day, doubted the decision he had made. The Talmud describes him on his deathbed, fearful of God’s judgment. In tears he blesses his students: “May you always fear God as much as you fear the human king”. “Just that much?’ his followers ask. ‘Is that all?’ He responds: “Would that it were that much!”

Rabbi Joseph Soleveitchik suggests that in these words Rabbi Yochanan hinted that his fear for the Roman Emperor had overcome his reverence for God. Perhaps, Rabbi Yochanan was thinking to himself, that if he had waited, the city of Jerusalem would have been spared in his day as it was in the time of King Hezekiah.

I disagree with Rabbi Riskin’s reading of Rabbi Yochanan’s life. From the perspective of history, we see the wisdom of Rabbi Yochanah’s decision. A generation later Bar Kochba’s revolt was a disaster, but Yavneh and its scholars endured.

Today we try to resolve this controversy between teaching and land, by supporting the modern state of Israel along with the values of the Torah, and struggling, every now and then, where the needs of survival and the moral teachings of the Torah, seem to conflict.