Vayera 2022
Some people say that denying the Jewish people the right to return to the Land of Israel, and the right to national self-determination, is not anti-Semitic; that Israel is not an essential part of being a Jew, since the Jewish people have been religious Jews for 2000 years without sovereignty in the Land.
The counter-argument is that the land of Israel is indispensable to Jewish theology and identity, the proof being that Jews have prayed to return to the Land for millennia. The first thing God says to Abraham in the Torah is, “Go to the land that I will show you, and I will make you a great nation, and bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing to the peoples of the world.” The Jewish people in the Torah’s view are not a religious tribe which travels the world and takes their identity with them, but a landed nation meant to be a blessing to the nations of the world by acting on the world’s political and international stage. This is to say nothing of the practical need for a place of safety and security from the consistent persecution which we have experienced and continue to experience. Certainly, history shows that the Jews cannot rely on anyone but themselves and their God to protect them.
I grew up in Haredi schools, believing that the Torah alone is what makes us the chosen people, and that until the Messianic era, the Land of Israel is not an important religious factor in who we are as Jews. When I was young, I read our prayers about the Land and understood them as many Haredi Jews do: that we pray for God to bring the Messiah and, until then, Israel, though always front and center in our prayers, is theologically on the back burner, since and one can be a fully observant and identified Jew without a land.
Twenty-five years ago, I interviewed to be the Assistant Rabbi at a Modern Orthodox synagogue, and as part of the interview weekend they asked me what I thought about Israel. Thinking nothing unusual about my answer, I replied that I did not think Israel was very important. Rather, what had kept the Jewish people who they were for the last 2000 years was the Torah, its study and its observance. I said certainly we believe a Messianic era will come and, if presently you study torah better in Israel than in the United States, then by all means go there and study. But I did not think the modern state of Israel was an important part of a Jew’s religious identity.
The senior Rabbi of that shul called me after the interview and said, “Hyim, if you want to be a Modern Orthodox Rabbi in America, you have to come to terms with the State of Israel.” And so I went on a journey to do just that.
Sara and I have spent two half-year sabbaticals in Israel and I have learned much about the modern State. I have changed my perspective a great deal over twenty-five years and certainly now I am a Zionist, but this is not because think Israel is the key to Jewish survival or identity, for, indeed it is mainly the Torah which has kept us who we are. It is rather because I believe, as I have said before from the pulpit, that these are Messianic times and so all of our ubiquitous prayers about Israel and our millennia long hopes are now current, relevant and playing out before our eyes, and thus are not just a hope for the future but the very definition of what it means to be a Jew right now.
This, in fact, according to Maimonides, the moment we are currently living in, is the way redemption is supposed to happen. As he writes (Laws of Kings, 12:1-2):
“Do not presume that in the Messianic age any facet of the world's nature will change or there will be innovations in the work of creation. Rather, the world will continue according to its natural way. Although Isaiah 11:6 states: 'The wolf will dwell with the lamb, the leopard will lie down with the young goat,' these words are a metaphor and a parable. The interpretation of the prophecy is as follows: Israel will dwell securely together with the gentiles who are likened to a wolf and a leopard…Similarly, other (supernatural) messianic prophecies of this nature are metaphors. In the Messianic era, everyone will realize which matters were implied by these metaphors and which allusions they contained. Our Sages taught: 'There will be no difference between the current age and the Messianic era except the emancipation from our subjugation to the gentile kingdoms.'"
After thousands of years of hoping and praying we now have the land, after suffering the greatest Holocaust, we have seen miracle after miracle in which the few have defeated the many. Today Israel, only 74 years old, ranks in the top ten countries in terms of happiness, power and influence. For Israel to go from sand to such a country in less than 100 years, despite the wars it has fought and money it spends on defense, is nothing short of miraculous. In addition, Israel is making peace with a number of its historical enemies, just as Maimonides describes.
One hundred years ago, if someone had said the twelve lost tribes would return to Israel in the modern era, we would have thought them insane. Yet in the last fifty years, several of those tribes have returned — groups from isolated areas of the world which have kept traditions for millennia, marking them as separate, and as Israelites. Indeed, the Chief Rabbinate and the government of Israel feels too that they are Jewish enough, based on their traditions and they genetics, to return to the land as citizens.
For many generations we have assumed that redemption would come in the blink of an eye, but now we see that it comes, as the Jerusalem Talmud says, slowly, slowly: “Rabbi Ḥiyya and Rabbi Simeon ben Halaphta were walking in the valley of Arbela before morning and saw the rising of the dawn. Rabbi Ḥiyya said to Rabbi Simeon ben Halaphta: 'So will be the deliverance of Israel; it will start out very small and grow and radiates as it goes on' (Yoma 3:2).”
We thought we would all leave the diaspora on the wings of eagles, once and for all, never to return. But perhaps the redemption is one in which a majority of Jewish people live in Israel but not all, some have houses in both Israel and the diaspora, some go on vacation there, some retire there, some go and come back every few months. Others spend holidays and vacations in Israel and other times in other countries. Perhaps this is not a lack of redemption, but indeed redemption itself. And now there is even a direct flight from Washington, D.C. to Israel, on the wings of eagles with WiFi!
