National Scholar Updates

How Large is a "K'zayit?" Really.

(This is a slightly edited version of an article that originally was published some years ago.)

Rashi almost certainly never saw an olive. The same goes for other medieval authorities in Ashk’naz (Germany-Northern France). This little-known but indisputable fact should matter to you. It has everything to do with the following question: Is Halakhic Judaism rational and rooted in reality, or is it a hypothetical construct unconducive to engaging the real world?

It is a simple matter to ascertain, or describe to another, the volume of an average olive, a ‘k’zayit’…provided you have olives. But what if you have never seen an olive? How would you understand the concept? How would you describe it to someone unfamiliar with olives?

This was the reality in Ashk’naz in the Middle Ages, and there is no mystery as to why. The olive tree is native to the Mediterranean basin, from Israel in the East to Spain in the west; it does not naturally grow elsewhere. In Roman times, due to the trade routes which crisscrossed the Empire, olives may have made their way to Germany and beyond. The collapse of Rome, however, led to a breakdown of law and order, and therefore trade.

Medieval Ashk’nazim were unfamiliar with olives, a fact confirmed by R. Eliezer b. Yoel’s (d. circa 1225) discussion of the minimal amount required for a b’rakha aharona: “Wherever a k’zayith is required, one needs a sizeable amount of food, because we are unfamiliar with the size of an olive…” (Ra’avya, B’rakhoth 107).

Some Ashk’nazi authorities concluded that an olive was half the volume of an egg, while others demonstrated, based on Talmudic sources, that it must be less than one third of an egg. How much less they could not say. The truth, of course, is different, as was clearly perceived by one 14th century authority who actually made it to Eretz Yisrael. Responding to the proposition that a person could swallow three k’zaytim at once (which is quite impossible if one assumes a k’zayit to be half of an egg in volume) he wrote: “As for me, the matter is plain, for I saw olives in Eretz Yisrael and Yerushalayim, and even six were not equal to an egg.” S’pharadi authorities, on the other hand, had no such difficulties. One wrote that an olive is “much less” than a quarter of an egg (Rashba), while another mentions in passing that a dried fig is equal to “several olives” (Rittba). The last three statements, made by sages who saw olives, are entirely accurate.

In present day Halakhic practice, predicated on opinions rooted in the aforementioned lack of knowledge and experience, a k’zayit is often said to be 30 cc, while others say 60 cc. These figures bear no relation to the real world olives of Eretz Yisrael which average 3-5 cc. It is claimed by some that once upon a time olives were much larger. This claim is false. Olives and olive trees have not changed, as evidenced by the fact that there are over 70 olive trees in Israel ranging between 1,700-2000 years old, and 7 are approximately 3000 years old. These trees continue to produce fruit identical to the olives of younger trees. Halakhic responsa from the G’onic period echo these facts, stating plainly that olives do not change. Some would have you believe that there are two kinds of olives: real olives and ‘Halakhic’ olives. In their view, Halakha need not reflect reality; it exists in an alternate reality of its own. This is a tragedy because it paints Judaism as divorced from reality and irrelevant to a rational person. This is a lie because Torah was intended by Hashem as our handbook for operating in the real world.

The ultimate purpose of Judaism was announced by the Creator before He transmitted the Torah to His people: “And you shall be for My purpose a kingdom of priests and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:6). The nation of Israel is the priest connecting God and mankind. “I, God, have summoned you for a righteous purpose…. and have assigned you for my covenant with humanity, a light for the nations” (Isaiah 42:6).

The Jewish people, in order to succeed, have to live and lead in the real world. To deal with the challenges facing us as a nation we must think, act and believe rationally. A rational person does not believe in olives 20 times the size of the olives we see with our own eyes. To deal with reality, we have to get real.

Nahamu, Nahamu: Thoughts on Consolation and Commitment

Nahamu, Nahamu

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

 

“Be comforted, be comforted My people, says the Lord…Oh you who tells good tidings to Zion, get up onto the high mountain, lift up your voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid…” (Isaiah 40: 1, 9).

During the three weeks between 17 Tamuz and 9 Av, the Jewish people experiences a period of mourning. We reflect on the tragedies of the past—the destructions of our First and Second Temples in ancient Jerusalem, the spiritual dislocation caused by prolonged exile, the physical toll of death and travail that have afflicted Jews through the centuries. We fast, we pray, we cry.

This year, the three weeks have been made heavier by the anxiety of the State of Israel being at war with Hamas terrorists, facing ongoing missiles from Houthis, and dealing with threats from Iran. We praise the amazing heroism of the Israel Defense Forces and the great strength demonstrated by the people of Israel during these dangerous times.

The Jewish people are resilient. We haven’t wended our way through 3500 years of history by accident. We have found the strength, courage and optimism to persist. One of our secrets is our ability to remember, to mourn past tragedies. Another of our secrets is our ability to think beyond tragedy and to look forward to the future.

On Tisha B’Av we fast, we chant dirges and the book of Lamentations. But in the afternoon of this most somber day, we declare “Nahamu,” be comforted. On the Shabbat following Tisha B’Av we chant Isaiah’s beautiful words of consolation and we begin a seven week period of consolation. Tragedy is part of life; but so are consolation and redemption. Sadness is part of life; but so are joy and peace. We never lose hope for a better, happier future, for ourselves and for all humanity.

Rabbi Hayyim Yosef David Azulai, a great rabbi of the 18th century, cites a rabbinic observation that the Hebrew words Nahamu Nahamu have the same numerical value as the name of Isaac (208). Our forefather Isaac is, thus, identified with the consolation of the people of Israel. What does Isaac have to do with consolation?

Rabbi Azulai refers to Shabbat 89b where the Talmud imagines a future conversation between God and our forefathers. God will come to Abraham and Jacob and tell them that the people of Israel have sinned. Abraham and Jacob seek to excuse Israel’s sins and ask God to be merciful. When God approaches Isaac with the words, “your children have sinned,” Isaac replies boldly: “Are they my children but not Your children?” Isaac then negotiates with God and expresses his willingness to accept responsibility for half of Israel’s sins if God will accept responsibility for the other half.


Isaac becomes identified with the consolation of Israel because he speaks out strongly for his people. He does not simply bow his head and ask for mercy. Rather, he stands tall and shows his willingness to shoulder responsibility for his people. Because of that spiritual courage, Isaac is also identified with the quality of “gevurah,” heroism. He is a lion in defense of the people of Israel.

Consolation is connected to strength. Consolation calls on us to rise from mourning and declare “Nahamu Nahamu,” we will be consoled, and we will offer consolation. We will identify with each other with the same sense of responsibility that was demonstrated by our forefather Isaac.

An ancient rabbinic teaching has it that only those who mourn for the sadness of Jerusalem’s tragedies will ultimately rejoice at Jerusalem’s redemption. On Tisha B’Av we cry for the tragedies that have befallen our people; but we also proclaim Nahamu Nahamu. We arise from our mourning. We cast our eyes forward to a happier and better time.

May the Almighty Who creates the harmony of the heavenly spheres bring harmony and peace to us, to all Israel, and to all good people everywhere.

 

The Contrasting Leadership Roles of Ezra and Nehemiah

 

The book of Ezra-Nehemiah (viewed by Jewish tradition as a single book, to be called EN) chronicles some of the final episodes of the biblical era. The Return to Zion and the rebuilding of the Temple lie at the heart of the first period in EN (538–516 b.c.e.). Zerubbabel, the political leader, and Jeshua, the High Priest, lead the community in tandem. These men are generally mentioned together, and they both work closely with the people.

 

In contrast, the two great leaders of EN’s second period (458–432 b.c.e.)—Ezra, the priest-sage; and Nehemiah, the political leader—model distinct leadership typologies in their attempts to guide their community to a more committed religious life.

 

EN introduces Ezra with an extended pedigree tracing all the way back to Aaron the Priest (Ezra 7:1–5). Ezra emigrates from Babylonia to Israel in 458 b.c.e., bearing a document from King Artaxerxes of Persia according him virtually unlimited halakhic authority over the people (Ezra 7:11–26). Given this remarkable introduction, one may expect Ezra to dominate the narrative and exert power over the people, both as a priest and as a sage. Yet, the opposite proves to be the case.

 

The first half of Ezra 8 lists those who returned to Israel along with Ezra. Ezra involves others and gives them credit for their participation. At the conclusion of the roster, Ezra invites others to help bring Levites to Israel (Ezra 8:15–20). A certain Levite named Sherebiah is a particular success story for Ezra. He remains prominent throughout EN after having been empowered by Ezra (see Ezra 8:18, 24; Neh. 8:7; 9:4–5; 10:13; 12:8, 24). Ezra similarly appoints twelve other priests—though he is one himself—to care for the Temple treasures (Ezra 8:24–30). Despite the immense power and authority granted to him by King Artaxerxes, Ezra involves others and is surrounded by name lists. These features of Ezra’s leadership set the tone for his transferring most of his authority to the people.

 

Ezra’s reaction to the scourge of intermarriage follows the same pattern. Upon learning of the problem, Ezra pulls his hair in grief and prays on behalf of his people. Members of the community spontaneously join him:

When I heard this, I rent my garment and robe, I tore hair out of my head and beard, and I sat desolate. Around me gathered all who were concerned over the words of the God of Israel because of the returning exiles’ trespass…. (Ezra 9:3–4. All biblical quotations are NJPS translations.)

 

While Ezra was praying and making confession…a very great crowd of Israelites gathered about him…the people were weeping bitterly. (Ezra 10:1)

After the completion of this prayer, the people propose and implement the solution, with Ezra simply endorsing their plan (Ezra 10:2–4).

 

According to Ralbag on Ezra 10:44, Ezra was a brilliant strategist. He realized that confrontational top-down rebuke would not be effective, and he therefore contrived an alternate plan to bring members of his community into the process. However, one could argue that Ezra believed in this model of leadership as the ideal. He was not an authoritarian leader. He wanted others to take active leadership and participatory roles. He also wanted to create a leadership that could perpetuate itself, rather than forcing the community to become entirely dependent on him. Ezra is an exemplar of the dictum attributed to the Men of the Great Assembly in the first Mishnah in Avot: Ve-ha’amidu talmidim harbeh— raise up many disciples.

 

Nehemiah also is a strong God-fearing leader, but he is characterized differently from Ezra. When Nehemiah comes from Babylonia to Israel in 445 b.c.e., no other names are listed with him. Nehemiah dominates the narrative and forcefully exerts his own power and authority.

 

When Ezra had come to Israel thirteen years earlier, he declined a military escort, since he wanted to sanctify God’s Name to the King of Persia:

I proclaimed a fast there by the Ahava River to afflict ourselves before our God to beseech Him for a smooth journey for us and for our children and for all our possessions; for I was ashamed to ask the king for soldiers and horsemen to protect us against any enemy on the way, since we had told the king, “The benevolent care of our God is for all who seek Him, while His fierce anger is against all who forsake Him.” So we fasted and besought our God for this, and He responded to our plea. (Ezra 8:21–23)

In contrast, Nehemiah accepted a military escort:

The king also sent army officers and cavalry with me. (Neh. 2:9)

 

            We have seen that Ezra pulled his hair in sorrow upon learning of the intermarriage in his community. In contrast, Nehemiah threatens and uses physical force against the people:

Also at that time, I saw that Jews had married Ashdodite, Ammonite, and Moabite women; a good number of their children spoke the language of Ashdod and the language of those various peoples, and did not know how to speak Judean. I censured them, cursed them, flogged them, tore out their hair, and adjured them by God, saying, “You shall not give your daughters in marriage to their sons, or take any of their daughters for your sons or yourselves. (Neh. 13:23–25)

 

Ezra tears out his own hair; Nehemiah tears out others’ hair.

 

Another significant contrast between the two leaders arises during the one occasion they are seen together: the religious revival and covenant recorded in Nehemiah 8–10. The people gather together and invite Ezra—their accepted teacher—to read from the Torah. Ezra is not the one who initiates the ceremony. Ezra is flanked by thirteen other people (Neh. 8:4), again highlighting his allowing others to initiate and share center stage in every aspect of his leadership. The people voluntarily turn to Ezra because they respect him as a teacher, not because he exerts his authority over them.

 

Despite the narrator’s assertion that the people initiated the reformation and covenant (Neh. 8–10; cf. 12:44–47; 13:1–3), Nehemiah casts himself differently in his first-person report (Neh. 13). He repeatedly gives himself credit, almost as a poetic refrain:

O my God, remember me favorably for this, and do not blot out the devotion I showed toward the House of my God and its attendants. (v. 14)

 

This too, O my God, remember to my credit, and spare me in accord with your abundant faithfulness. (v. 22)

 

O my God, remember it to my credit! (v. 31)

 

And also:

 

O my God, remember to my credit all that I have done for this people! (Neh. 5:19)

 

Nehemiah’s repeated stress on his personal accomplishments stands out starkly, especially after the narrative in EN, which credits the people for their initiatives. Additionally, Nehemiah makes it appear that the religious state of the people was entirely dependent on him. He attributes the spiritual decline and other woes on the fact that he had left the community and returned to Babylonia (Neh. 13:6).

 

            To summarize, Ezra was given immense authority—but deliberately moderated it. Instead, he raised new leaders and engaged the members of the community to take active roles in their spiritual development. He surrounded himself with people and shared or transferred authority to others. He raised many disciples, thereby broadening the base of the leadership and also ensuring continuity rather than dependence on him. In turn, the people voluntarily gravitated to him for guidance and teaching. Nehemiah, on the other hand, tended to occupy center stage. He gave orders to others, and often threatened them and used physical force to implement his goals. He credited himself for his accomplishments, even though the narrator credits the people for their initiatives. He portrayed himself as an indispensable leader whose community failed as soon as he left them.

 

Both Ezra and Nehemiah were God-fearing individuals dedicated to rebuilding Israel physically and spiritually, and both were effective to a large degree. There are no explicit evaluations of either Ezra or Nehemiah by the narrator, typical of biblical narrative. Several rabbinic traditions give clear preference to Ezra, while showing ambivalence toward Nehemiah.

 

Rabbi Yosei said: Had Moses not preceded him, Ezra would have been worthy of receiving the Torah for Israel. (Sanhedrin 21b)

 

When [Hillel] died, they lamented over him, “Alas, the pious man! Alas, the humble man! Disciple of Ezra!” (Sotah 48b; cf. Sanhedrin 11a, Sukkah 20a)

 

By likening Ezra to Moses and by using Ezra as a paradigm for their beloved Hillel, these Sages enshrine Ezra as one of the greatest biblical figures.

Working on the assumption that Ezra and Nehemiah co-authored EN, the Sages wondered why the book was called only “Ezra” (as they referred to it). One responded that Nehemiah was penalized for his self-aggrandizement by having his name excluded from the title of the book:

The whole subject matter of [the book of] Ezra was narrated by Nehemiah the son of Hacaliah; why then was the book not called by his name? R. Jeremiah b. Abba said: Because he claimed merit for himself, as it is written (Neh. 5:19), “O my God, remember to my credit.” (Sanhedrin 93b)

Another believed that Nehemiah viewed himself as indispensible, while denigrating all other leaders as ineffective, though some of his predecessors certainly were righteous and competent:

R. Joseph said: Because he spoke disparagingly of his predecessors, as it is written (Neh. 5:15), “The former governors who preceded me laid heavy burdens on the people, and took from them bread and wine more than forty shekels of silver, etc.” (Sanhedrin 93b)

            It appears that the aforementioned Sages have balanced Nehemiah’s positive and negative traits when compared and contrasted with Ezra. These exceptional individuals from the biblical period, as interpreted in traditional rabbinic sources, have much to teach contemporary Jewish leaders about leadership.

 

For further study, see my article, “The Literary Significance of the Name Lists in Ezra-Nehemiah,” Jewish Bible Quarterly 35:3 (2007), pp. 143–152; and Tamara Cohn Eskenazi, In an Age of Prose: A Literary Approach to Ezra-Nehemiah (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1988).

 

 

Winning Wars and Minds

Winning Wars and Minds

(This Op Ed piece by Rabbi Marc D. Angel appears in the Jerusalem Post, July 25, 2025.)

Israel is fighting two wars, one on the battlefield, one in public opinion. On the battlefield, Israel has demonstrated amazing strength, courage, and brilliance. The IDF forces have accomplished remarkable victories.

In the war for pubic opinion, Israel is doing very badly. Many people and nations, even those supportive of Israel, cringe at the ongoing devastation in Gaza and the widespread suffering of its residents. Yes, much of the media coverage is slanted against Israel; yes, enemies of Israel exaggerate the extent of famine and death among Gazans. But the fact remains that the situation in Gaza is very bad. For Israel, Gaza is moral quicksand. 

When Israel occupies the moral high ground, it lives up to the ideal of being a “light unto the nations.” When Israel forfeits the moral high ground, it becomes the lightning rod of the nations. It opens itself to criticism, malevolence, and hostility. 

As Jews who have suffered first hand from expulsions, calls for the expulsion of other peoples from their lands should be a moral impossibility. As Jews who have known the horrors of concentration camps, it should not even be vaguely possible for anyone—let alone a former Prime Minister of Israel—to compare the situation in Gaza as in any way resembling concentration camps. 

Surely, Israel faces serious threats in Gaza but the threats are not only military; they are threats to our moral stature. Maintaining the moral high ground is not for the sake of public relations; it is for the sake of Israel’s own self-respect and self-understanding. Although Israel takes justifiable pride in the high moral standards of its military, it is essential to constantly evaluate and re-evaluate military and political strategies.

The world—including (and especially) Israel’s friends—need to hear Israel’s vision for the future. Will Israel offer a meaningful peace plan in spite of all the obstacles and negatives in the way? Will Israel extricate itself from the Gaza quicksand and offer a positive road forward for Israelis and Palestinians? Will Israeli leaders and spokespeople speak more of righteousness and justice, and less about military concerns? 

The prophet Isaiah taught (1:27): “Zion will be redeemed with justice and those that return to her with righteousness.”  These were wise words many centuries ago; they are wise words today.

 

How the Torah Broke with Ancient Political Thought

How the Torah Broke with Ancient Political Thought[1]

 

by Joshua Berman

 

 

 

For some, the proposition that the Torah needs to be understood in its ancient context seems to diminish from the sacredness and divinity of the text. However, it is precisely through appreciating the Torah in its ancient context that we can arrive at a set of illuminating insights into how the Torah stands out from that context and reveals its divinity, particularly in its approach to political thought.

 

In ways that were astonishingly new and counterintuitive, and in ways that served the purposes of no known interest group, the political philosophy of the Torah rose like a phoenix out of the intellectual landscape of the ancient Near East. Throughout the ancient world the truth was self-evident: All men were not created equal. It is in the five books of the Torah that we find the birthplace of egalitarian thought. When seen against the backdrop of ancient norms, the social blueprint espoused by the Torah represents a series of quantum leaps in a sophisticated and interconnected matrix of theology, politics, and economics.

 

Equality: A Brief History

 

To appreciate the claim that the Torah represents the dawn of egalitarian thought, let us set the idea in historical perspective. It is only in the European revolutions of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries that we find the rejection of the privileges of rank and nobility that resulted in the delegitimation of entrenched caste, feudal, and slave systems. Greece and Rome had known their respective reformers, yet nowhere in the classical world do we find a struggle to do away with class distinctions. Nor do we find this articulated as a desideratum by any of the ancient authors in their ideal systems. “From the hour of their birth,” wrote Aristotle, “some are marked out for subjection, others for rule.”[2] It was assumed that some would be rich and that many, many more would be poor—not simply because that was the way things were, but because that was the way things were actually supposed to be. Justice, for Aristotle, meant that equals would be treated as equals and unequals as unequals. The Greeks and Romans possessed an overwhelming belief in the harmony of various classes.

The medieval mindset, too, believed that an ordered society was one in which each socioeconomic class performed its tasks for the common good. Social stratification was likewise endemic to the empires and lands of the ancient Near East. Nowhere in the region is there articulated the ideal of a society without class divisions founded on the control of economic, military, and political power. It is not merely that the notion of social mobility was unknown to the ancient world; it would have been unthinkable. These cultures believed that the only way that a society could function was if everyone knew his or her station in life. The modern ideas of free choice and equal opportunity would have struck them as surefire recipes for anarchy and chaos. It is in the books of the Torah that we find the world’s first blueprint for a social and religious order that seeks to lessen stratification and hierarchy and to place an unprecedented emphasis on the well-being and status of the common person.

 

Religion and Class in the Ancient World

 

The Torah’s revolution of political thought begins with its theology. The attempt to treat things political as distinct from things religious is a thoroughly modern notion; in not a single culture in the ancient Near East is there a word for “religion” as distinct from “state.” To appreciate the ancient mindset and the conceptual default settings that it supplied, imagine that we are archaeologists digging up an ancient culture called “America.” Deciphering its religious texts, we discover that the paramount god of the pantheon bore the title “Commander in Chief,” resided in a heavenly palace called “White House,” and would traverse the heavens in his vehicle, “Chariot One.” We further discover that Commander in Chief had a consort known as “First Lady”—herself a goddess of apparently meager powers, yet assumed by some to be a barometer of desirable values and fashionable dress. In the heavens was another palace, this one domed and populated by 535 lesser, regional deities, who routinely schemed and coalesced into partisan groupings, and who were known, on occasion, to have been able to depose the Commander in Chief.

 

Put differently, what we would discover is that the institutional order “down below” manifests the divine order of the cosmos “up above.” This phenomenon, wherein the political structure of the heavens mirrored that of the earthly realm, was widespread in the ancient world, and it is easy to see why. Political regimes are, by definition, artificial, constructed, and therefore tenuous. Always implicit is the question: Why should he reign? The imposed institutional order can receive immeasurable legitimation, however, if the masses underfoot believe that it is rooted in ultimate reality and unchanging truth, that the significance of the political order is located in a cosmic and sacred frame of reference. Ancient religion is the self-interested distortion that masks the human construction and exercise of power.

 

For example, we find that Enlil, the chief god of the Mesopotamian pantheon, utterly resembles his earthly counterpart, the king. Enlil, like his earthly counterpart, rules by delegating responsibilities to lesser dignitaries and functionaries. Like his earthly counterpart, he presides over a large assembly. He resides in a palace with his wives, children, and extended “house.” Generally speaking, the gods struggled to achieve a carefree existence and enjoyed large banquets in their honor. Like kings, gods needed a palace, or what we would call a temple, where they, too, could reside in splendor in separation from the masses, with subjects caring for them in a host of earthly matters.

 

If a god wanted something—say a temple repaired, or the borders expanded—he communicated through various agents with the king, and the king was his focus. The gods never spoke to the masses, nor imparted instruction to them. Within ancient cosmologies, the masses served a single purpose: to toil and offer tribute. They were servants, at the lowest rung of the metaphysical hierarchy. The gods were interested in the masses to the extent that a baron or feudal lord would have interest in ensuring the well-being of the serfs that run the estate and supply its needs. Servants, no doubt, play a vital role in any monarchical order, but it is an instrumental role. From an existential perspective, it is a decidedly diminished and undignified role.

 

Religion and Class in the Torah

 

By contrast, the Torah’s central accounts—the Exodus and the Revelation at Sinai—preempt claims of election and immanent hierarchy within the Israelite nation. The Exodus story effectively meant that no member of the children of Israel could lay claim to elevated status. All emanate from the Exodus—a common, seminal, liberating, but most importantly equalizing event. Although we normally think of the Revelation at Sinai in religious terms, its political implications are no less dramatic, and constitute the bedrock of the Torah’s egalitarian theology. Elsewhere, the gods communicated only to the kings, and had no interest in the masses. But at Sinai, God spoke only to the masses, without delineating any role whatever for kings and their attendant hierarchies. The ancients had no problem believing that the gods could split the seas, or descend on a mountaintop in a storm of fire. Nevertheless, the stories of the Exodus and Sinai necessitated an enormous stretch of the imagination, because they required listeners to believe in political events that were without precedent and utterly improbable, even in mythological terms. Slaves had never been known to overthrow their masters. Gods had never been known to speak to an entire people.

 

The pact or covenant between God and Israel displays many common elements with what are known in biblical studies as ancient Near Eastern vassal treaties, which were formed between a great king and a weaker one. In these treaties, we typically find that the more powerful king acts on behalf of a weaker, neighboring king; sensing an opportunity to foster a loyal ally, he may send food during a famine, or soldiers to break a siege. In return, the lesser king demonstrates his appreciation to the powerful one by agreeing to a series of steps that express his gratitude and fealty. In these treaties the vassal king retains his autonomy and is treated like royalty when he visits the palace of the powerful king. Having been saved from Egypt by God, the children of Israel sign on at Sinai to a vassal treaty as sign of fealty, becoming junior partners to the sovereign king, God. The theological breakthrough of the Torah was the transformation of the metaphysical status of the masses, of the common person, to a new height, and the vitiation of nobles, royalty, and the like. The common man, in short, received an upgrade from king’s servant to servant king.

 

Yet no less significant is the Torah’s call that these stories should be promulgated among the people as their history. The point requires a note of context for us as moderns. Although there are over one million inscriptions in our possession from the ancient Near East, there is nowhere evidence of a national narrative that a people tells itself about its collective, national life, of moments of achievement or of despair, recorded for posterity. Stories abound in the ancient Near East—but they revolve around the exploits of individual gods, kings, and nobles. The most important audience of these materials was the gods themselves—as witnessed by the fact that these texts were often discovered in temple libraries, buried, or in other inaccessible locations. Myths were recited to remind the gods of their responsibilities. Details of a king’s achievements on the battlefield were to constitute a report to a deity about the king’s activities on his or her behalf; they were not composed for the masses. The Kadesh Inscriptions of Rameses II were the exception that proves the rule: Those inscriptions were not only textual, but pictorial; and they were not only carved on stone, but copied and disseminated via papyri. However, most inscriptions of royal activity in ancient times were limited to monumental structures in writing that was inaccessible to the common person.

We may take a page from the history of technology of communication to understand the implication of the Torah’s call to promulgate the accounts of Israel’s early history. The distribution of printed texts in the early modern period is said to have occasioned the birth of modern citizenship within the nation-state. The vernacular languages that were now fashioned and standardized led to the creation of newspapers and novels designed for a mass readership comprised of people who were in disparate locales but could now envision themselves as a public sharing a common heritage, destiny, and range of interests—religious, social, and political. People could now imagine themselves as a political collective, and thus was born the political “we.”

 

It is in the Torah that we see for the first time the realization that the identity of a people may be formed around an awareness of its past. Indeed, the Hebrew Bible is the first work of literature before the Hellenistic period that may be termed a national history. Moreover, the Torah displays an attitude toward the dissemination of texts among the populace that is in sharp contrast to the relationship between texts and society that we find elsewhere in the ancient Near East. It is a contrast, further, that is a reflection of the egalitarian agenda that the Torah seeks to pursue, over against the entrenchment of class distinctions. In an age and place such as our own, where literacy is nearly ubiquitous, access to texts of many kinds and the knowledge they bear is unfettered and, in theory, available to all. But in the ancient world physical access to written texts and the skills necessary to read them were everywhere highly restricted. Indeed, in the cultures of the ancient Near East as well as of ancient Greece, the production and use of texts was inextricably bound up with the formation of class distinctions: Those who possessed the capacity to read and write were members of a trained scribal class who worked in the service of the ruling order.

 

Writing in the ancient Near East was originally a component of bureaucratic activity. Systems of writing were essential for the administration of large states. Indeed, the elite in these cultures had a vested interest in the status quo, which prevented others from gaining control of an important means of communication. Far from being interested in its simplification, scribes often chose to proliferate signs and values. The texts produced in Mesopotamia were composed exclusively by scribes and exclusively for scribal use—administrative or cultic—or for the training of yet other scribes.

The Cambridge anthropologist Jack Goody notes that a culture’s willingness to disseminate its religious literature inevitably reflects an emphasis on the individual within that culture.[3] The comment sheds light on the Torah’s agenda to establish an ennobled egalitarian citizenry, as we are witness to an impetus within the biblical vision to share the divine word with the people of Israel. Moses reads the divine word to the people at Sinai (Ex. 24:1–8). Periodically, the people are to gather at the Temple and hear public readings of the Torah (Deut. 31:10–13). It is telling that the Tanakh never depicts kohanim or scribes as jealous or protective of their writing skills, as is found in neighboring cultures.

 

In sum, we have seen something remarkable about the most basic, familiar aspects of the Torah. The idea of covenant; the story of the Exodus; the fact that the Torah is a written, publicized text—these are as significant politically as they are religiously. They each point to the equal and high standing of the common person in Israel.

 

The Torah’s Radical Conception of Political Office

 

Turning from theology, we see that the Torah radically revamped regnant notions of political office and the exercise of power. What is most striking about the Torah’s statements on political office are two radical ideas about how these offices are to be governed. First, we are witness here to the transition from the law of rule to the rule of law. Elsewhere in the ancient world, the kings composed and promulgated law, but were above it, not subject to it. Before the thinkers of Athens came along, the Torah arrived at the notion of equality before the law. All public institutions in the Torah—the judiciary, the priesthood, the monarchy, the institution of prophecy—are subordinated to the law. Moreover, the law is a public text whose dictates are meant to be widely known, thus making abuse of power more obvious and safeguarding the common citizenry.

Second, we may see that the most important body of authority in the polity envisioned by the Torah is none other than the people themselves. The Torah addresses the fraternal and egalitarian citizenry in the second person, “you,” and charges them with appointing a king—if they desire one—and appointing judges. Put differently, the Torah specifies no nominating body for appointing leaders or representatives. Rather, the collective “you”—the common citizenry—bears ultimate responsibility to choose a king and to appoint judges. From American history we know how unthinkable it was only a few generations ago for many to contemplate the notion that persons of color or women should play a role in choosing who rules. For the royal monarchies of the ancient Near East, the notion that the masses—who elsewhere were serfs and servants—would hold any sway over those that ruled them was equally unfathomable.

 

If the people did elect to have a king, the Torah was determined that he should be but a shadow of what a king was elsewhere. Elsewhere kings played central roles in the cult. In the Torah he plays none. Elsewhere, the king aims to build a strong army. The Torah calls for him to have a limited treasury and to forgo a cavalry (Deut. 17:16–17), limitations that would leave him commanding only a small army. Moreover, were a royal chariot force to serve as the backbone of the nation’s defense, it would inevitably emerge as an elite military class. The great jurist of Athens, Solon, extended preferred status to the members of the cavalry over other citizens. But what confers status in the Torah is citizenship in the covenantal community, and this is shared by all. Elsewhere, the king would consolidate his power through a network of political marriages. The Torah forbids the king from taking a large number of wives (Deut. 17:17).

 

Finally, we see in the Torah a page in the history of constitutional thought, one that would not be written again until the American founding. It pertains to a highly advanced notion of the separation of powers. Classical Greek political thought had already understood that in the absence of a strong center in the figure of a monarch or a tyrant, factionalism threatened the stability of the polity. It was inevitable that the population would contain rich and poor, nobles and commoners. The absence of homogeneity led classical theorists to balance power by ensuring that each faction within society would receive a share of the rule. Yet, the balance of power was not a balance of institutions of government, as we are accustomed to today. Rather, the balance was achieved by allowing each of the socioeconomic factions a functioning role within each seat of government. Thus, in Roman jurist Polybius’ conception, the legislative branch of government in the republic was to consist of two bodies—the senate for the nobles and the assembly for the commoners—with each institution permanently enshrined in law.

 

The notion that the effective division of power was predicated upon its distribution across preexisting societal seats of power was one that would hold sway throughout most of the history of republican thought, from Roman theorists through early modern thinkers. It is central even to the thinking of Montesquieu, the father of modern constitutional theory, who is credited with proposing the separation of powers into three branches—executive, legislative, and judiciary—in his 1748 work, The Spirit of the Laws. Looking at the English model of his day, Montesquieu held that the legislative power should consist of a body of hereditary nobles and of a body of commoners. He saw hereditary nobility not as a necessary evil, nor even as an immutable fact of life, but rather as a boon to effective government. The nobility, with its inherent wealth and power, would serve as a moderating force within government against the abuses of the monarch. Moreover, the fact that the nobility’s strength was derived from its own resources would endow its members with a sense of independence. This, together with developed education and time for reflection, would enable the nobles to contribute to effective government in a way that members of the lower classes could not. Montesquieu could not conceive of a classless society and a regime in which the division of powers was purely institutional and instrumental, where the eligibility to hold office was independent of class.

 

Here the Torah stands distinct. For the first time in history we see the articulation of a division of at least some powers along lines of institution and instrument rather than of class and kinship, where office legitimizes preexisting societal seats of power. Anyone who is “among your brethren” (Deut. 17:15) is eligible to be appointed king. Moreover, the king is appointed by the collective “you” that we mentioned before. How that selection occurs, apparently, is an issue that the Torah deliberately left open so as to imply that there is no body that a priori has a greater divine imprimatur than any other. In this sense, the Torah’s notion of offices that are entirely institutional and instrumental is an idea that would again appear only with the American Founding Fathers.

 

The same is true with regard to the judiciary, as outlined in the book of Deuteronomy. Anyone may be appointed judge, and no less importantly, anyone, in theory, is eligible to participate in the process of appointing judges (Deut. 16:17). One could have thought of any number of bodies that could have been charged with appointing judges: the king, the prophets, the kohanim, or other judges. But the Torah insists: “Judges and officers you shall appoint for yourself” (16:18). The appointment of judges is mandated with the sole purpose of achieving the execution of justice, rather than the assignment of office to perpetuate the standing of a noble class. As Montesquieu noted in the eighteenth century, it is critical that the people appoint judges, so that they have faith in the justice that is meted out. The only source prior to Montesquieu to arrive at this insight was the Torah.

 

God the Economist

 

The Torah understood that in order to create an egalitarian order, it would also need to re-envision the economic structure of society, for without equity, there is no equality. What the Torah proposes is the Western tradition’s first prescription for an economic order that seeks to minimize the distinctions of class based on wealth, and instead to ensure the economic benefit of the common citizen.

 

A ubiquitous feature of the socioeconomic landscape of the ancient Near East was the threat faced by the common person of falling into irreversible insolvency. Social stratification would emerge as the common people would have to sell off their farm animals, their land, and even their own freedom to repay debts. Famine, drought, or war could lead to precisely the kind of economic landscape we witness in the account of Egypt under Joseph, in Genesis 47. The Torah sought to remedy this through radical legislation on several fronts. Elsewhere, the norm was that land was owned by the palace and by the temple. The Torah, in contrast, knows of no land holding for either king or cult. Instead, nearly the entire land is given to the people themselves, in an association of free farmers and herdsmen, subsumed within a single social class. The idea that wide tracts of available land should be divided among the commoners was unprecedented. Perhaps the most famous example of such an initiative from modern times is the American Homestead Act of 1862. With the Great Plains open to mass settlement, nearly any person 21 years of age or older could acquire, at virtually no cost, a tract of 160 acres that would become his after five years of residence and farming. For millions of new arrivals and other landless Americans, the Homestead Act was an opportunity to acquire assets and to bring equality of economic standing in line with equality before the law.

 

The Torah also took specific aim at the institution of taxation. Elsewhere, taxes to the state and to the cult were deeply integrated. In the Torah, no taxes are specified for the state. Of course, no regime would be able to function without taxing its populace—but the Torah apparently envisioned that taxes would be levied without sacral sanction, as was so prevalent elsewhere. God would not be invoked as the tax collector. Moreover, far less surplus is demanded from the people of Israel for the Temple than was customary in the imperial cults of the ancient Near East.

 

Whereas elsewhere cultic personnel controlled vast tracts of land, the Torah balances the status that these groups maintain in the cult by denying them arable lands of their own. They are dependent upon the people they represent for their subsistence, and in some passages are even grouped together with other categories of the underprivileged. The Torah further legislates that one type of tax—the ma’aser ani—should not be paid to the Temple at all, but rather distributed to the needy—the first known program of taxation legislated for a social purpose (Deut. 14:28–29).

 

What is most remarkable about the Torah’s economic reforms is the manner in which the new economy is incorporated into a new measure of time. Elsewhere in the ancient Near East, the calendar was based upon readily perceptible astronomical rhythms: The counting of days stems from observing the rising and setting of the sun; of months, from observations of the waxing and waning of the moon; of years, from observing the seasons and position of the sun. The ancient Near East, however, knows no calendar that incorporates the notion of a week. The week is the invention of the Torah, and is rooted, of course, in the Torah’s account of Creation, in which God worked for six days and rested on the seventh. The result is that throughout the Torah the Shabbat principle determines the schedule of the laws of social welfare, and serves as a great equalizing force between haves and have-nots. Shabbat day is a day of rest for all. In the seventh year—the Sabbatical year—the field lies fallow and is available for all to enjoy, and debt release is enacted. Time itself is marshaled in the establishment of the egalitarian agenda.

 

A Revolutionary Document

 

What power interest could have been served by this program? We have already seen that it was a program that favored neither the king, nor the rich, nor the priesthood. Prophets are hardly mentioned in the Torah, and the criteria set out for validating an individual as a prophet are exacting in the extreme. Sages or philosophers are nowhere mentioned at all. No immediate candidate jumps out of the pages of the Torah as the interested party in the formulation of this new egalitarian order.

 

Throughout the ancient world, the truth was self-evident: All men were not created equal. They saw the world they had created and, behold, it was good. It was good, they deemed, because it was ordered around a rigid hierarchy, where everyone knew his station in life, each according to his class. For the first time in history, the Torah presented a vision to the masses in which the gods were something other than their own selves writ large, a vision with a radically different understanding of God and humanity. It introduced new understandings of the law, of political office, of military power, of taxation, of social welfare. It conceived in radically new ways the importance of national narrative, of technologies of communication, and of a culture’s calibration of time. What we find in the Torah is a platform for social order marked with the imprint of divinity. Within the annals of political thought it is difficult to think of another document that revolutionized so much in such anonymity, and with so little precedent to inspire it.

 

Of course, these notions of equality are but early precursors of our more developed notions of equality today. Yet, the Torah instructs us with the implicit understanding that society changes, and with it, the form in which we fulfill God’s will. We can marvel at how utterly removed the Torah’s political thought was from the prevailing spirit about such things in ancient times. And, at the same time, we can appreciate that without believing that we are limited to the notion of equality as it had been expressed in those ancient times. Rather, the Torah serves as an inspiration for the further elaboration of those ideas as times change and events warrant so doing.

 

 

[1] This chapter is a concise presentation of the arguments I make in my monograph, Created Equal: How the Bible Broke with Ancient Political Thought (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

[2] Aristotle, Politics BK1 1254a20, translation by Benjamin Jowett, available at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.1.one.html.

[3] Jack Goody, The Logic of Writing and the Organization of Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 2.

Rabbi Kook and the Modernization of Judaism

 

 

Rabbi Abraham Yitzhak ha-Cohen Kook (1865–1935) is, without doubt, one of the most celebrated rabbis of the twentieth century. He is known to most people simply as Rav Kook, the founder of Religious Zionism, and we frequently overlook the fact that the foundations of his teachings reflect a deep modernization of the Jewish faith itself and of its approach to an array of contemporary problems.

To discuss the religious approach to the role of the Jewish people and the State of Israel in today’s world, we must turn to the ideas of Rav Kook who saw Zionism in a religious light. At the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth centuries, Zionism was not seen as an aspect of Judaism. In fact, it contradicted Judaism in many ways, and occasionally even came into sharp conflict with some of Judaism’s conceptions.

Despite these contradictions, Rav Kook not only “supported” Zionism, as did many rabbis, but he also formulated Zionism in religious terms. Furthermore, he demonstrated Zionism’s importance for the development and deepening of Judaism. We will examine how Rav Kook’s conception of Zionism shaped a more profound form of Judaism.

The central idea of monotheism is that God created humankind in His likeness. The individual is the image of God, and our entire life is a dialogue with Him. All of our actions are the words we speak to God, and everything that happens to us is His answer to us. Rav Kook’s main philosophical concept is that the Jewish understanding of life as a dialogue with God has not one but two central themes: a dialogue on an individual level and a dialogue at the national level, i.e. a dialogue between God and the Nation.

The religious significance of the State of Israel is that its very creation compels the Jewish people to act as a single entity. Zionism and the creation of the State of Israel bring the Jewish people back into a full dialogue with God.

Rav Kook was a poet by nature, not a university professor. Thus, he believed that mysteries are explained only by other mysteries. This approach makes a systematic study of Rav Kook’s philosophy difficult. In the following article, we will attempt to outline Rav Kook’s philosophy in more concrete terms.

1. A Step in the Development of Judaism

According to Rav Kook, one vital step in the evolution of Judaism is the revival of those sparks of Divine light that have hitherto been lost, or that were insufficiently realized in the process of historical development. It must be noted that the outline presented below represents a simplification of Rav Kook’s views. It is described in more detail in his article, “The War of Ideas and Faiths” (Orot, p. 129; see also Shemona Kevatzim 1:16).

The central problem Rav Kook faced was the wave of Jewish souls leaving Judaism for various ideological movements alien to it. This wave was particularly strong in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when many deserted yeshivas closed their doors and Jewish youth turned en mass to secular Zionism, socialism, or other “isms.” According to the mainstream Orthodox view, these departing youths were “lost and mistaken,” the problem was thought to lie

in them—they were not taught correctly, they did not fully understand their traditions, and so forth. Thus, the task of religious leadership was to influence these souls through explanation and teaching so that they would return to Judaism.

It was at this moment that Rav Kook proposed an entirely different approach to the problem. According to him, the reason Jews were rejecting the Torah lay not only in the error of their ways, but also in the flaws of the modern religious world—in Judaism as it existed at the time. In order to bring about the return to Judaism of those who had fled, it was necessary not to drag them back to the Judaism that they had rejected, but to correct the defects within Judaism itself. Then those Jewish souls would gradually return of their own accord to the renewed Judaism of tomorrow. In other words, Rav Kook regarded the exodus of Jews from Judaism as an indicator of the presence of flaws in Judaism; furthermore, he saw it as a sign that the time was ripe for correcting these defects and believed that social/historical circumstances required that we do so without delay.

Basing his approach on Kabbalah, Rav Kook maintained that if a large number of Jews rushed to a particular ideology under the banner of morality and virtue, this meant that despite its apparent distance from Judaism, or even hostility to it, that ideology must contain a spark of Divine light. The anti-religious appearance of this alien ideology would merely be its shell, which fed off the energy of the spark inside. It is that spark, not the shell, that attracts the souls of those who turn away from Judaism, as Jewish souls, on the whole, are drawn to good and reach for it innately. Furthermore, the “breach”—the spontaneous, morally grounded mass movement of the Jewish people—is itself an indicator of the ripeness of the spark, a sign that it is time for its activation.

2. The Teaching of Rav Kook as Torat haKelal, Teaching for the Entire Nation
Of course, Rav Kook did not believe that every Jew is an entirely upright person, who strives for good in every deed. We know perfectly well that among Jews there are plenty of fools and criminals. However, when a large group of Jews leave their tradition for another ideology, we see not the rejection of the Torah by an individual Jew, but a socially significant movement. Such a movement is always accompanied by a sense of moral righteousness declared and subjectively felt by its participants. Without this sense, a social movement cannot develop.

Rav Kook believed that a human sense of morality, which is the manifestation of God in the individual, is the world’s driving force. Therefore, he viewed a spontaneous, morally grounded social movement by the Jewish people as a definitive manifestation of the role of the Jews as the chosen people—even though the form that this manifestation takes might directly contradict the directives of the Torah—and held that we must, in the end, view the situation as “hitgalut Elokim,” the revelation of the Divine.

Thus, Rav Kook’s teaching is a Torat haKelal, a teaching of national unity, viewing the Jewish people as an integral whole, capable only as a single entity of bringing the Torah to the world, and seeing disparate groups within the Jewish people as essential parts of the whole.

3. Flaws in Judaism and the Process of their Correction
Continuing our analysis of the outline for Judaism’s development, it is important to note that the ideas presented so far—that inside every shell are concealed sparks of holiness and Divine light, that the shell feeds off the energy of this spark, and that Jewish souls carry within themselves—the role of the chosen and the attraction to good—do not constitute the unique and truly revolutionary teaching of Rav Kook, as all of these ideas have been stated and discussed many times in Kabbalah and in Chassidism.

The true revolution in thinking put forth by Rav Kook lies in the proposition that this situation arises due not only to the attraction of the sparks, but, above all, to a defect in Judaism as it exists, evidenced in the lack or insufficient activity of a given spark within it.

The process of activating the spark involves several stages. The first step is to extract the sparks from the shell (see Shemona Kevatzim 1:71, also p. 63, passage 9). Guided by our Divine moral intuition, we must explore and determine the precise nature of the Divine spark that is drawing masses of Jewish souls to a particular ideology. To do this, it is necessary not only to approach the views of those who have joined the new ideology or movement with extreme respect and deep attention, but also to demonstrate genuine sympathy for the “ism” itself.

In the language of Kabbalah, we must feel the Divine spark locked within the foreign ideology. Clearly, in order to extract the spark from any specific “ism,” it is necessary, while staying within the framework of Judaism, to show sympathy toward the “ism,” as sympathy and empathy are the first steps toward understanding. But any individual religious person may not sympathize with every ideology. Some may simply be too deeply repulsive to him or her. This merely shows that this person is not equipped to extract the spark of Divine light from those particular “isms.” Rather, that person must work with those ideologies that he finds himself naturally in accord with, as only in them he or she will be able to find the spark of Divine light. It is impossible for any one person to sense the sparks in all “isms,” and it is wrong to attempt to spread oneself so thin. Every person must focus on what is genuinely close to his or her Divine soul.
At this stage, those who, in the course of their lives, have spent time near to or even within the foreign ideology being examined may play an especially important role. In particular, when Western values are integrated into Judaism—or, to put it more precisely and formally, when those sparks of Divine light that nourish the values of contemporary Western culture are revived within Judaism—an important role must be played both by Jews from Western countries and by Jews from Russia, who have been educated in the crucible of totalitarianism and communism.

The process of identifying the Divine sparks in secular ideologies is only the beginning of our work since, as stated above, we cannot integrate that spark into Judaism directly. Such a heavy-handed transplant would lead to a rejection of the tissue, which could even result in the death of the entire organism. Therefore, unlike Reform Judaism, which swallows the spark whole from the other teachings and so takes in with it elements of shell that radically contradict the Jewish approach and tradition, the Modern Orthodoxy of Rav Kook strives before all else to find this spark’s native, authentic manifestation in Judaism. Orthodoxy must seek out the spark and its true Jewish form in the fundamental tenets of Judaism—that is, in the complete and ideal Judaism, encompassing all the ideas contained in all of its texts and oral traditions. To do this work, one must not only be an expert in Torah, Halakha, and Aggadah, but one must also have the particular wisdom to sense behind the traditionally expressed formulations the deep contemporary content that accurately reflects their Divine light while resonating in today’s world.

Next, the given spark must be cultivated within a renewed Judaism. The process of the cultivation of sparks is carried out in our model through modern Judaism, as it does not alter the existing, historically formed Judaism, but supplements and corrects it. (See for example, Midot HaRe’aya, Emuna (Faith) 28.) The concept presented here is not Reformism, which is associated with the abolition of ritual commandments, but Modern Orthodoxy, in which a process of development is continually taking place alongside the preservation of tradition. Judaism loses nothing, but only increases.

Rav Yochanan Fried, who studied at Mercaz HaRav in the seventies, gives an example of this complementary kind of learning. He once received a letter which related how two Mercaz HaRav students, Yochanan Fried and Hanan Porat, were invited by Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook to the Ein Harod Kibbutz to participate in a discussion on “What does the youth do in its free time.” When their turn came to speak their mind, they said, “Yeshiva students don’t have free time. Therefore, we don’t have this kind of problem. Yeshiva students are above all this—we study Torah continuously and don’t have time for recreation.” As a result of their words, an hour-and-a-half long discussion evolved, at the end of which a women sitting at the end of the hall stood up and asked, “If you are so great, what can you learn from us?” When Rav Tzvi Yehuda later heard about the question, he asked the students, “What did you answer her?” When they responded that they didn’t answer anything, he criticized them. “Be ashamed of yourselves! You traveled all the way to Ein Harod and didn’t learn anything about love of the land and about hard work? You didn’t learn anything from the wonderful relationships that exist between members of Ein Harod?” This encounter gave rise to a correspondence between Rav Tzvi Yehuda and Hanan Porat, who published his letters in his book Et Ahai Anohi Mevakesh (first published as Et Anat Anohi Mevakesh).

As a result of the activation of the spark, the defect in Judaism is corrected, and Judaism takes a new developmental step. In place of the existing Judaism of today comes the Judaism of tomorrow. Furthermore, because the spark whose light had been attracting the souls who left in process is now restored and active within Judaism, these souls begin to return to Judaism (see Shemona Kevatzim 8:51).

Of course, we do not in any way mean to say that those who will return to Judaism are the very same people who earlier left it. The step in development described here occurs over the course of several decades, and those who have left have left. At the individual level, a return to Judaism is possible at any moment; but the return of a whole generation is impossible without the restoration of that spark that gives life to the new ideology and that triggered the exodus from Judaism in the first place—a process that must ripen over many decades. Finally, people with “kindred souls” to those who left earlier now return, as they are the souls attracted to this particular spark—but this takes place two to four generations. In other words, it is their spiritual grandchildren and great grandchildren.

4. Example 1: The Integration of Sparks from Zionism
We will now use examples to illustrate how this model functions in practice.
For the first example, we will examine a fairly simple “ism,” with regard to which the above model has been fully carried out from beginning to end: secular Zionism.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, “Judaism” and “Zionism” were not only contradictory, but in many ways hostile to one another. The first heralds of Zionism were religious (Rav Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer, Rav Yehuda Ben Shlomo Chai Alkalai, and others) but they did not succeed in creating a mass movement. The Zionist mass movement sprang up in the twentieth century and was mostly secular. At that time, the slogan of secular Zionism was “we will become a nation like all others.” This entailed, in particular, the abandonment of religious principles as a basis for Jewish self-identification in favor of a civil-national identity. Because of this, many rabbis condemned secular Zionism as an attempt to destroy the Torah and traditional Judaism.

Under these circumstances, Rav Kook took an entirely different position. He maintained that we should not berate secular Zionism for being outwardly wrong, that is, for straying from the Jewish heritage, the Torah, and God. His method was not to focus on the outward defects of Zionism, but to seek out its inner truth, to find its Divine spark and then, to correct the existing Judaism accordingly by integrating into it the spark that had attracted Jewish souls to secular Zionism. As Rav Kook writes,
The nefesh [that is, the lower part of the soul in kabbalistic tradition] of sinners of Israel in the “footsteps of Messiah”—those who join lovingly the causes of the Jewish people, Land of Israel and the national revival—is more corrected than the nefesh of the perfect believers of Israel who lack the advantage of the essential feeling for the good of the people and the building of the nation and land. But the ruah [that is, the higher part of the soul] is much more corrected in the God-fearing and Torah observant… The tikkun [correction] will come about through the “Light of Messiah”… Israel should bond together, and the nefesh of the observant will be corrected by the perfection of nefesh of the better transgressors, in regard to communal affairs, and material and spiritual ideals attained to human understanding and perception. Whereas the ruah of these transgressors will be corrected by the influence of the God-fearing, observant and great of faith. And thereby both groups will receive Great Light… The higher tsaddikim, masters of neshama [the third and highest part of soul] will be the uniting conduits, through which the light of the nefesh will flow from left to right, and the light of the ruah from right to left…This will be accomplished through the light of Messiah, who is David himself, who erected the yoke of teshuvah. For the sake of David, Your servant, do not rebuff Your Messiah.” (Arfilei Tohar, § 21, published also in Orot, Orot HaTehiya 51)

The situation was somewhat simplified by the fact that this spark consisted of the desire to resurrect a full and authentic Jewish national life in the land of Israel. Not only does this ideology not contradict Judaism, as many mistakenly believed at the beginning of the twentieth century, but, on the contrary, it is an essential condition for Judaism’s further existence and development. Therefore, Rav Kook focused on the study of those sources in Judaism that address the religious significance of Jews coming back to their Land [See, for example, Orot HaTehiya 8]. In his articles and books, he conducted a thorough and deep analysis of these sources, and he made this analysis the central component of his educational program at the Zionist “world-wide Yeshiva” (Merkaz haRav) that he founded. After his death, Rav Kook’s students, and especially his son, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, brought up a new generation of rabbis and religious activists at that yeshiva, for whom Zionism—the claiming of the Land of Israel and active participation in its government—was an integral part of the living Judaism that they studied, taught, and abided by. Graduates of the yeshiva Merkaz haRav transmitted the same active contemporary Zionist spirit to their students and to the religious circles they influenced.

Since this teaching was in keeping with the times, it began to spread far and wide. All of this took place as an undercurrent over the course of nearly half a century, from the 1920s to the 1970s. And when, after the Six Day War (1967) and especially after the Yom Kippur War (1973), the question of creating Jewish settlements in the territories of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza came up, the tens of thousands of students of Rav Kook’s school, united in the movement Gush Emunim, were the driving force behind the new wave of Zionism.

In other words, in the 1970s and 1980s, the religious Zionists—that is, the adherents of Modern Orthodoxy, Rav Kook’s school—became the leading Zionist group in the country. The perceptions of society were transformed: People’s ideas of “Zionism” and “Judaism” ceased to contradict one another and drew closer. The struggle for the settlement of the Land of Israel by Jews took on a religious character far different from the anti-religious character it had had at the beginning of the twentieth century. As a result, those who had a Zionist soul, who cared about Jewish settlement in Israel, began to draw closer to Judaism, rather than to distance themselves from it. One could say that in the late twentieth century, Zionism “returned” to Judaism the souls that it had “borrowed” at the beginning of the century.

As a result of all of these processes, the right wing of Israeli society (that is, people who seek to settle and claim all of the territory of the Land of Israel) is today significantly closer to religious values than the left wing. This distinction is so strong that the expression “religious right” has become a stock phrase in the Israeli political lexicon. In the 1920s, it was the opposite—those concerned with the settlement of Israel were significantly farther from religion than those who were indifferent to the issue. In this way Judaism has completed a step in its development, having extracted a spark from secular Zionism. A side-effect of drawing “Zionist souls” to religion was, in particular, that hardly any such souls remained on the atheist side; this has led to the fact that today secularism is most often associated with a rejection of Zionism, or “post-Zionism.”

5. Example 2: The Integration of Sparks from Atheism
We will now examine a different example, one that may appear shocking at first, but that nevertheless fits within Rav Kook’s overall model for approaching secular ideologies (see, for example, Orot Hakodesh 3, Musar Hakodesh, pp. 125–127, 129.) Specifically, we will apply the system described above to atheism. We will attempt to carry out the process of extracting a spark of Divine light and furthering the development of Judaism by means of atheism.

Rav Kook writes,

Atheism displays the power of life. Therefore, the real spiritual heroes extract sparks of great kindness from their atheism and turn its bitterness into sweetness. (Arfilei Tohar, § 120)

The destructive wind of disbelief will purify all the filth that gathered in the lower realm of the spirit of faith... all will grow in purity and strength, in supernal holiness, from the firm, pure exalted kernel, which no negativity can affect. Its light will shine as a new light upon Zion with a wondrous greatness. (Shemona Kevatzim 1:476, Orot haTehiyah, ch. 51, p. 199)

Atheism, according to our model, fully qualifies as an outside “ism.” It stands in opposition to Judaism, it displays the banner of rejection of religion, yet Jews join its ranks in significant numbers, proclaiming its morality and worth.

Because in Rav Kook’s time atheism was actively growing and attracting supporters,
Rav Kook devoted a significant amount of attention to its analysis in his works (for example, Midot HaRe’aya, Emuna (Faith), pp. 27–28; Orot Ha’Emuna, Kfira (Heresy), p. 84). As always in his approach to a foreign ideology, Rav Kook did not focus on a critique of atheism’s mistakes, its rejection of God and tradition, and so forth. This would have been trivial, and it was attended to at the time by much of the religious establishment. Rather, he attempted to understand where the deep attraction of atheism lay, what was in it that drew Jewish souls, and how Judaism needed to evolve so that, instead of leaving, souls of this type would find their rightful place in it.
What is the “spiritual core” of atheism, its Divine spark? In order to find this, we can ask the following question: From where do members of this group derive pride? For pride reveals the correlation between our achievements and our Divine spirit. We take pride in those achievements that gladden our Divine spirit, seeing them as truly worthy. In other words, the point of pride of any ideology signals what must be culled from it, as it is the root of the attraction of the Divine soul. This, therefore, is where we must seek out the concealed spark.

In what, then, do atheists take pride, specifically as atheists? Of course, I am not speaking here of those atheists who have never given either religion or atheism a serious thought, and who were simply taught to be atheists. Any movement has fools in plenty; we must not focus on these, but on those who think for themselves. We speak here of real atheists—intelligent, thinking, and active. In what do they take pride as atheists? Based on my own acquaintance with atheists and their books, I believe that the atheist prides himself on being a doubting, critically thinking person. The atheist says: “You, the religious, merely believe. But I doubt. I cannot unquestioningly accept all of this. I am a skeptic.” It is not for nothing that a conversion to atheism in Israel is called hazarah beShe’ela, literally, a “return to the question” (as opposed to coming to religion, which is traditionally known as hazarah beTeshuva, or “return to the return,” which can also be read as “return to the answer.”) With this formulation, atheists establish themselves in opposition: “You, the religious, have the answer (teshuva)—but we have the question (she’ela). This is their source of pride, that they “have the question.” We are not discussing simple questions, of course, such as what is or is not kosher, but the fundamental and eternal questions of existence. The atheist stresses: “You are attracted to answers, we to questions.”

Thus, the true atheist has skepticism as his or her core conviction and declares him or herself to be a critical thinker who has unanswered questions to which no one can have ready answers. Is this core of atheism attractive? Picture two teachers, one who says, “Come to me. I have answers for everything,” and one who says, “Come to me. I have questions and doubts for every problem.” Which of them seems more spiritually advanced? Whose lectures would you wish to attend? The skeptic’s, of course. We know that there are no ready answers to the truly complicated questions. We also know that answers are very often superficial and questions much deeper. Therefore, if one says that he has answers, and the other that he has questions, we will, of course, go to the one who has questions.

By means of this analysis, with the help of our own religious intuition, we have found the spark of Divine light in atheism. Our intuition clearly confirms that questions and doubts are a great thing, and that in them there lies the source of atheism’s spiritual attraction.

Does this component—unanswerable questions—exist within Judaism? Clearly, in Judaism as it existed 100 to 200 years ago, the emphasis was primarily on the “answers.” Today, unfortunately, within the popular, rather primitive Judaism with which certain demagogues try to “capture” the masses, the stress is also frequently placed on the answers. But if we are deeply convinced of the religious importance of unanswerable questions, then let us look to ideal Judaism and try to find out where within it the central questions and doubts lie.

The first thing that comes to mind is the book of Job. Job is a righteous and good man, yet he is showered with misfortunes: the destruction of his possessions, the death of his loved ones. And so, three of his friends come to him, and after the period of silent mourning, they begin to ask: Where is justice in the world? Why does the righteous man suffer? Job’s friends offer highly reasonable explanations, but Job rejects them all, telling his friends that they are wrong, that they understand nothing. The discussion continues for the length of the book, about 40 chapters. At the end of the book a voice rings out from the heavens, saying to the three men, “Ye have not spoken of Me the thing that is right, as My servant Job hath.” (Job 42:7)

In other words, the Book of Job concludes by telling us that there is in principle no answer to these essential questions. The question of justice remains open. It is necessary to seek an answer, but one must never assume one has found it.
Thus, we have an example from a book from Tanakh that clearly states that there can be no answer to this and, apparently, to many other fundamental questions. Another such book is Ecclesiastes (Kohelet). And although this book ends with the words “fear God… for this is the whole man(Ecclesiastes 12:13) which can be seen as an “answer,” the entire book in essence tells us that answers to real existential questions do not exist. This is one more typical instance in Judaism of the “unanswerable question.” One must admit that had the books of Job and Ecclesiastes consisted of a collection of answers about the meaning of life, the Tanakh would have been greatly impoverished.

However, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, this aspect of doubt was not a developed area within existing Judaism. Its spiritual leaders considered doubt to be a flaw and discouraged their followers from discussing questions that sowed it. They were to stay inside and never venture out. The leaders feared that one of their flocks might leave—yet many did flee Judaism because those spiritual leaders were unable to reveal its inner potential to address adequately the problems of the times. The leaders discouraged the reading of certain books, but people read them and turned away from Judaism and its lack of tolerance for doubt.

We have found the Divine spark in atheism, and we determined that that spark was not realized in existing Judaism, which feared doubt to the point that the thirst for it became a force for the spread of atheism. Our next steps are to develop within Judaism the spark of doubt that we have discovered in its roots, so strongly that it will shine more brightly there than it does in atheism.

The following conception formulated by Rav Kook provides us with a roadmap for revealing the spark of doubt in Judaism. He tells us that any faith that lacks doubt is not an ideal faith. On the contrary, belief without doubt is primitive and simplistic [See for example, Shemona Kevatzim 1, 36; Orot, Zir’onim 5]: Doubts are an integral part of true faith. As the Divine is by its very essence eternal, and all things human are, by their essence, temporal and finite, including all of our thoughts, ideas, and reasoning about God, our understanding of God cannot, in principle, be correct.

But what are we to do, if we are finite and temporal? How can we at least draw closer to the eternal Divine, come to understand even partially? At the very least, we must doubt everything we think about the Divine, for when the finite being feels his limitations and doubts himself, he becomes “less finite,” some potential of the infinite appears within him. If we are sure of ourselves and do not doubt, then our finite and temporal conceptions of the Divine become “even more finite,” moving further from the eternal Divine. If what is finite wishes to become less finite and to move closer to the infinite, it must be dynamic. That is, we cannot become actually infinite, but we must at least be potentially infinite, if only through doubting the certainty of our understanding and wishing to move forward. Therefore, doubts are an integral, necessary part of true faith, aiding, not impeding, its progress.

When students in a yeshiva or school are taught this concept of faith, an entirely new generation of religious people rises up, whose views can be characterized as “religious post-atheism,” which uses the religious achievements of atheism in the development of Judaism. Unless it activates within it the aspect of doubt, religion will be primitive. Doubt is necessary for its existence. Because the aspect of doubt was not adequately developed in religion over the last centuries, atheism came along, smashed everything, and advanced among people the concept of the value of doubt—and for this, religion owes it a debt of gratitude.

Atheism comes, says Rav Kook, to ridicule the primitive form of religion and destroy it, clearing the ground for the construction of a more exalted religious system. From the point of view of the development of religion, atheism was a historical necessity, as we ourselves—even the religious community and leaders who recognize the importance modernization—would never have decided to destroy that primitive aspect of religion. We simply would not have had the strength and nerve. Therefore, atheism enters and does all of that work for us.

The observant religious person who has grasped the ideas of post-atheism holds a different sort of religious consciousness. He combines Orthodox religiosity with a willingness to doubt his own religious tenets. Such a person emanates this new type of faith, changing the ideas of those around him, opening the way to religion for doubting people. These doubting souls begin to approach Judaism, seeing that post-atheist Judaism contains the spark of doubt, and that the spiritual necessity of doubt is even more developed here than it was in atheism.

The difference between the post-atheist religious consciousness and the classical one is easy to see. The Israeli essayist and philosopher Dr. Daniel Shalit says that one needs to converse with a religious person for no more than ten minutes to determine whether he or she is post-atheist or pre-atheist. Approached this way, atheism is not an enemy of religion. It is an enemy of primitive religion, but an ally in the creation of a more advanced one. If we can make the ideas of atheism the general property of the religious world, we will move religion forward and make it possible for those whose souls instinctively and absolutely correctly thirst for skepticism and doubt to approach this religion.

What Is to Be Doubted?

Thus, according to Modern Orthodoxy and post-atheism, doubt is critical for the growth of faith; without it a person cannot believe truly. If people, limited by nature, do not doubt their own limited religious ideas, they will remain much farther from God in their understanding than those who, though limited, at least doubt.
When we frame the problem this way, we frequently encounter the following question: “Should one doubt everything? There must be something, from the religious perspective, that is absolutely beyond question. God’s existence is certain—how can that be doubted?” The answer, from the point of view of religious post-atheism, is that everything can and must be doubted. To doubt is not to deny, but to subject to criticism and analysis. This applies even to the tenet that God exists. What is to be doubted is not the words themselves, but our interpretation and understanding of them. Since doubt is not denial but analysis and clarification, it is necessary for our religious understanding. It would be incorrect to see doubt in the existence of God as a choice between the statements “God exists” and “God does not exist.” This is a different kind of doubt entirely. What we must doubt is the meaning that we give to the word “existence” as it relates to God.

Rav Kook proposes a completely radical approach to this problem. He explains that there is a faith that is not faith. And there is a lack of faith, or atheism, that is, in its essence, faith (see Shemona Kevatzim 1, 633). What does he mean by faith that is not faith? He refers to the person who believes in God, but whose belief is so primitive that his image of God is closer to a caricature than to what God is. And what is lack of faith that is faith? This is the situation when a person says that he does not believe in God, but he says that because religious groups have pictured God in such a primitive form that he is unable to believe in such a God. This unbelief reflects not a lack of faith, but a high level of religious feeling.

The words “I believe in God” or “I do not believe in God” do not reflect true faith or lack of faith. We must hone the meaning of these words during our whole lives—not just our individual lives, but over the course of all human life. We can and must doubt these meanings in every way, for doubt is not denial; doubt is dissatisfaction with simple answers and a thirst for more precise understanding.

6. The Concept of Continuing Revelation

The religious concept of the continuing Revelation of God asserts that the Divine Revelation did not stop at Mount Sinai, but continued throughout time and continues still, manifested not in miracles, but in the course of human history, above all of Jewish history. Therefore, this Revelation can and must be listened to, and to do this we must see history as a dialogue with God.

There is no doubt that the very idea of monotheism as a religion of dialogue implies a continuing interaction between humans and God throughout all of human history. What is more, Jewish monotheism, as Rav Kook’s concept emphasizes, is characterized by the idea that not only does every individual carry on a dialogue with God, but the nation as a whole, and all of humankind do the same. It would be natural to suppose that through this dialogue, God continues to speak. Of course, God does not say anything to contradict God’s earlier words; God’s word cannot be revoked. The earlier Revelation is never rescinded, but it must be continually developed and added to. Thus, the idea of a national dialogue with God leads to the principle of continuing (or ongoing) Revelation, and that, in its turn, to Modern Orthodoxy.

The view of history as a dialogue between humans and God means that God is continually speaking to us, and all innovations that bring forth progress in culture, society, and religion are not simply human invention, but also Divine Revelation. Therefore, they must be integrated into our religious ideas and not discarded. In other words, the need for progress and modernization, even in the area of religion, is not merely a human trait; it is a manifestation of our Divine nature. Religion, therefore, must develop—not in order to make it easier and more convenient for us humans, but because without development religion will not adequately reflect God (see Shemona Kevatzim 8:43, as well as many other sources.)

It stands to reason that not everything that has occurred in the course of history is Divine. Many developments can and should be criticized, changed, repaired. However, it would be categorically wrong to cast away historical development as a whole, as we would be discarding with it essential elements of the Revelation. According to this conception, we do not have the right to reject historical change—not because we must protect human creative activity from primordial religious dogma, but on the contrary, because we adhere to a religious viewpoint.

7. 1. The Spiritual-Religious Value of Science and Technology

Science and technology play a big role in society, but do they have a spiritual-religious value in and of themselves? The general opinion is that they don’t. However, already in the first chapter of Genesis, immediately following the creation of Adam and Chava, God commands them, “Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it” (Genesis 1:28). This verse contains a commandment to conquer the earth, which means to build a civilization. This building is impossible without the development of science and technology. Conquering the earth means gaining control over nature. It means using power and knowledge to improve the conditions of human existence despite nature’s limitations: being able to turn on the light when it is dark outside, to heat your house when it is raining and cold, to move at great speed, to transmit sound over long distances. All this is included in the concept of “conquering,” and technological development needs to be seen as the fulfillment of this commandment. Why then is the “commandment of conquering,” i.e., constructing of civilization, not enumerated among the 613 commandments? The reason is that it pertains to humanity as a whole and does not address any individual or even any nation—and commandments that are intended for the human race are not counted among the commandments. There are those who interpret this verse as a blessing and not as a commandment; however, the grammar of the verse suggests the formulation of a commandment. Additionally, “be fruitful and multiply” is understood as a commandment. Therefore, if the first half of the verse is a commandment, it stands to reason that the second half is also a commandment. See also Orot Hakodesh 2, Hamegama Haelyona 33, page 563; Orot Hatechiya sections 16 and 30. According to Rav Soloveitchik as well (in The Lonely Man of Faith), the ambition to develop technology is engrained in humans, who are created in God’s image, and therefore, it is clearly a spiritual value. It follows, then, that science has religious worth. We must see those who advance science and technology as performing a commandment and feel national and religious pride towards Israelis who receive the Nobel Prize. Moreover, in order return those souls who are attracted to “Americanism” as expressed in the desire to conquer and develop nature, we must create a positive religious image of scientific and technological development; to do so we need the explicit support of our religious leaders. Many of them are focused on finding halachic solutions to the halachic problems that arise from technology. But unfortunately, very few of them see the religious significance of science and connect it with Torah.

7. 2. The Spiritual-Religious Value of Art

In ancient times, the sole purpose of art was decoration and beauty. In both secular and religious life, decoration and beauty were used to convey a divine message to the people. Judaism did not have a problem assimilating this view of beauty: there are numerous Jewish sources that emphasize its importance. For example, Ten measures of beauty came down to this world - nine of them were received by Jerusalem and the rest by the entire world (Kidushin 49b) and, “whoever did not see the Beit haMikdash that Herod built, never saw a beautiful building in his life” (Bava Batra 4a).

In the Renaissance period, the perception or art underwent a metamorphosis: art became an expression of the innermost world of the artist, and was no longer a means of transmitting a religious message. In the modern age, a new phenomenon that facilitates this newly gained purpose appeared: all of society began promoting and encouraging creativity.

During the course of history, art lost its association with religion, and became a secular, universal phenomenon. Religion did not comprehend this new kind of art, which exists in and of itself and expresses the inner world of the artist; religion surely did not see any religious value in it and therefore limited its interaction with art by using strictly halachic terminology, defining what is permitted and what is forbidden. The tension between religion and art intensified until they reached a point where each one saw the other as hostile and dangerous.

Rav Kook changed religion’s perception of art. He taught that there is religious value in the expression of a person’s inner world. (See introduction to Shir Hashirim (Song of Songs) in Olat Hara’ayah; Rav Kook’s letter to the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design; Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, Mizmor 19 (Eretz HaTzvi in Ma’amarey HaRav Tzvi Yehuda.)
A person is created in the image of God, and the more a person comes closer to Him, the more he realizes himself as a human being and makes himself complete. The Torah opens with a description of the creation of the world—God creates the world and humans. Creation is the first act; thus, a person’s ability to create brings him closer to God. [In The Lonely Man of Faith, Rav Soloveitchik speaks a lot about how a man resembles God through creative action.] Therefore, art, which gives expression to human creativity and teaches society about creativity, opens before mankind a new way to draw nearer to God.

It should be emphasized that art’s religious significance becomes clearer when we contemplate art’s role in history rather than the lives of individual artists.

8. The Embedded Implication that Judaism Must Lag Behind Culture in Its Development
Looking at this model for the development of Judaism by means of sparks from “isms,” we are obliged to make note of one critical feature, which from a religious point of view might well be seen as an embedded “flaw.” Namely, the model presupposes that Judaism lags behind culture in its development. The “ism” appears first, arising in relation to progress in the larger society. As a result of this, people become dissatisfied with flaws in Judaism that earlier generations accepted (see Arfilei Tohar, 2 and 68); they leave and build a new ideology; and only two or three generations later does a segment of the religion adopt, develop, and realize the essence of these new ideas to create.

But if it is always thus, how will religion ever be able to lead? How will it accomplish what it is called upon to do?

The answer to this problem comes in two complementary parts.

The first is the fact that, indeed, within the structure of assimilating sparks from various ideologies and movements, Judaism will never be in a position to overtake those “isms.” However, Rav Kook explains that Judaism has “in reserve” another most important concept, namely, that of God’s dialogue not only with the individual, but also with the nation as a whole. Christianity or Western society never adopted this idea, inherent to Judaism from the start; humankind has only today begun to explore it. Therefore, Judaism will be able to lead civilization by means of this idea, rather than through its assimilation of sparks, which, as important as it is, merely serves to correct accumulated flaws that occur in the process of transition from Judaism of Diaspora to a Judaism of the Nation of Israel. Until we have adequately corrected these flaws, we will continue to fall behind and so will be unable to make ourselves heard by the world. We must continue to correct them, while at the same time developing that concept of national dialogue with God that is uniquely ours. We would later bequeath this concept to humankind, thereby making an essential contribution to the development of civilization.

This is the first part of the answer. However, the problem has another aspect. The second part of the explanation as to why Judaism lags behind culture in its development is that, as Kabbalah explains, our entire world is “tikkun olam”—“a world of correction.” Godliness is infinite and therefore human perception cannot fully grasp it. Similarly, no traditional movement can reflect Divine perception in its entirety because it is limited by time and wording. (Orot HaEmuna, p. 64) In kabalistic terms, God’s light cannot appear in our world immediately in its true form. At the beginning of Creation and again in every new stage of development, there is shevirat kelim, the breaking of the vessels, and the sparks of Divine light become enveloped by shells. Judaism’s “lag” is grounded in the very foundations of existence. Every idea first appears in a wrong form, in the context of the “ism.” And only afterward, as a result of our efforts to improve the world, it appears in a purer and more correct form.

This arrangement of things is, of course, not accidental. It is related to God’s desire to allow us to become God’s “companions,” God’s co-creators in the universe.

 

 

 

Lamentations: Putting the Mouth before the Eye

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

         For over forty years preceding the destruction of the first Temple (627-586 B.C.E.), Jeremiah incessantly warned his people that Jerusalem, the Temple, and their lives were in the gravest jeopardy. The people mocked, threatened, and physically mistreated the prophet. Most scorned his message, thereby sealing their own doom.

          Finally, Jeremiah’s nightmarish visions became a reality. The Babylonians breached the walls of Jerusalem, killing and plundering, and burning the city to the ground. Other nations, including spurious allies, mocked Israel, looted her wealth, and even turned Jewish captives over to the Babylonians. The Temple was destroyed, and most of the humiliated survivors were dragged into captivity, wondering if they would ever see their homeland again.

         The Book of Lamentations describes this calamity from the perspective of an eyewitness. It contains five chapters. Chapters 1, 2, 4, and 5 contain twenty-two verses each, and chapter 3 contains sixty-six verses (three verses per letter). Chapters 1-4 are arranged in aleph-bet acrostics. There is meaning in the content of Lamentations, and in its structure. Both make the book particularly poignant.

          Chapter 1 casts the destroyed Jerusalem as a woman whose husband has abandoned her. While this initial imagery evokes pity, the chapter then adds that she took lovers and therefore deserved this abandonment. Israel admits that she has sinned and asks for mercy and for God to punish her enemies.

         Chapter 2 asks: how could God be so harsh? The tone shifts from one of shame and despair to one of anger. There also is a shift of emphasis from Jerusalem as a victim to God as the Aggressor. At the end of the chapter, there is another plea for God to help.

         Chapter 3 presents the voice of the individual who begins in a state of despair but who then regains hope. He expresses a desire to restore order and return to the pre-destruction state.

         Chapter 4 is a painful step-by-step reliving of the destruction. It also contains lamenting over how the destruction could have happened, and it curses Israel’s enemies.

         Chapter 5 depicts the people left behind as looking at the ruins, absolutely miserable. They call on God for help, but conclude with disappointment and uncertainty as to what the future will bring.

 

REFLECTIONS ON THE TRAGEDY[1]

 

        Chapter 1 acknowledges that the destruction of Jerusalem is God’s work (1:12-15). While the main theme of chapter 1 is mourning, the author repeatedly vindicates God for the disaster, blaming it squarely on Israel’s sins (see 1:5, 8, 14, 18, 20, 22).

        Throughout chapter 1, the author adopts a rational, transcendent perspective. Reflecting an ordered sense of the world, the aleph-bet order is intact, poetically showing a calculated sense of misery.[2]

          While chapter 1 acquits God, chapter 2 adopts a different outlook. Suddenly, the author lashes out at God:

How has the Lord covered the daughter of Zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven to the earth the beauty of Israel, and remembered not His footstool in the day of his anger!...He has bent His bow like an enemy...He has poured out His fury like fire... (Lam. 2:1-4)

 

          Chapter 1 gave the author a chance to reflect on the magnitude of this tragedy: death, isolation, exile, desolation, humiliation. In this context, the point of chapter 2 is clear: although Israel may be guilty of sin, the punishment seems disproportionate to the crimes. Nobody should have to suffer the way Israel has. The deeper emotions of the author have shattered his initial theological and philosophical serenity.

          This emotional shift is reflected in the aleph-bet order of chapter 2. While the chapter maintains the poetic acrostic order, the verse beginning with the letter peh precedes the verse beginning with ayin. Why would Lamentations deviate from the usual alphabetical order? At the level of peshat, one might appeal to the fluidity of the ancient Hebrew aleph-bet, where the order of ayin and peh was not yet fixed in the biblical period. If this is the case, then there is nothing unusual or meaningful about having different orders since each reflects a legitimate order at that time.[3]

          On a more homiletical level, the Talmud (Sanhedrin 104b) offers a penetrating insight. The Hebrew word peh means “mouth,” and ayin means “eye.” The author here put his mouth, that is, words, before what he saw. In chapter 1, the author evaluates the crisis with his eyes, in that he reflects silently, and then calculates his words of response. But in chapter 2, the author responds first with words (peh) that emerge spontaneously and reflect his raw emotions.

          In the first section of chapter 3, the author sinks further into his sorrow and despairs of his relationship with God (verses 1-20). However, in the midst of his deepest sorrow, he suddenly fills with hope in God’s ultimate fairness (3:21-41). The sudden switch in tone is fascinating:

And I said, My strength and my hope are perished from the Lord; Remembering my affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the gall. My soul remembers them, and is bowed down inside me. This I recall to my mind, therefore have I hope. The grace of the Lord has not ceased, and His compassion does not fail. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. The Lord is my portion, says my soul; therefore will I hope in Him. (Lam. 3:18-24)

 

The final section of chapter 3 then vacillates between despair, hope in God, and a call to repentance:

Let him sit alone and be patient, when He has laid it upon him. Let him put his mouth to the dust—there may yet be hope. Let him offer his cheek to the smiter; let him be surfeited with mockery. For the Lord does not reject forever, but first afflicts, then pardons in His abundant kindness. For He does not willfully bring grief or affliction to man…Let us search and examine our ways, and turn back to the Lord; Let us lift up our hearts with our hands to God in heaven: We have transgressed and rebelled, and You have not forgiven. You have clothed Yourself in anger and pursued us, You have slain without pity. (Lam. 3:28-43)

 

          In chapter 4, there are further details of the destruction. Horrors are described in starker terms, climaxing with a description of compassionate mothers who ate their own children because of the dreadful famine preceding the destruction (4:9-10). The author blames God for the destruction (4:11), blames Israel for her sins (4:13), and expresses anger at Israel’s enemies (4:21-22). In both chapters 3 and 4, the poetic order remains with the peh before the ayin, reflecting the author’s unprocessed painful feelings. The author’s conflicting emotions create choppiness in the thematic order and logic:

Those who were slain with the sword are better than those who are slain with hunger; for these pine away, stricken by want of the fruits of the field. The hands of compassionate women have boiled their own children; they were their food in the destruction of the daughter of my people. The Lord has accomplished His fury; He has poured out His fierce anger, and has kindled a fire in Zion, which has devoured its foundations...It was for the sins of her prophets, and the iniquities of her priests, who have shed the blood of the just in the midst of her. (Lam. 4:9-13)

 

          Chapter 5 opens with a desperate appeal to God, a profound hope that He will restore His relationship with Israel. After further descriptions of the sufferings, the book ends wondering whether the Israelites would ever renew their relationship with God:

 

You, O Lord, are enthroned forever; Your throne is from generation to generation. Why do You forget us forever, and forsake us for so long? Turn us to You, O Lord, and we shall be turned; renew our days as of old. But You have utterly rejected us; You are very angry against us. (Lam. 5:19-22)

 

Such a painful confusion leaves the reader uneasy. The author does not propose any solutions or resolution to the state of destruction. Reflecting this passionate plea, chapter 5 has no aleph-bet acrostic at all. With no clear end of the exile in sight, the author loses all sense of order. Perhaps the fact that chapter 5 still contains 22 verses suggests a vestige of hope and order amidst the breakdown of the destruction and exile.

          To review: the aleph-bet pattern goes from being completely ordered in chapter 1, to a break in that order for three chapters. The last chapter does not follow the controlled aleph-bet order at all, signifying a complete emotional outburst by the community. The book ends on a troubling note, questioning whether or not it is too late for Israel to renew her relationship with God.

 

CONCLUSION

          Although Lamentations attempts to make sense of the catastrophe of the destruction, powerful and often conflicting emotions break the ordered poetic patterns. This sacred work captures the religious struggle to make sense of the world in a time of tragedy and God’s ways and the effort to rebuild damaged relationships with God following a crisis.

          Our emotional state in the aftermath of tragedy often follows the pattern of Lamentations—we begin with an effort to make sense of the misfortune, but then our mouths come before what we see—that is, our deeper turbulent emotions express themselves. Ideally, we come full circle until we again turn to God. Our expression of persistent hope has kept us alive as a people.

          In the wake of catastrophe, people have the choice to abandon faith, or hide behind shallow expressions of faith, but even while emotionally understandable, both are incomplete responses. We must maturely accept that we do not understand everything about how God operates. At the same time, we must not negate our human perspective. We must not ignore our emotions and anxieties. In the end, we are humbled by our smallness and helplessness—and our lack of understanding of the larger picture. Through this process, the painful realities of life should lead to a higher love and awe of God.

 

 

 

[1] The remainder of this chapter was adapted from Hayyim Angel, “Confronting Tragedy: A Perspective from Jewish Tradition,” in Angel, Through an Opaque Lens (NY: Sephardic Publication Foundation, 2006), pp. 279-295. This chapter is predicated on the assumption that the Book of Lamentations is a unified poem that should be treated as a literary unit. For a scholarly defense of this position, see Elie Assis, “The Unity of the Book of Lamentations,” CBQ 71 (2009), pp. 306-329.

 

[2] Walter Bruggemann observes that Psalms 37 and 145 also are arranged according to the aleph-bet sequence and similarly display orderliness (Praying the Psalms: Engaging Scripture and the Life of the Spirit [Oregon: Cascade Books, 2007], p. 3).

 

[3] See Aaron Demsky, “A Proto-Canaanite Abecedary Dating from the Period of the Judges and its Implications for the History of the Alphabet,” Tel Aviv 4:1-2 (1977), pp. 14-27; Mitchell First, “Using the Pe-Ayin Order of the Abecedaries of Ancient Israel to Date the Book of Psalms,” JSOT 38:4 (2014), pp. 471-485. First notes that in the Dead Sea text of Lamentations, the peh verse precedes the ayin verse in chapter 1, as well. For an attempt to explain the intentional deviation of the acrostics based on word patterns, see Ronald Benun, “Evil and the Disruption of Order: A Structural Analysis of the Acrostics in Ekha,” at http://www.jhsonline.org/Articles/article_55.pdf.

 

Galut, Self-Defense, and Political Zionism in the Halakhic Thought of Rabbi Ya’akov Moshe Toledano

               In this article I present and analyze concepts of Galut and of the modern Return to Zion found in a seminal responsum composed by Rabbi Ya’akov Moshe Toledano (1880–1960).[1] Born in Tiberias, scion of an illustrious Sephardic family in Meknès, Rabbi Toledano served as a rabbi in Corsica, Tangier, Cairo, and Alexandria, subsequently returning to Eretz Israel and serving as Sephardic Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv from 1942 until his death. For a brief period toward the end of his life he also served as minister of religious affairs of Israel’s government.[2] In his creativity and career, he may be seen as reflecting attitudes and values common to a significant but insufficiently studied group, rabbinic scholars and lay leaders of the “Old Sephardic Yishuv,” whose members held Zionist ideals in high regard while remaining loyal to their traditional heritage.[3]

            Rabbi Toledano’s central halakhic publication was a collection of responsa entitled Yam HaGadol.[4] Several of these responsa express his deep identification with the Zionist Yishuv and his belief that halakha entailed supporting the Yishuv in various ways. Thus, he takes up the question whether halakha requires a Jew in Eretz Israel to employ only Jews and to buy only Jewish produce even if non-Jewish labor or produce is cheaper—and answers in the affirmative. Moreover, he stresses that this halakhic determination applies also with regard to the labor and produce of nonobservant Jews.[5] 

In another responsum, he determines that under current conditions, halakha forbids the sale of weapons to non-Jews, especially in Eretz Israel. Only when a state of true peace prevails between Jews and Gentiles can such sales be permitted.[6] 

In a third decision, Rabbi Toledano discusses the possibility of restoring a Sanhedrin-type institution. Coming out in favor of the position typical of the more radical wing of religious Zionism, he advocates the establishment in Jerusalem of a (halakhic) High Court for the Jewish people; a court which would also, if possible, restore semikha.[7]

However, it is yet another of Rabbi Toledano’s responsa that I wish to analyze here. In August 1929, there occurred a wave of Arab violence against the Jewish population in many places throughout Eretz Israel. Especially murderous were a pogrom in the old Jewish quarter of Hebron on August 24, in which 67 Jews were massacred, and a pogrom in the old Jewish quarter of Safed in which 18 Jews were murdered.[8] In neither of these cities was there even the semblance of a Jewish self-defense framework. In Yam HaGadol, published soon afterward, the following question is posed:

 

Does the mitzvah of settling in Eretz Israel apply in our times in a manner that obligates all Jews to obtain possession of the Land by all possible means? And, is it not halachically forbidden to teach the sons of Israel military tactics and methods of defense, so that they might fight and defend themselves against their enemies, should the necessity arise?[9]

 

A close reading of the question reveals an important conceptual differentiation that is further explicated in Rabbi Toledano’s response. Two very distinct questions are being asked. Only one of these questions, concerning the parameters of Jewish settling of Eretz Israel, is presented as relating specifically to current reality. The second question, regarding halakha’s view of the correct self-defense posture Jews should adopt, is understood to be one of basic principle, not contingent upon time or place; it is precisely because of this that Rabbi Toledano’s position on the matter is so striking. 

            Attitudes toward self-defense stem, in his analysis, not from the way Jews conceive of settlement of Eretz Israel but rather from their conception of Galut. An understanding of Galut was fundamentally mistaken, theologically and morally, had come to prevail in rabbinic circles; in consequence, many rabbis preached that Judaism advocated a passive-submissive response to persecution. The traditionalist Jewish masses in the Diaspora and in Eretz Israel had followed the teachings of these rabbis, reacting to attacks not by defending themselves, but by allowing themselves and their families to be slaughtered “for the sanctification of the Divine Name.” Rabbi Toledano wrote while it is not an easy thing to say, the truth must be stated outright: Rabbis who furthered (or continue to further) this attitude bear direct and unequivocal responsibility for Jewish blood that was unnecessarily spilled due to their misguidance. Here is the relevant paragraph, in full:

 

Many of our great rabbis, both in former generations and in current times, erred—and misguided the simple masses of our people—in the belief that as long as we are in this hard exile, we are forbidden to lift up our heads. Rather, we are commanded to bow ourselves down before every tyrant and ruler, and to give our backs to the smiters and our cheeks to them that pluck our hair (cf. Isa. 50:6); as if the blood of Israel had been forfeited, and as if He, blessed is He, had decreed that Jacob be given for a spoil and Israel to the robber (cf. Isa. 47:24). They thought that the [Divine] decree of [Israel’s] exile and servitude to the nations included slavery and lowliness, and that, as a matter of sanctifying the Name even at the price of one’s life, a Jew must forfeit his life and surrender himself like a slave or a prisoner of war to Israel’s enemies, even in a situation in which it would have been possible to resist them and retaliate in kind.

            Let me, then, state outright that—begging their pardon—they have caused the loss of individual lives and of entire communities of the Jewish people, who in many instances might have saved themselves from death and destruction, had the leaders and rabbis of that generation instructed them that they were obligated to defend themselves against aggressors, according to the rule “If a person comes to murder you, kill him first” (Sanhedrin 72a). 

 

Further reading of the responsum clarifies Rabbi Toledano’s understanding of the nature of the exile ordained by God. Galut, he explains, is a political category; that is, God decreed that the Jewish people be deprived of sovereignty and live as subjects of Gentile sovereigns in the various lands in which they lived. To be the subject of a state, says Toledano, entails that one obeys the duly enacted laws promulgated but the authorities, pay taxes, and the like; not that one be the object of insult and torture, and even less that one willingly acquiesces in such a role.

            Rabbi Toledano states that such a conception of Galut as deprivation of political sovereignty—but not including divine requirement of acquiescence to insult and torture—is the one borne out by classic Jewish sources. What exile, he writes, was more directly and specifically ordained than that of the children of Israel in Egypt? Abraham was clearly informed that the divine plan was for his descendants to be enslaved and afflicted by the Egyptians for 400 years (Gen. 15:13). Yet when Moses saw an Egyptian attacking an Israelite, he struck the Egyptian down (Exodus 2:11–12), for he realized that such an attack could not possibly have been ordained as part of Israelite bondage. So, too, Esther and Mordecai regarded it as completely legitimate that the Jews (living in exile in the Persian Empire) not only be saved from Haman’s genocidal plan, but also seek to retaliate against those who had planned to destroy them (Esther 8:11, 9:1–5).

            In addition to biblical instances, Rabbi Toledano cites two other types of sources. One is Sephardic folk tradition, according to which on the eve of the 1492 expulsion Don Isaac Abarbanel and other leaders of Spanish Jewry planned together to organize their communities to confront their enemies and fight against them (a plan foiled by a treacherous converso who revealed it to the authorities).[10] The other comprises descriptions by historians of the Jewish uprisings against Rome outside of Eretz Israel, during the first decades of the period after the destruction of the Second Temple. It is worthy of note that most of the events to which he refers in this context (i.e., the uprisings in Mesopotamia, Egypt, and Cyrenaica) could not have been known to Rabbi Toledano from traditional Jewish historiography. Clearly, Rabbi Toledano’s halakhic methodology enabled him to attribute normative halakhic significance to non-canonical sources.[11]

If an uncowed defensive posture was the original and correct orientation advocated by Judaic tradition and practiced by Jews in biblical and post biblical times, how does Rabbi Toledano explain the contemporary gulf between that original view and current rabbinic attitudes? He explains that deviation originated within a specific historical-geographical framework: “It was only in France, Ashkenaz, and Russia that they demeaned themselves, and they never attempted to resist and defend themselves.” In recent generations, he adds, this attitude spread to many Sephardic communities, including Morocco, Persia, and Turkey. In other words, the ideology of submissiveness, widely regarded in traditional rabbinic circles as the authentic religious norm ordained by God for Jews living in a pre-messianic reality, is in fact (Toledano explains) an Ashkenazic heresy that subsequently corrupted many Sephardic Jews, whose own ancestors never stooped to such levels. Interestingly, Gershom Cohen similarly wrote that Medieval and Early Modern Ashkenazic Jewry advocated passivity as a religious value and idealized martyrdom, while Sephardic Jewry was active and dynamic.[12] Elisheva Carlebach critiqued this dichotomy as incompatible with historical fact. However, she concluded that while historically inaccurate, the dichotomy did reflect a clear historiographical difference: Traditional Ashkenazic historiography idealized passivity and martyrdom as religious ideals, while traditional Sephardic historiography idealized activism.[13]

In its fully developed form, writes Toledano, the religious glorification of this perverted notion of Galut had turned back even against the heroes of the pre-exilic era (who ostensibly should not have been bound by ideals of passivity) and attempted to modify their images in consonance with the supposedly eternal values exemplified in the figure of the submissive Jew:

 

When one reads works of homilies and musar composed by several recent rabbis, one finds that they believe Jews are religiously obligated to submit to all forms of suffering, insult, and physical degradation. They thought that this followed from [the ideal of] Galut or humility. As a result, some of them regarded as problematic the attitude of the patriarch Jacob, who said, “With my sword and bow,” and of Caleb, who said, “As was my strength then, so is it even now,” and they asked: “How could such saintly men boast of physical prowess?!”

 

Toledano refers the reader to the source of this critique of the plain meaning of Caleb’s words: Rabbi Haim Aryeh Leib Fenster’s introduction to Parashat Ki Tetze.[14] He adds that similar views can be found with ease in recent Ashkenazic rabbinical works. A reading in Mendel Piekarz’s impressive work on Polish Hassidic thought provides striking examples illustrating the Ashkenazic ideal of submissiveness in Galut as a religious virtue. Thus, Piekarz cites an 1880 homily by Rabbi Yehezkel Halberstam (1813–1899), who wrote that when faced with a threat a Jew should act with submissiveness, humility, and a broken heart—and flee.[15] So too, Rabbi Shmuel Bornsztain (1855–1926) the second Rebbe of Sochatchov, wrote that Jews should maintain an inner sense of superiority over the Gentiles, but simultaneously act with humility and submissiveness as proper to the state of Exile, as the biblical author of Lamentations (3:30) instructed: “He should offer his cheek to he who strikes him.” Rabbi Bornstein explicitly contrasted this with “the attitude of the well-known sect [= the Zionists] who are unable to bear the submissiveness and the suffering of Galut.”[16] It is thus clear that Rabbi Toledano was not inventing a straw man but criticizing a major trend in Ashkenazic Hareidi thought of his time.

In characterizing this attitude, Rabbi Toledano employs a literary allusion of extreme force that could not fail to evoke a powerful reaction on the part of readers acquainted with classic talmudic culture. This posture, he says, calls forth the rabbis’ devastating critique of Zechariah ben Avkolas: “The piety of Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkolas destroyed our temple, etc.” Toledano alludes, of course, to the well-known talmudic story (Gittin 55b–56a) describing a chain of events that led to the destruction of the second Temple. Perhaps best-known today is the first part of the tale, often referred to as “Kamzah and Bar-Kamzah,” which illustrates the moral and social callousness of Jerusalem’s Jewish elite on the eve of the First Revolt. In the second part of the story, the offended Bar-Kamzah maneuvers the Roman emperor into sending an imperial sacrificial offering to the temple of Jerusalem—an offering that Bar-Kamzah secretly blemishes in a manner rendering it unfit for a sacrifice according to Temple norms. 

            It is the third part of the story, however, to which Toledano alludes. Having received the animal sent by the emperor, the rabbis of Jerusalem convene to decide upon a course of action. Most, realizing the disastrous consequences of noncompliance, favor having the animal offered up on the Temple altar despite its minor blemish. But Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkolas speaks out in a different vein: Sacrosanct rules should not be set aside because of an imperial whim, lest a precedent be set. The rabbis give in to Zechariah, but are now faced with another quandary: If Bar-Kamzah reports to the emperor that the sacrifice was not accepted, this will be construed as an act of rebellion by the Jews—with dire consequences. The rabbis therefore conclude that the only way out is for Bar-Kamzah to be put to death. But Rabbi Zechariah ben Avkolas again rebukes them: This might lead people to incorrectly think that he who brings a blemished sacrifice is liable to the death penalty. Abashed by his devoutness and principled consistency, the other rabbis swing around to Zechariah’s position—and Jerusalem’s fate is sealed.

            In the talmudic story, Zechariah appears as the advocate of a principled policy, with the other rabbis tending toward a weaker line of “adaptation to circumstance.” In what sense, then, can Toledano, who supports a bold defensive posture vis-à-vis enemies of the Jews, identify his opponents, who preach adaptation to circumstance, as analogous to Zechariah? The answer lies not in the similarity of their specific proposals, but rather in their concept of value and norm; both first-century Zechariah and contemporary Ashkenazic rabbis identify true devoutness with unswerving commitment to set patterns of behavior, without the broader consequences of such behavior being recognized as a prime consideration in the decision-making process. In both cases, this narrow sense of what commitment to Torah entails leads to terrible loss of Jewish life. As Toledano puts it, with regard to the “Ashkenazic” glorification of submissiveness: 

 

This faulty humility, which rabbinical leaders instilled in the hearts of the multitude, caused an intensification of Galut, and postponed its end. And, alas for our sins, we recently saw this with our own eyes here in the Holy Land; for in the riots and disturbances which occurred in the year 5689 [1929], the number of deaths was especially great among our brethren who were yeshiva students or of the simple folk, who were educated to agree to suffer insult, to be dragged about, and to be victimized.

 

Misguided religious attitudes toward Galut thus affect mass behavior and contribute in no small measure to the perpetuation of the exile. Rabbi Toledano’s conclusion is clear:

 

Regarding the second question, then, “Is it not halakhically forbidden to teach the sons of Israel military tactics and methods of defense, etc.?” Why, according to the above, not only is it not halakhically forbidden, but it is a mitzvah and an obligation incumbent upon the rabbis and leaders of Israel, to institute mandatory daily lessons in these matters in all the talmudei torah and yeshivot, so that the students and youth be prepared to fight, in case an hour of need arises.

 

According to Toledano, then, renewed acknowledgment of Torah’s positive attitude toward self-defense must lead to a revised notion of Torah study; the curriculum of Torah institutions should reflect the role which their students are expected to fulfill as defenders of Jewish lives. As he noted previously, however, this was not at all the actual praxis of these institutions; yeshiva students—and, of course, their teachers—were far from exemplifying the values of Judaic tradition in this crucial matter.

            Until this point, Rabbi Toledano’s analysis and rhetoric have unfolded purely as a discourse on Galut. His critique of the “Ashkenazic” sanctification of Israel’s suffering in exile derives from the self-evident nature of the imperative of self-defense, and is supported by citation of scriptural and historical sources. His conclusion is that self-defense is “a mitzvah and an obligation” incumbent upon all Jews, wherever they reside. In other words, there is no inherent connection between the mitzvah of self-defense and any geographical locus, e.g., Eretz Israel. 

            Eretz Israel, however, is squarely on the agenda of Toledano’s responsum. The first question posed by the inquirer was, we recall, whether the mitzvah of settling in Eretz Israel applies in our times in a matter which obligates all Jews to obtain possession of the Land by all possible means. Accordingly, in the second part of his responsum, Toledano proceeds to discuss halakhic perspectives on the conquest and settlement of Eretz Israel. In a lengthy, detailed, and technical analysis he relates primarily to the opinions of medieval halakhists. His conclusion is that the two leading halakhic authorities who each developed a detailed position on this matter, Maimonides and Nahmanides, both agree that all Jews are at all times obligated in principle by Torah to do what they can to develop the potential of Eretz Israel, settle there, and gain possession of the Land. However, to be obligated in principle does not always entail obligation in practice. With regard to Eretz Israel, a specific question obtained: according to a midrashic tradition cited in the Talmud (Ketubot 111a), three vows limiting initiatives to gain control of Eretz Israel were divinely ordained in conjunction with the exile:

 

  • Lo la’alot ka-homah: Forbidding the Jewish people to initiate a collective campaign to regain sovereignty in Eretz Israel against the will of the nations of the world.
  • Lo limrod be-umot ha-olam: Forbidding Jews to revolt against sovereign powers in the lands of exile.
  • Lo lehisht’abed be-yisrael yoter midai: Forbidding the nations of the world to overly oppress the Jews.

 

To what extent does the first of these vows suspend or curtail the mitzvah of settling Eretz Israel, under the conditions prevailing in 1929?

            Rabbi Toledano argues that under contemporary conditions, the first vow cannot be construed as applying to the Zionist project, for two reasons:

 

  1. It is quite probable that the limitations originally imposed by the three vows should be understood as mutually contingent. Thus, should the nations not fulfill their obligation under the third vow to limit the oppression of the Jews (and they have not done so, notes Toledano), Jews would be freed from their limitations under the first two vows, and might try to regain Eretz Israel even in the face of Gentile opposition.
  2. The preceding claim, regarding the reciprocity of the vows’ validity, is (while correct) unnecessary for halakhic justification of the contemporary Zionist enterprise. The vow Lo la’alot ka-homah relates to a collective Jewish move opposed by the nations of the world, whereas in the twentieth century the nations have endorsed political Zionism through the Balfour Declaration and the mandate of the League of Nations. 

           

Strikingly noteworthy in Toledano’s position is the absence of messianism from his presentation of Zionism. His halakhic rationale for Zionism is not based on the claim that current events with regard to Eretz Israel represent a new historical phase or mode, or a materialization of prophetic promises of Israel’s restoration to Zion. In an important sense, Toledano’s understanding of Zionism stems from his understanding of Galut: Galut was not a divine decree obligating Jews to deny their group’s dignity, or forbidding them to affirm that dignity through forceful reaction to persecution. Even in the depths of Galut, Jews were always expected to regard themselves as a nation, in the most conventional, political sense of the term. Galut simply meant that the Jewish nation might not unilaterally attempt to avail itself of the usual instrument for safeguarding a polity, i.e., sovereignty.

Given such a notion of Galut, it follows that political Zionism does not involve or require any redefining or rethinking of previously held concepts regarding the place and role in history of the Jewish people. Rather, Zionism requires only that Jews realize that the political limitations imposed by Galut, expressed in the three vows, are not valid in contemporary reality. No longer constrained by these limitations, Jews can legitimately (as far as halakha and the Torah are concerned) attempt to achieve the ultimate political expression of nationality, i.e., sovereignty, to which they had always inspired. In and of itself, there’s nothing miraculous in the shift and ebb of international political constellations; thus, there is nothing in the emergence of a political moment favorable to Zionism which requires explanation or justification in terms of messianism or of divine intervention in the course of history. Religiously, one need not hold that Zionism’s validity is contingent upon current events being understood as reishit tzemihat geulatenu, the inception of eschatological reality. 

Yet Rabbi Toledano does allude to an aspect of recent developments as reflecting divine involvement—not directly in history, but in the realm of the psyche: God has inspired certain Jews to free themselves from the false consciousness of Galut propounded by contemporary rabbis and thus to reappropriate the authentic Judaic posture of self-defense and assertiveness. This psychological shift has enabled those Jews to seize the opportunity, provided by the international politics, for the Jewish people to regain sovereignty in Eretz Israel. As Rabbi Toledano puts it:

 

Let me praise the flowers of this new generation[17] who “awoke and wakened”[18] to revive oppressed hearts,[19] to engirdle themselves with a courageous spirit, and to restore the crown of Israel’s honor to its pristine glory. Indeed, it is with regard to this that the Bible says: “And I will give you a new heart and instill in you a new spirit.”[20]

 

There is a two-pronged irony here—both prongs directed at the conventional rabbinic establishment. On the one hand, God’s involvement serves precisely to eliminate the passive-submissive psychological attitude explicitly extolled by rabbis as the essence of correct Jewish conduct vs. Gentile persecution. On the other hand, God’s involvement is manifest specifically within the hearts and minds of the secular halutzim of the New Yishuv. Paradoxically, it is those whom those rabbis identify as the furthest from Torah, whose hearts and spirits reflect God’s concern for Israel. Indeed, God works in mysterious ways unacknowledged by the rabbinic “establishment.”

 

Some questions for further thought

Rabbi Toledano’s understanding of Galut, self-defense, and Zionism are fascinating in their own right. In addition, several significant directions for additional reflection and thought emanate from his responsum. These include:

 

Analysis of his halakhic methodology

Toledano integrates biblical, rabbinic, and historiographical sources in his discussion, and makes extensive use of reasoned arguments (s’vara) that are not contingent upon proof-texts. It would be of great interest to flush out the underlying methodological and conceptual assumptions that make possible such halakhic writing, and to explicitly develop their philosophical and religious implications.

 

Authority, commitment, and critique

Rabbi Toledano is writing within the classical genre of halakhic responsa, which is based upon the acceptance of tradition and recognition of the authority of earlier scholars who created within that framework. Yet Toledano directs a powerful attack upon what had become a pillar of convention in the rabbinic community, and, indeed, in the traditional Jewish community at large: the understanding of the Divine decree of Galut as requiring submissiveness and as justifying suffering at the hands of the nations. Obviously, then, Toledano does not hold, that to be within the halakhic tradition means to accept as binding everything that has been justified by halakhic masters of the past, or to refrain from explicit criticism of generally accepted opinions. How, then, does he understand the relationship between halakhic authority and halakhic independence, between working within a tradition and subjecting it to a direct critique?

 

Continuity and change

Toledano’s claims that his perception of Galut harks back to a classic tradition that was accepted by Jews up to the expulsion from Spain. Are there real grounds for this claim? If so, what are they, and why and how were they subsequently supplemented by “Ashkenazic” submissive attitudes? If not so, then, what does Toledano’s adoption of a novel understanding of Galut indicate regarding the integrative and transformative capacity of the halakhic system vis-à-vis cultural and social change?

 

 

Notes

 

[1] This article is based upon (but not identical with) two earlier versions:

  1. “Sephardic Halakhic Tradition on Galut and Political Zionism,” in: Yedida K. Stillman and Norman Stillman (eds.), From Iberia to Diaspora: Studies in Sephardic History and Culture, Leiden, Brill, 1999, 223–234.
  2. Tziyonut Medinit u-Biqoret ha-Galut be-’Einav shel Ḥakham Sefaradi Artzi-Yisraeli,” in Zvi Zohar, He-Iru P’nei ha-Mizraḥ, 2001, pp. 285–297.

[2] Scholarly research on Rabbi Toledano includes inter alia: Moshe Ovadia, Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Toledano’s Biography and his Contribution to Jewish Historiography, M.A. thesis, Bar Ilan University, 5704/2003 [Hebrew]; ibid., “The Legal Discourse in Respect of the Status of Deserted Jewish Wives-Agunot in Light of Halachic-Jewish Law Responsa of Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Toledano,” in: The International Journal of Legal Discourse, 2,2 (2017), pp. 423–435; Izhak Bezalel, “The First Levantines in the Ottoman Period in Eretz Israel—Their Zionist Identity and their Attitude Towards Arab Identity,” in: Pe’amim 125–127 (2010–2011), pp. 75–95 [Hebrew]; Eliezer Bashan, “The Attitude Towards Secular Jews in Eretz Israel According to a Responsum of Rabbi Yaakov Moshe Toledano,” in: Qovetz ha-Tziyonut ha-Datit, vol. 2, Jerusalem 1999, pp. 80–86 [Hebrew].  

[3] On the attitude of the leadership of the Old Sephardic Yishuv to the Jewish national movement (Zionism) see: Penina Morag-Talmon, “Zionism in the Consciousness of the Sephardic Community of Jerusalem,” in: Hagit Lavsky (ed.), Yerushalayim ba-Toda’a u-va-Mahashava ha-Tziyyonim, Jerusalem 1989, pp. 35–46 [Hebrew].

[4] She’elot u-Teshuvot Yam HaGadol, Cairo, 5691/1931.

[5] Yam haGadol (above note 4), responsum #92.

[6] Ibid., responsum #57.

[7] Ibid., responsum #21.

[8] One of those murdered in Safed was advocate Meir Toledano, 30 years of age—and the youngest brother of Rabbi Ya’akov Moshe Toledano.

[9] Yam HaGadol, responsum #97. All further quotes in this article are from this responsum.

[10] I have been unable to find mention of this striking tradition in other sources—traditional or academic. In the introduction to his commentary on the Book of Kings, Don Isaac Abarbanel dramatically details his attempts to prevent the Expulsion, but makes no reference to planning an uprising. Sixteenth-century historiographical works such as Eliyahu Capsali’s Seder Eliyahu Zuta and Solomon Ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehuda also say nothing of a planned uprising. Twentieth- century research, such as Ben-Zion Netanyahu’s Don Isaac Abravanel (Philadelphia 1972) and Ephraim Shemueli’s Don Yitzhak Abarbanel ve-Geirush Sepharad (Tel Aviv 1963) are also silent on this topic.

[11] It seems that the rationale for this can be understood as follows: The actions of Moses in Egypt and of Esther and Mordechai in Persia obviously embody model Jewish behavior that should be emulated by all Jews. So too, Jewish leadership in heroic times—such as in the major communities of second century Diaspora Jewry—expresses in action norms to be followed by all Jews. Thus, non-canonical sources can inform us of behavior that is of canonical validity.

[12] Gerson D. Cohen, “Messianic Postures of Ashkenazim and Sephardim (Prior to Sabbethai Zevi),” in Max Kreutzberger, ed., Studies of the Leo Baeck Institute [=Leo Baeck Memorial Lecture, no. 9] (New York: Leo Baeck Institute, 1967), 115–156.

[13] Elisheva Carlebach, “Between History and Hope: Jewish Messianism in Ashkenaz and Sepharad”: third annual lecture of the Victor J. Selmanowitz Chair of Jewish History, Touro College, New York, 1998.

[14] In Rabbi Fenster’s work Sha’ar Bat Rabbim [vol. 5 (Devarim) (Piotrko 5680/1920) fol. 39a–b] he explains, that in biblical times all of the Israelites’ victorious battles were fought not by human prowess but by God; the Israelite forces just stepped out on the field of battle—and God vanquished their enemies. If so, what could Caleb possibly mean when he declared (cf. Joshua 14:11) that at 85 years of age he was still as strong as he was 45 years earlier? He meant, that just as 45 years earlier victory was not due to any physical strength he possessed but only to God’s will, so too at age 85 his situation is identical.

[15] Mendel Piekarz, Trends in Polish Hasidic Thought in the Interwar Years and During the Decrees of 1940–1945, Jerusalem, 1990. The citation is from p. 269.

[16] Ibid., p. 270.

[17] I.e., the Zionist youth of the New Yishuv, most of whom did not follow a lifestyle characterized by commitment to Torah.

[18] This phrase is a direct allusion to Song of Songs 2:7 and 3:5—traditionally interpreted to signify the awakening of God’s love for Israel in the messianic era. Indeed, these are the very same verses interpreted by the midrash in Ketubot 111a as enjoining the Jewish People not to attempt to prematurely awaken God’s love.

[19] Cf. Isaiah 57:15.

[20] Cf. Ezekiel 36:26.

Gilda Angel: In Memoriam

Gilda Angel: In Memoriam

(Thoughts by Rabbi Marc D. Angel for the “sheloshim”—30 days of mourning—for his beloved wife of nearly 58 years.)

 

Everyone knows intellectually that we are mortal, that death is inevitable.

But when death claims a loved one, our intellectual awareness of death gives way to grief. Death is shocking.

Scientists can explain the process of death. Doctors can identify the symptoms leading to death. Theologians and philosophers can offer discourses on the meaning of death.

But death remains a profound mystery.  All the explanations in the world still leave us at a loss. Someone we knew and loved is gone. The new silence is deafening. We strain to hear a beloved voice, to feel a tender touch, to share a living moment.

But no, death has taken this all away. 

We mourn. No matter how wise or experienced we are, we find ourselves crying and mourning over an irreplaceable loss. The one who died is at peace; but the survivors are bereft.

Jewish tradition provides a framework for coping with death and mourning. It understands that mourning is a process; it takes time; it develops stage by stage—seven days, a month, eleven months, a year…a lifetime.

The Talmud (Berakhot 46B) records the opinions of Rabbi Akiva and the Sages on the appropriate blessing to recite when a loved one dies. Rabbi Akiva suggests: Barukh Dayan HaEmet, blessed be the True Judge.  This is a blessing of resignation. We don’t understand the mystery of death, we aren’t sure how we are going to get through our grief: but we affirm that God is the True Judge and ultimate Master of life and death. We bow our heads humbly.

The Sages suggest a different blessing: Barukh Hatov VeHameitiv, blessed be the One who is good and bestows good. This seems like an odd blessing to recite when we are grieving. We don’t necessarily feel that God is good or does good when we stand before the dead body of a loved one. But the Sages may be suggesting a profound way of coping with death. Yes, of course we are sad and forlorn; but we also need to inject positive emotions into our mourning. We need to remember all the blessings and happiness the deceased person had enjoyed. We need to call to mind all the good that was accomplished and experienced. We need to remember the happy times, the achievements, the special moments. We affirm that God is the source of goodness.

Gilda Angel (April 24, 1946-June 3, 2025) lived a beautiful life. She was a wonderful daughter, sister, wife, mother, grandmother, aunt, teacher, friend. She was bright, loving, wise. She lived with a keen sense of God’s presence. She taught science for over 40 years; she wrote a food column for ten years and also authored an amazing cookbook “Sephardic Holiday Cooking.” She was an active “rebbitzin” in a wonderful congregation; she was hospitable and gracious, always with a welcoming smile on her face. She loved music, nature, art, travel. She loved Israel; we spent many summers in Jerusalem. She was kind, charitable, sociable…the list of her virtues goes on and on.

Gilda and I went on our first date May 8, 1966. We were married August 23, 1967. I am grateful beyond words for the privilege and joy of having spent these many years with her. The Almighty blessed us with wonderful children, grandchildren and extended family. 

Barukh Dayan HaEmet: As a rabbi for over 50 years, I’ve been at many death beds, officiated at many funerals, made many shiva visits. But one never entirely comes to grips with death; it remains a mystery beyond our ken. With the passing of my beloved Gilda, I have lost my life partner, my light and my blessing. In resignation, I acknowledge God as the True Judge. God will shine glory and peace on Gilda’s soul. God will provide our family with as much consolation as is possible.

Batukh Hatov VeHameitiv: Even in mourning—or perhaps especially in mourning—we need to recall the many blessings the Almighty bestowed on us. Gilda lived a beautiful life, full of love, happiness, fulfillment. When I reminisce about our life together, my primary emotion is gratitude. I thank God who is good, who bestows good, and who blessed our lives with so much good and goodness.

Our tradition teaches that the memory of the righteous is a blessing. Gilda’s life-force will continue to impact positively on me, our children and grandchildren, on Gilda’s sisters, on our extended family, friends and her many students. Her faith, love and wisdom live on within all who were blessed to experience the radiance of her life.

Blessed be the True Judge. Blessed be God who is good and who bestows goodness.

 

How and Why: Thoughts for Parashat Devarim

Angel for Shabbat, Parashat Devarim

by Rabbi Marc D. Angel

The people of Israel had wandered in the wilderness for forty years and were now on the verge of entering the Promised Land. Moses had been their leader, their liberator, their link with the Almighty. Now, during the last days of his life, Moses re-emphasized his role as teacher—Moshe Rabbeinu. The book of Devarim records Moses’s memories, chastisements, and his hopes for the future of his people.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wisely observed that Moses’s last messages to the Israelites went beyond instructing them on how to conduct themselves. He sought to inspire them with the underlying meaning of their covenant with God. He addressed not only the How of Torah life—but the Why. He reminded them that “they are God’s people, the nation on whom He has set His love, the people He rescued from slavery and gave, in the form of the commandments, the constitution of liberty. They may be small but they are unique. They are the people who, in themselves, testify to something beyond themselves. They are the people whose fate will defy the normal laws of history. Other nations, says Moses, will recognize the miraculous nature of the Jewish story.”

Moses set an example for rabbis, teachers, parents, grandparents…all who are involved in the transmission of the Torah tradition. We need to communicate a sense of mission, a deep awareness that we are part of an amazingly powerful worldview that is life-transforming. Judaism is an adventure. It addresses every aspect of our daily life but puts things into a cosmic perspective. 

Moses taught us to strive to go beyond our “ordinary selves” and aspire to live according to our “best selves.” It’s not only a matter of how we live…but why. Without the spark of idealism and striving for transcendence, life becomes insipid.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel lamented the decline in religiosity among moderns.   For some Jews, religion has become a matter of rote. People follow the rules by habit, not by inner spiritual connection. For others, Judaism is honored for its past, but not granted a serious role in life today. And yet for others, religion is disconnected from the ongoing crises of everyday living, the challenges facing society at large.

 He wrote: “When faith is completely replaced by creed, worship by discipline, love by habit; when the crisis of today is ignored because of the splendor of the past; when faith becomes an heirloom rather than a living fountain; when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than with the voice of compassion—its message becomes meaningless” (A. J. Heschel: Essential Writings, p. 49).

A story is told of a Rosh Yeshiva who was overseeing his class of Talmud students. As the young men pored over the texts and engaged in heated discussion, the Rosh Yeshiva suddenly slammed his hand on his desk with a loud thud. He called out: “There is a God!” The students were startled…and surprised. Of course there is a God; why was the Rebbi shouting what we all know?  But the Rebbi explained: it often happens that we are so engrossed in the texts we forget why we are studying, we forget the divine source of our studies, we need to be reminded: There is a God.   An important lesson for the students, and for all of us.

Moses taught the Israelites: There is a God. Life must be lived with awareness of this grand reality. We study and observe Torah not only to learn How. We study and observe to know Why.