Theology Today - Vol 35, No. 4 - January 1979 - ARTICLE

413 - Israel's Stake in the Land

Israel's Stake in the Land
By Bruce S. Warshal

"Judaism developed a special relationship, not only, to the entire land of Israel, but to the city of Jerusalem in particular.... The rise of modern Zionism in the nineteenth century did not represent a rekindling of interest in the land, but rather was the culmination of eighteen hundred years of developing theology centered upon the land of Israel... This is not to imply that Israel should not compromise and, with adequate safeguards for national security, should not divest itself of Samaria and Judea (the West Bank in the lexicon of the last thirty years). I personally believe that this is the only route to a lasting and just peace."

ONE CANNOT SPEAK of Jewish theology without first stating an essential caveat: there is no one monolithic Jewish theology or religious practice. Variance in philosophy and liturgical practice is as great in Judaism as it is in Christianity. Traditional Judaism believes in an inerrant revelation from God to Moses on Sinai while modernists stress the historical nature of the wilderness experience. One would expect that this would greatly affect the role that the land of Israel would play in the theologies of the different branches of Judaism; yet this is not the case. What the traditional Jew believes as the gift of God, the modernist Jew has internalized as part of the Jewish psyche, so that both the traditionalist and the modernist believe in the centrality of Israel with the same fervor and devotion, although working within different philosophical systems.

The importance of the land of Israel to Jews and Judaism is first delineated in the Torah, the five books of Moses. Those books are replete with references to God's promise to the Jews concerning the land.

Bruce S. Warshal is an attorney and a rabbi, holding degrees from Yale University and Hebrew Union College. He has practiced law in Ohio and served congregations in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and New Orleans, Louisiana; currently he is South County Associate Director of the Palm Beach County Jewish Federation. He is also a member of the National Task Force on Jewish Identity of the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Rabbi Warshal's article helps to explain why Jews have always maintained a tenacious hold on what they consider, theologically, as their homeland. But he concedes that peace in the Middle East requires compromise, difficult as that may be, religiously, for Jews everywhere.

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Rather than recounting the promise and belaboring the obvious intention to give the land to the Jews, two observations help to clarify the Jewish theological attachment to the land of Israel.

First, the biblical writers understood that this land was forcibly taken from other peoples and that the Jewish right to the land would be challenged. Exodus 34:1 1 answers this problem as God proclaims:

Mark well what I command you this day. I will drive out before you the Amorites, the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. Beware of making a covenant with the inhabitants of the land against which you are advancing, lest they be a snare in your midst. No, you must tear down their altars, smash their pillars, and cut down their sacred posts.

Clearly God is giving the land to the Jews because of the idolatry of other peoples. It is not the Jews who are dispossessing these others, but God, and for a just reason. Many, additional passages in the Pentateuch reinforce this, but none surpasses the explicitness of' Deuteronomy 9:4:

And when the Lord your God has thrust them from your path,, say not to yourselves, "The Lord has enabled me to occupy this land 'because of my virtues"; it is rather because of the wickedness of those nations that the Lord is dispossessing them before you.

From what was originally a political justification for the taking of the land, it is a short step to the second observation, namely, if God gave the land to the Jews because of the misdeeds of other peoples, God could take the land from the Jews because of their own misdeeds. In Jewish theology the possession of the land became the reward or punishment for the conduct of the Jews. The ethics and the morality of the religion was tied to the land. Deuteronomy 5:29-30 states:

Be careful, then, to do as the Lord your God has commanded you. Do not turn aside to the right or to the left: follow only the path that the Lord your God has enjoined upon you, so that you may thrive and that it may go well with you, and that you may long endure in the land you are to occupy. (At greater length cf. Lev. 26 and Deut, 30).

The land played the same theological role in biblical Judaism as did the afterlife later in both Judaism and Christianity. Nowhere does the Pentateuch mention an afterlife. That concept developed within Judaism in the Second Century before the Christian Era and increasingly played a larger theological role both within Judaism and emerging Christianity. But no matter what the development within Judaism, it cannot be ignored that the original reward and punishment theology centered upon the land of Israel. To the Jewish traditionalist this is as much a part of present theology as the afterlife. To the modernist this tic to the land through the original theology can never be totally ignored. It can be analyzed, dissected, and discussed, but it cannot be emotionally discarded.

415 - Israel's Stake in the Land

This use of the land in theology is not limited to the Pentateuch. After the downfall of the Northern kingdom of Israel in 721 BCE (Before the Christian Era) and the Babylonian Exile in 586 BCE, the Jews justified the loss of the land as punishment from God. Second Kings is typical when it speaks of the exile of the ten northern tribes (17:20, 22):

And the Lord rejected all the descendants of Israel, and afflicted them, and gave them into the hand of spoilers, until he had cast them out of his sight.... The people of Israel walked in all the sins which Jeroboam did; they did not depart from them, until the Lord removed Israel out of his sight, as he had spoken by all his servants the prophets. So Israel was exiled from their own land to Assyria until this day.

It was not until Second Isaiah, writing about the year 550 BCE, that the concept of the Mission of Israel as an Or Legoyim, A Light to the Nations, was developed. This is an affirmative explanation for the Exile, which the religion required for survival. But try as we might, Judaism has always felt more secure, both physically and philosophically, when Jews controlled the land of Israel. One does not easily reject nor substantially neglect one of the original theological tenets of a religion.

The tie of Judaism to the land is strengthened when one honestly admits that until a very late date, again with Second Isaiah, the Hebrew God, Adonai (YHVH), commonly designated as the Lord, or Yahveh or Jehovah-was a parochial God ruling only the land of Israel. Being the originators of monotheism is of great pride to Judaism. Yet an honest reading of the texts would indicate that until the Sixth Century BCE, Yahveh or Jehovah or the Lord was peculiarly tied to the land of Israel. Writing of the defeat of the Northern Kingdom by the Assyrians in 72 1, Second Kings, chapter 17, tells us that the king of Assyria brought foreign people a-ad placed them in the Israelite cities in place of the exiled Jews. Verses 25 onward state:

And at the beginning of their dwelling there, they did not fear the Lord (YHVH); therefore the Lord sent lions among them, which killed some of them. So the king of Assyria was told, "The nations which you have carried away and placed in the cities of Samaria do not know the law, of the god of the land; [not] the particular god of this land Samaria, or northern Israel therefore he has sent lions among them, and behold, they are killing them, because they do not know the law of the god of the land." Then the king of Assyria commanded, "Send there one of the priests whom you carried away from there; and let him go and dwell there, and teach them the law of the god of the land." So one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the Lord.

It did not disturb the ancient Jewish mind that there were other gods that served other lands. They were concerned only that their god, this new and revolutionary God that one could not see nor touch, ruled their land of Israel. There was even a doubt whether Yahveh, the Lord,

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could be worshipped outside of the land. This explicates Jeremiah's famous letter to the Babylonian exiles found in chapter 29 of his book. There he assures a very doubtful and newly exiled community that it could worship the Lord (their particular god) outside the land of Israel while residing in Babylonia. The letter proclaims in part:

Thus says the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel [and Israel here means the land of Israel] to all the exiles whom I have sent into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon: Build houses and live in them; plant gardens and cat their produce. Take wives and have sons and daughters ... Hear the word of the Lord, all you exiles, whom I sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon (Jer. 29:4-6, 20).

Jeremiah's letter is a landmark in Jewish theology and in the development of monotheism. It is the first step in the separation of the Lord from the land. It was only forty years later that Second Isaiah could develop a complete monotheism and declare that there is only one God for all people: "I am the Lord, and there is no other, besides me there is no God" (Isa. 45:5).

Although Judaism develops this universal monotheism, it cannot ignore, either emotionally or theologically, that the Lord's origins are tied to the land of Israel. We cannot deny or ignore our own Scripture. Even Second Isaiah, who proclaims this new universal monotheism, indicates that the Lord has some special) concern with Zion: "But Zion said, 'The Lord has forsaken me, my Lord has forgotten me.' [But] can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? (Isa. 49:14-15).

Today, the Jewish traditionalist would stand on this very point, on this special relationship. The Jewish modernist would agree with the traditionalist from a vantage point of historical perspective. Within Judaism tile modernist's attachment is considered theological.

III

Judaism developed a special relationship, not only to the entire land of Israel, but to the city of Jerusalem particular. The Jewish religion is still tied, almost by an umbilical cord, to that Holy City. The earliest scriptural tale concerning Jerusalem involves- King David taking the city from the Jebusites (found in First Chronicles, chapters 11 through 15, and in Second Samuel, chapters 5 and 6). There the curious story of the bringing of the ark to Jerusalem and the death of Uzzah deserve our attention. At this point David is triumphant as the newly crowned king. He is moving the seat of his authority to Jerusalem, a city which heretofore had not been part of the kingdom. It is a city which is identified with only David's conquests, thus making it the seat of government is a brilliant political move by David. He stands in his own city, in his own glory.

David brings the holy ark of God to Jerusalem. As recorded in chapter 6 of Second Samuel, along the way Uzzah touched the ark and was smitten dead for having approached it. Yet six verses later David takes the very same ark to Jerusalem:

417 - Israel's Stake in the Land

As the ark of the Lord came into the city of David, Michal the daughter of Saul looked out of the window, and saw King David leaping and dancing before the Lord; and she despised him in her heart. And they brought in the ark of the Lord, and set it in its place, inside the tent which David had pitched for it; and David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings before the Lord.... And David said to Michal, "it was before the Lord, who chose me above your father, and above all his house, to appoint me as prince over Israel, the people of the Lord-and I will make merry before the Lord" (II Sam. 6:16-17, 21).

The significance of the Uzzah incident becomes clear. Uzzah merely touched the ark and was struck dead. Yet David removed it and danced before it in Jerusalem. Michal, Saul's daughter, was disturbed since this signified the total collapse of the house of Saul. "The Lord chose me above your father, and above all his house, to appoint me as a prince over Israel." The Uzzah incident indicates that only the divinely appointed can touch the ark. God, represented by the ark, chooses King David and chooses the City of Jerusalem. In no uncertain terms, we have an example of the divine fight of kings. More important, we also have a chosen city where the ark was deposited and where the Temple was built. The holy aura of this city allowed King Josiah in 621 BCE to close all the outlying temples and to centralize the priesthood, and incidentally to centralize political control, in Jerusalem, Psalm 137 does not overstate Jewish emotional and theological attachment to Jerusalem when it proclaims:

If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither!
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, If I do not remember you,
If I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy!

This attachment to the city of Jerusalem and to the land of Israel did not cease with the downfall of the kingdom and the dispersal of the people in exile; rather it became a tenet of the religious hope that Israel would be rebuilt. The Lord says, through Jeremiah, the first postexilic prophet (chapter 31):

I have loved you with an everlasting love; therefore I have continued my faithfulness to you
Again I will build you, and you shall be built, O Virgin Israel
Again you shall adorn yourself with timbrels, and shall go forth in the dance of the merrymakers.
Again you shall plant vineyards upon the mountains of Samaria; the planters shall plant and enjoy the fruit
For there shall be a day when watchmen will call in the hill country of Ephraim:
Arise, and let us go up to Zion, to the Lord our God.

Jeremiah's call is reinforced and indelibly stamped upon Judaism by Second Isaiah, one of the major prophet theologians of Judaism. Isaiah writes, "The Lord will have compassion on Jacob and will again choose Israel, and will set them in their own land . . ." (14: 1).

This theological attachment to the land does not cease with the closing of the biblical period; rather it is expanded and reinforced through

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time. Under the Hasmoneans (Maccabeans) the Jews re-established an independent Jewish state in Israel after a struggle against the Seleucid Greek empire beginning in 168 BCE. The holiday of Hanukkah commemorates this event. Unfortunately this new Jewish state was to last less than a hundred and fifty years before it was superseded by the rising Roman Empire. After the second Jewish uprising against Rome in 132 to 135 CE, and after the utter defeat of the Jews, practical political aspirations on behalf of Jews to rule the land did not entirely cease. There were always waves of immigration of Jews to Israel throughout the Middle Ages. Many of these movements were closely tied to messianic hopes. The rise of modern Zionism in the nineteenth century did not represent a rekindling of interest in the land, but rather was the culmination of eighteen hundred years of developing theology centered upon the land of Israel.

The Uganda experience clearly showed the Jewish tie to the land. In 1903 Britain tentatively offered the rising Zionist movement a Jewish homeland in the British East African colony of Uganda, assuming that the Jews were merely looking for a place of refuge. This offer was roundly rejected. The British did not understand the theological tie of Jews to Israel. Jews have always lived in the land of Israel, and the land never ceased to play a central role in Jewish thought.

Normative, traditional Judaism as we know it today was forged in the Talmudic period, in the first five centuries of, the Christian Era. Stripped of any political control of the Land, the rabbis wove their theology into the very fabric of the soil of Israel. The Yureshalmi Talmud declares that, "More beloved is, a small school in Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) than a large Academy outside of it." The very Language of the Jews forged this bond with the land. In Hebrew one either lives in Ha-Aretz, translated The land (implying there is no other) or outside or Israel in galut, which translates as exile or captivity.

Of course, as a modern Jew, I am Choosing to live outside the land, being as close to Israel as the nearest El Ai Israel airline office. Thus I am not in galut, in exile or captivity, and I must use another word to explain my status. I am in the diaspora. Diaspora derives from the Greek, and its primary meaning connotes merely a dispersion or a scattering, without the emotional and theological overtones, of the tiebrew word. It is interesting that I must use a Greek rather than a Hebrew word to describe my position. In its development, the Hebrew language has reflected the centrality of the land of Israel in Jewish theology. Modern Hebrew still reflects this centrality. An immigrant to Israel is called an oleh, which technically means one who goes up. An emigrant, in Hebrew is a yored, meaning one who descends. These are emotionally-laden words integrally tied to Jewish theology.

Traditional Judaism developed a listing of 613 Mitzvot or Commandments or Good Deeds. These included positive and negative com-

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mandments, both ethical and ritual obligations. These commandments form the basis of the Jewish salvation system. If one is to receive salvation, defined by the tradition list as the Olam Habah, the World to Come, or by other Jewish theologians in less cosmic terms, if one is to receive whatever this salvation is, it is by following commandments. The modernist may redefine the commandments, but the Good Deed is still the basis for salvation. Belief or dogma plays little role in Jewish salvation.

Yet in the Second Century CE a commentary to Deuteronomy (the Sifre) declares that living in the land of Israel is equal to all of the commandments. This may very well be a hyperbole, but it indicates the importance of the land. In the Talmud, Rabbi Yohanan declares that he who walks four cubits in Israel is assured of a place in the world to come. Again a hyperbole, but it shows the tic of the land to the Jewish salvation system. One should never forget that the Temple cult was land-based in Israel, and particularly in Jerusalem. Judaism never attempted to establish the Temple outside of the land.

The theological role of the land, of Israel in Judaism has not diminished over time. Today it is reflected in our liturgy as well as our philosophical writings. Three times daily the traditional Jew recites a prayer that asks God to "Return in mercy to Jerusalem your city and dwell therein as you have spoken. Rebuild it soon in our days as an everlasting building . . . Blessed art Thou, O Lord, the One who rebuilds Jerusalem." This refrain-is approximately nineteen hundred years old. It is found in the prayer called the Amida, and one can argue that it is the most important prayer in the traditional liturgy. In traditional sources this prayer has been called Tephila, which means simply, the prayer.

It is historical fact, of course, that Jews have not always controlled the political apparatus of Israel. But it is also historical fact that Jews have never ceased praying for the restoration of Jerusalem and the whole land of Israel. Though the Jews were removed from the land, the land was never removed from Judaism. One can argue the opposite, that the land assumed ever greater importance after the dispersion.

Although the above prayer is not found in the Reform prayer book, the attachment to Israel and Jerusalem is not Forgotten. Reform Jews pray in their daily service: "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem; may they prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces." The tie to the land and to the Holy City pervades all Jewish thought. This is reflected in unexpected settings. One cannot be married within traditional Judaism without the following prayer said at the wedding, either in Hebrew or English: "Soon may there be heard in the cities of Judah, and in the streets of Jerusalem, the voice of joy and gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride." In all Jewish wedding ceremonies (Reform, Conservative, Orthodox), the

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bridegroom breaks a glass with his foot at the end of the ceremony as a sign of mourning, a remembrance of the glory of the Second Temple that was crushed by the Romans in 70 CE. It is a sign of the Jewish tie to the land. Jews are not married without remembering whence they came.

To separate the land of Israel and the City of Jerusalem from Judaism would be as impossible as to separate the life of Jesus or the crucifixion and resurrection from Christianity. Both represent the core of their respective religious systems. In speaking of Israel, David Ben Gurion, the first Prime Minister of the modern State of Israel, wrote:

We have gathered up human particles and combined them into the fruitful and creative nucleus of a nation revived.... . In the desolate spaces of a ruined and abandoned Homeland, we have built villages and towns, planted gardens and established factories; we have breathed new life into our muted and abandoned ancient language, ... Such a marvel is unique in the history of human culture.

Such a modern miracle was only possible because theologically the centrality of the land of Israel never ceased within Judaism.

A contemporary postscript may be, appropriate. I write this addendum after Camp David but before a peace treaty has been negotiated with Egypt, and certainly before the difficult transition period for the West Bank.

If religiously committed Americans understand the role of the land of Israel in Jewish theology; if they understand that the very heartbeat of Judaism was involved in the political decisions at Camp David (which were, in fact, religious decisions as well); If they understand the difficulty in relinquishing land that is contiguous to their national sovereignty and is theologically a very part of that sovereignty; then they would comprehend how difficult these decisions were for Menachim Begin, who is a religiously committed Jew.

I personally applaud compromise even with one's theology if it is in the service of peace. It is a Jewish religious tenet that all religious obligations can be abrogated to save a life. Certainly all theology can be bent to attain peace and save many lives.

In compromise everyone is a winner. There were no winners or losers at Camp David. The success of a final peace will redound to the glory of both nations and both peoples. I applaud Anwar Sadat for being as flexible and courageous as Menachem Begin.

Yet a recent American political opinion poll indicated that the American people perceived that Sadat gave more and, was more accommodating than Begin. This misperception derives from an ignorance of the role of the land of Israel in Jewish theology, We are not dealing with a mere thirty-year nationalism, but with a three thousand year old theology. As I have tried to indicate, the very heartbeat of Judaism is involved in these decisions.