THE SOUL OF JUDAISM
A Reform Jew's Perspective
on Israel
Stuart Berman
Torah Study Group
Congregation Beth El
Berkeley, CA
August 2, 1997
Numbers 30:2 - 36:13
Prologue
I wrote this before the terrible suicide bombings in the market in Jerusalem in July 1997 and now feel it is necessary to add a prologue. Someone reading this is bound say, "But what about them? How come you only criticize our side?" and it's a fair question. Let me say right here that I condemn all enemies of peace and what happened then is awful beyond words.
But I believe especially now in the face of the killing that we can't loose sight of our specialness; that Am Yisrael, the Jewish people, has a special covenant of peace. If our mission is not to bring peace into the world, then what is it? If this leads people to judge us by a higher standard then so be it. We should not shrink from that challenge.
And lastly, I quote Martin Buber. In "The Spirit of Israel and the World of Today," written around 50 years ago, to take issue with those, even then, who were saying that Israel had no special mission other than to survive as one nation amongst many:
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The spirit of Israel is the spirit of realization. But where does it exist? For if it has not existence, it has no force at this hour. Not only do we have no realization of the truth to any adequate extent, but faith in the truth is growing steadily weaker even among ourselves. Day by day an increasing number of us are saying: "The period of humanism is past! You cannot swim against the current! Those Messianic tidings, the charge of justice, were nothing but an expression of our weakness! So come, let us be strong!" Their only wish is to join the wolf pack. If we are not acceptable in the pack, it is enough to live on its fringes, in its neighborhood. And if we cannot be the head, it is also quite enough to be the tail. Of the many kinds of assimilation in the course of our history, this nationalist assimilation is the most terrifying, the most dangerous. |
Introduction
A Torah portion can be like the I CHING: (http://www.yahoo.com/Regional/Countries/China/Arts/Literature/Classic_Literature/I_Ching/)
you throw coins and you get a fortune totally by chance but in some mysterious way the fortune you get speaks to you in a very personal way. I got this portion without having any idea what was in it, but it seemed to be the exact parashah that I needed right now.
These two parashiyyot taken together more than any others speak to us:
- of our relationship with Israel, for better or worse
- of the borders of Israel
- of the treatment of the indigenous people, and
- of the relationship of the Jews of Israel to the Jews of the Diaspora.
I visited Israel last December and doing these parashiyyot has given me a good opportunity to sort out some of my thoughts.
Mattot: Tribes
Moses presents laws governing vows. A man's vows are binding, but a woman's vows must get her father's or her husband's approval first.
Moses commands the Israelites to make war on the Midianites in revenge for Baal-Peor. They capture Midianite towns and bring back booty, but Moses is furious because they didn't kill all the women who were not virgins. So they kill them. The implication here is that it was the women of Moab and Midian who seduced the Israelites and are therefore to be punished. Soldiers remain outside camp to purify themselves and spoils are divided.
Balaam is also killed in this war.
The tribes of Reuven and Gad, who own much cattle, request that they be allowed to stay in Jazer and Gilead, on the east side of the Jordan, because this is good grazing land. Moses gets angry and berates them for deserting their brethren. How will it look to the others just when they're about to go into battle? They assure Moses that they are not deserting, but that they will leave their families and cattle here, and all their warriors will cross over and not return until the land is conquered, and they will make no claim on any land west of the Jordan. Moses' anger is pacified and he agrees. This is used as the proof text for the very important Talmudic principle of appearances, More'et Ayin . It is not enough to not sin. You must not give the appearance of sinning. But I'll come back to this incident later because there is some new information to report.
Mase'ei: Stages, or
Journeys
Mase'ei starts with a long recap of the wanderings in the desert from place to place and ends with a very chilling passage that has present day reverberations:
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When you cross the Jordon into the land of
Canaan, Numbers 33:52-56 (Fox Translation) |
This is perhaps the most troubling statement in the entire Torah because it precludes the possibility that people can live together in peace.
Moses gives the boundaries of Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel:
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Your southern sector shall extend from the wilderness of Zin alongside Edom. Your southern boundary shall start on the east from the tip of the Dead Sea. Your boundary shall then turn to pass south of the ascent of Akrabbim and continue to Zin, and its limits shall be south of Kadesh-barnea, reaching Hazar-addar and continuing to Azmon. From Azmon the boundary shall turn toward the Wadi of Egypt and terminate at the Sea. For the western boundary you shall have the coast of the Great Sea; that shall serve as your western boundary. This shall be your northern boundary: draw a line from the Great Sea to Mount Hor; from Mount Hor, draw a line to Lebo-hamath, and let the boundary reach Zedad. The boundary shall then run to Ziphron and terminate at Hazar-enan. That shall be your northern boundary. For your eastern boundary, you shall draw a line from Hazar-enan to Shepham. From Shepham the boundary shall descend to Riblah on the east side of Ain; from there the boundary shall continue downward and abut on the eastern slopes of Sea of Chinnereth. The boundary shall then descend along the Jordan and terminate at the Dead Sea. That shall be your land as defined by its boundaries on all sides. Numbers 34: 3-12 |
He informs the Israelites that the southern border of their land is from the southern tip of the Dead Sea to Kadesh-barnea in the middle of the Negev desert and to the Mediterranean Sea just south of what today is Gaza. The western boundary is the coast line of the Mediterranean Sea. The northern boundary is to run eastward from what today is near the Israel-Lebanon border to near Mount Hermon close to Damascus, Syria. The eastern border is to stretch south from near Damascus to the Sea of Galilee and from there along the Jordan River and Dead Sea.
Moses informs the people that the land inside these borders is to be divided between nine and one-half tribes, reminding them that the tribes of Reuven, Gad, and the half-tribe of Manasseh have been given their portion in land east of the Jordan River.
Then we get the six cities of refuge for those who commit accidental murder.
The parshah ends with the clans of Manasseh and Joseph complaining about the daughters of Zelophahad. If you remember, in Parashah Pinchas, the daughters of Zelophahad, who are not married and whose father has died without sons, petition Moses to be allowed to inherit land. Moses grants their request, but now their tribe is afraid that they will marry outside the tribe and their land will be lost. They reach a compromise. It is decided that they can inherit land, but they must marry within their tribe.
Sefer Yishayahu
Historians tell us that the sons of Gad and the sons of Reuven disappeared from history in about 400 years, swallowed up by the peoples around them, and were never heard from again. Much rabbinic commentary is critical of them and they might be forgotten today; relegated to a footnote in Jewish history if it weren't for a lucky accident.
A book recently found and just translated sheds new light on these tribes and what their fate really was. The following is an excerpt from the SEFER YISHAYAYU, the lost book of tribes of Rueven and Gad.
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Yea, it is told that the children of Reuven and the children of Gad were swallowed up by the people around them and they disappeared from the earth. But this is not so, for they wandered with their families and their cattle for many generations, and their cattle died out, and they became doctors and lawyers and accountants, and more. They came to a new land called America and its pastures were good, and they prospered. Now there came up from the children of Israel a new generation that set out to conquer Eretz Yisrael and their leader, Ben Gurion, called on all the tribes to come and fight and reconquer the land. But the children of Reuven and of Gad said, "Nay, we will settle here, because the land is good to us, but we will found Hadassah and UJA, and other organizations, and we will send money and we will see that Medinat USA is a friend of Israel." And Ben Gurion said, "So be it." And so it was good for all the children of Israel, and Medinat Yisrael prospered, and the children of Reuven and Gad prospered. But then a new generation grew up in Israel, and they were the children of Zeal (known as the Zealots), the children of Natan (known as the Nationalists) and the children of Apoth (known as the Apathetics), and they had forgotten what Reuven and Gad had done for them. Now the Nationalists said of Rueven and Gad, that they didn't support their vision of a greater Israel, derived from the Torah. And the Zealots said that their rabbis were not rabbis, and their converts were not converts, and their religion was not Judaism. Now they appealed to the Apathetics (who were by far the largest tribe), but the Apathetics answered, "We feel your pain, but frankly, this is a very low priority in our lives, and also, even though we can't stand the Zealots, we're not sure that they aren't right." And the children of Reuven and the children of Gad were sorely vexed, and their souls cried out. |
SEFER YISHAYAYU breaks off here, and the rest is lost. But by now, you must have guessed that we are the children of Reuven and the children of Gad, Jews who have freely chosen to live outside Eretz YIsrael.
Israel to Liberal Jews of
the Diaspora
I think that, as liberal Jews of the Diaspora, we are experiencing a spiritual crisis in our relationship with Israel that can not be overestimated. One more vote in the Knesset, one more Supreme Court ruling, and we could be unwelcome in the Jewish homeland as Jews. It is also a political and moral crisis, but at heart it is a spiritual dilemma. What do we do?
Israel is really three things that we sometimes get confused:
- Eretz Yisrael - the land of Israel. Eretz Yisrael has
shifting borders, not set even in Biblical times. As
liberal Jews of the Diaspora, we would always value peace
above land.
- Medinat Yisrael - the State of Israel and its
government. Occasionally Medinat Yisrael rises to great
moral heights, as in the ransoming of the Ethiopian Jews,
or the Oslo Peace Accords. But mostly is subject to all
the corruption and politics of any other government.
There's nothing holy about it.
- Am Yisrael - the nation of Israel in the larger
sense, to which every Jew belongs, regardless of where he
or she lives. According to Martin Buber, "The true spirit
of Israel is the divine demand implanted in our hearts."
and "Our purpose is the great upbuilding of peace."
"The Spirit of Israel", pp.
189 and 181.
So in the light of this crisis, it is necessary to reassess, what does Israel mean to us? Why is it important to us? What is this fight really all about? And, could we think the unthinkable -- the renunciation of our claim to Eretz Yisrael and Medinat Yisrael? Could we live as Jews without Israel? If Israel rejects us, can we reject Israel?
Reform Movement's attitude
to Israel
The early Reform movement thought that modern Jews did not need Israel:
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Although Reform and Zionism both were products of the same encounter with the non-Jewish world and the same hope that the Messianic era was at hand, they differed totally as to how that goal could be attained. Reform was religious; Zionism, at least in its main thrust, was largely secular. Reform was more interested in Judaism than in Jewish peoplehood; Zionism was more a movement of the people than of the faith. Reform's mantra was "the G-d of Israel lives;" Zionism's was "Am Yisrael Chai," the Jewish people lives. Reform tended toward the universalistic; Zionism was essentially particularistic. For Reform, Messianism was the redemption of the world, free from ethnic and geographic constraints. For Zionism, it was not possible to speak of a world fulfilled unless and until the future of the Jewish people had been secured and normalized. Rabbi Dow Marmur, "The odd couple no more" |
From the Congress of Reform Rabbis' PITTSBURGH PLATFORM of 1875:
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We recognize in the modern era of universal culture of heart and intellect the approach of the realization of Israel's great Messianic hope for the establishment of the kingdom of truth, justice and peace among all men. We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community, and therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the administration of the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning the Jewish state. |
In other words, anywhere that Jews were at home was the Jewish homeland.
Rabbi Marmur goes on in his article to imply that not until the Holocaust did the American liberal Jewish community shift their position, but in 1937, the second Congress of Reform Rabbis in Columbus,Ohio, issued a new statement on Israel:
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In the rehabilitation of Palestine, the land hallowed by memories and hopes, we behold the promise of renewed life for many of our brethren. We affirm the obligation of all Jewry to aid in its upbuilding as a Jewish homeland by endeavoring to make it not only a haven of refuge for the oppressed but also a center of Jewish culture and spiritual life. |
And this is considerably earlier than most Orthodox groups accepted the need to physically reclaim Eretz Yisrael. Some still don't recognize that need.
But I think Rabbi Marmur misses the point. Reform Judaism is limited in how far it can stray from tradition. Two examples:
- Early Reform tried to change Shabbat to Sunday. That reform just didn't feel right to people so they were forced to change it back; and
- Congregations that forbade the wearing of kippot and tallitot are now going back to wearing them.
So we believe that the boundaries of Jewish life shift over time. However some boundaries once crossed, give us the uneasy feeling that we've gone too far and we feel the ruach or spirit of tradition pulling us back.
The Soul of Judaism
We would have returned Israel to our spiritual center regardless of historical events because our souls dwell there.
This is not a unique concept in world religion. Why do Moslems make the hajj to Mecca at least once in their lives? Because their souls dwell there. Our souls don't just dwell in us. They dwell in the real world.
In Judaism, we have three pilgrimage festivals: Sukkot, Pesach, and Shavuot. In ancient times, many Jews actually made the pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem at these three special times of the year. Today, we try to symbolically celebrate these pilgrimage festivals, but we have lost something very precious when we gave up the pilgrimage itself.
Neil Levy, a member of Congregation Beth El, claims that these festivals were originally instituted by the ancient Jerusalem Tourist Bureau in order to ensure that the hotels were filled at least three times a year. But I think there's more to it than that because every time we take a trip out in the world, i.e., a trip in which we don't totally insulate ourselves from our surroundings, becomes a spiritual journey; a journey into ourselves.
The journey is a teacher. As we study the journey of the Israelites through the desert, the journey becomes our teacher if we truly open up to it.
In a 1994 Torah drosh on Mattot-Mase'ei,(http://shamash.org/tanach/tanach/commentary/ravriskin/matot-masei.riskin.94), Rabbi Shlomo Riskin tells us that Moses mentions all forty-two camps the Israelites stopped at on their way to the holy land to show us that, while life is a journey leading somewhere, each step along the way has its own importance and should be honored.
I didn't really understand why it was important to go to Israel until I actually went there myself. I didn't feel any desire to go. I thought of Israel as a place where you went on a tour to see as many holy sites as possible and I don't really enjoy sightseeing that much.
But two years ago I took a seminar with a Rabbi named Gidalea Fleer who lives in Jerusalem and visits the U.S. once a year to teach. He's a very wise and nice man and one day he said to us that if we were in Jerusalem we should look him up and he gave us all his phone number. One of the men in our group said to him, "If you go to Israel, what do you do there?" He answered, "Do? You don't do anything. You walk around Jerusalem, you sit in a cafe and you figure out who you are." A little light bulb went off in my head and I thought, "Hmm, I could that." So in December I finally went.
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Why did God swear that the Western Wall would never be destroyed? Because when lots were drawn at the time the Temple was constructed it fell to the poor to build the Western Wall. The wealthy men of Israel took the golden earrings from the ears of their wives and their daughters, as well as all their jewels, which were very precious....They hired day laborers from the Sidonians and the Tyrians and others of the heathen who lived in the land....Thus the work was speedily ended and the responsibilities of the wealthy were fulfilled. Only the work of the poor was delayed, for they could not bring materials from afar and they did the work themselves: the men, women, and children hewing stone. When the holy work was ended, the Divine Presence descended and rested upon it and the Lord chose the Western Wall, for He said, "The toil of the needy and the poor is precious in My eyes, and My blessing shall be upon it." And a heavenly voice went forth and proclaimed, 'Never shall the Western Wall be destroyed. THE LEGENDS OF THE RABBIS, V.1, p. 368. |
Because the Western Wall was built with tears and anguish of the poor, the Holy One dwells there, just as when our lives are filled with tears and anguish, we find the Shechinah (the presence of the Holy One) there to comfort us
We were in Israel for Chanukah and it was wonderful to walk through Jerusalem in the evening and look up at all the windows and see chanukiyyot burning.
We went to a wonderful Reform synagogue in Jerusalem named Kol HaNeshama (All of the Soul). It had a lovely Shabbat service, all in Hebrew, but when it was over everybody started speaking English. They were all Americans. This should tell us something important.
I believe we should support ARZA, the Association of Reform Zionists of America. They do great work, but it is naive to feel that just more money and more hard work will establish liberal Judaism as a viable option in Israel without a massive migration of Reform Jews. We must accept the possibility that a liberal Judaism that stresses individual decision-making over collectivism, that will always support peace efforts over nationalist aspirations, may never have widespread appeal amongst native-born Israelis.
And while most Israelis believe in religious pluralism, they are not prepared to fight for it. Even Natan Sharansky, whom Reform and Conservative Jews fought so hard for when he was a Soviet dissident, would not take up the cause of religious freedom. So we shouldn't delude ourselves, the situation is dire and the stakes are very high. But this is a battle we can't give up, because our Jewish souls are at stake.
Our ties to Israel are sacred and no matter what happens there in terms of politics or religion, we must find a way to maintain those ties, difficult as that may be, because a Judaism that does not place Israel at its spiritual center will have moved too far from home to ever find its way back.
Every Jew, every Jew, should make a pilgrimage to Israel, go to Jerusalem, go to the Western Wall, walk up to it (not meekly, as if you have less right to it than anyone else, but proudly, as if you are greeting a lost part of yourself) put your hands on it, say a prayer, say a Shehechiyanu and say, "This is mine, this is my soul, and I won't give it up."
Because if the government of Israel ever becomes so odious in its corruption, if their nationalists ever become so terrifying in their violence, if the zealots ever become so alienating in their exclusivity that we say, "To hell with them, give them Israel, give them the Western Wall. It's not worth the fight," then we'd be giving up a vital part of our souls and we would sink back into the very comfortable upholstery of America and would become, like the children of Reuven and the children of Gad, a people never to be heard from again.
GENERAL REFERENCES
Buber, Martin, "The spirit of Israel and the world of today," in: ON JUDAISM, ed., N. Glatzer, NY: Schocken, 1967, p 185.
Chabin, Michael, "Israel goes from hope to grief, [suicide bombings]" JEWISH BULLETIN OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, August 1, 1997.
"The Columbus Platform," in: Isaacs, Ronald H. and Kerry M. Olitzky, eds., CRITICAL DOCUMENTS OF JEWISH HISTORY: A SOURCEBOOK, Northvale: NJ: Jason Aronson, 1995, pp. 62-65.
Mann, Cynthia, "Israel's non-Orthodox seek to end religious monopoly", JEWISH BULLETIN OF NORTHERN CALIFORNIA, September 20, 1996.
Marmur, Rabbi Dow,"The Odd Couple No More," REFORM JUDAISM, Vol. 25, #3, Spring 1997, pp. 43-46.
Nadich, Judah, ed. THE LEGENDS OF THE RABBIS. Northvale, NJ : J. Aronson, 1994.
"The Pittsburgh Platform," in: Isaacs, Ronald H. and Kerry M. Olitzky, eds., CRITICAL DOCUMENTS OF JEWISH HISTORY: A SOURCEBOOK, Northvale: NJ: Jason Aronson, 1995, pp. 58-59.
SEFER YISHIYAHU ("Book (or Scroll) of Yishiyahu"). Unpublished translation from fragment in the Berkeley Genizah, in possession of the author together with "The Cheshire Cat" and similar works.
Count: 2/22/98-
8/2/98
"The Soul of Judaism" ©1997, Stuart Berman
Bluethread ©1997 Rosemarie E. Falanga, Cy H. Silver