When the Tabernacle is to set out, the Levites shall take it down,
and when the Tabernacle is to be pitched, the Levites shall set it up; any
outsider who encroaches shall be put to death. The Israelites shall encamp
troop by troop, each man with this division and each under his standard.
(Bemidbar 1:51-53)
Another story is told of a gentile who was passing behind the Beth Midrash and overheard the voice of a scribe reciting "These are the garments which they shall make: the Choshen and the Ephod." He said: "To whom were these instructions given?" They answered him: "To the High Priest." Said the gentile: "I shall go and convert myself so that they appoint me High Priest."
He came before Shammai. He said to him: Convert me on condition that you appoint me High Priest." He pushed him away with the builder's cubit he was holding.
He came before Hillel, who converted him. Said Hillel to him: Is it not so that only one acquainted with the conventions of monarchy is appointed king?" The convert went and studied. When he reached the passage "And the stranger who comes near shall die" he asked: "To whom does this passage refer?" He replied: " Even to David, King of Israel."
The gentile analyzed his situation with a kal va'chomer. "If Israel, who are called Sons of the Omnipresent, and because of His love for them he called them "Israel, My firstborn son", yet they are subject to "And the stranger who comes near shall die" - a convert who comes but with his stick and pack, all the more so!"
He came before Shammai: He said to him: "In your estimation, am I
worthy of being a High Priest? Does it not say in the Torah: "And the
stranger who comes near shall die?"
He came before Hillel. He said to him: "Hillel the humble, may blessings be heaped upon your head, for you brought me beneath the wings of the Divine Presence."
One day, the three of them happened to meet. The convert said: "Shammai's strictness sought to drive us from the world; Hillel's humility gathered us under the wings of the Holy Presence."
(Shabbat 31a)
"YOUR
FOLLOWING ME IN THE DESERT"
THE
FORMATIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF ISRAEL'S
DEVELOPMENT
IN THE DESERT
Gili
Zivan
The Parasha of Bemidbar, which opens the Book of Bemidbar, provides a propitious pretext for examining the significance which various thinkers assigned to the story of Israel's formation in the desert. What is the meaning of forty years of wanderings in the desert prior to the entry into an inhabited land? Desert is the antithesis of an inhabited land, the opposite of civilization. It is a place where man is dependant upon God's beneficence, no less than upon man's favors. Is it a place of freedom, or a place of fear?
Shulamit Hareven masterfully described the atmosphere of that desert experience, capturing something of the feelings of the Hebrews fleeing their Egyptian masters into the great desert:
Tremendous freedom, vast, larger than the measure of man, stood in the air. There was no scheduled order of the day, it seemed as there was no longer any order in the world... there was neither master nor slave. There was unthreatening desert, and crevices... the silence could be felt. Infinite skies...
There were no sounds. A few bleats of a
flock, a few human voices in a crevice and by the water... here and there the
sharp screech of a desert bird. Their ears were cleansed of all sounds of a
settled land, of the shouts of the taskmasters .
(From the trilogy "Thirst" - "The Hater of Miracles")
What is the function of the desert? Freedom from the sounds of Egypt? From the voices of the master and the slave? From the noises of the Nile and its magicians? What is the import of the fact that that the first moments of Israel's formation were not in its own land?
We shall examine this problem through the eyes of three modern thinkers: Erich Fromm, Franz Rozenzweig, and Yeshaayahu Leibowitz. But I should like preface this journey through commentary with a Midrash. The Darshan in the Tanhuma explains the extended wanderings in the desert as an educational necessity. The people had to undergo a radical metamorphosis, to change habits and conceptions; they needed forty years in the desert in order to free themselves from earlier conceptions:
He led them around in the desert for forty years. Said The Holy One, Blessed Be He: If I lead them on the short route, every man will take hold of his field and his vineyard, and will not engage in Torah. Instead I will lead them through the desert, and they will eat the manna and they will drink the water of the well, and the Torah will settle in their bodies. (Midrash Tanhuma, Beshalach, chap. 1)
This idea is elaborated upon at length by the psychologist and philosopher Erich Fromm (b. 1900), who saw in the wanderings of Israel in the dawn of Jewish history evidence of Judaism's struggle against the god of acquisitiveness. The forty years of desert wanderings are forty years of being, of human existence which does not seek to define itself through ownership. This is the period during which the slaves of yesterday become aware of the development of a different sort of relations, human relations which are not founded upon relations of ownership and acquisitiveness. The desert is the most important symbol of liberation from the definition of 'self' by property.
The desert is not a home. There are no
cities. There is no property. It is the place of nomads who have that which
they need, and all that they need is life's essentials, not belongings... life
in the desert as preparation for a life of freedom. (Erich From, Ownership or Self-Realization, p. 59, emphasis mine
- G. Z.)
Even when God acquiesces to the Children of Israel's demands for the pot of flesh in Egypt, He attaches an important reservation: "They gathered as much as they needed to eat" (Shemot 16:18), the Children of Israel were not allowed to hoard food. According to Fromm , this command is related to the fight against acquisitiveness:
Here, for the first time, is a formulation of
the principle promulgated by Marx: "Each according to his needs." The
right to receive food is determined without limit... the second command is
against hoarding, covetousness, and acquisitiveness. The Children of Israel are
forbidden to hoard anything until morning. (Fromm,
ibid., p. 60)
The struggle against acquisitiveness , then, is expressed through the restriction against gathering on the Shabbat and by the command to gather a double portion on the Sixth Day, for the Sixth Day and for the Shabbat. According to Fromm, the Sabbath is not only a day of rest; it is an expression of life without acquisitiveness, without transfer of objects from domain to domain, without purchase or giving over of property, without transfer of ownership.
On the Sabbath Day, one lives as though he
possesses nothing, he is engaged in simply being, that is to say, in
expression of his essential abilities; praying, study, eating, drinking,
singing, and loving. (Fromm, ibid., p.61,
emphasis in the original - G. Z.)
This basic element of the Shabbat was emphasized by the philosopher and theologian, Avraham Yehoshua Heschel, in his book "The Sabbath - Its Meaning for Man Today". In his view, the Shabbat is a kind of freeze of the race for the materiel, it is the "Sanctuary in time" which is erected not by aggregation of that which is, but by enrichment of being. "Not everyone who increases possessions increases individuality. (Avraham Yehoshua Heschel, The Sabbath, p. 11, emphasis in the original - G. Z.)
The wanderings in the desert, like the
Shabbat, are an unusual way of life, devoid of possessions and ownership of
land. Their goal is the internalization of the idea that man is defined not
only by his possessions; in the words of Fromm, man is what he is, not
what he has.
Did the nation of slaves succeed in shedding their attitudes towards ownership and acquisitiveness in the desert? It seems that "the Children of Israel cannot live without ownership" (Fromm, ibid., p. 62, emphasis in the original G. Z.) Fromm notes the failure of the revolution, in the light of the behavior of the tribes entering Eretz Yisrael, and in light of the development of Israeli monarchy. In contrast, the prophets and the sages of the Talmud, in his opinion, continue the struggle against the sanctification of place and property. It was this struggle which saved the Jewish nation from total oblivion after the collapse of its political dependence and the destruction of its Temple.
The story of the wanderings of the Jewish People in the desert and their unceasing longing for additional sources of food, for hoarding, for the Egyptian fleshpot, for the golden calf, are but the essence of the story of one who observes humanity. The ability to share and to give, and not only to amass, is - in Fromm's view - the great mission of people living in societies of consumption and affluence.
A different approach to the significance of Israel's formation in the deserts of Sinai is offered by the Jewish philosopher Franz Rosenzweig (1886-1929), author of "Star of Redemption". Rosenzweig develops a unique historiosophy in his attempt to understand the uniqueness of the Jewish nation in relation to the rest of the world: the Jewish people is distinct from the nations in that "blood kinship" suffices, it does not need land, earth, in order to express its eternal message. The Jewish nation's religious peculiarity obliges it to rise above settlement of land, because, although "it nourishes... it also chains." The Jewish people, which lives in "eternity", not in "history", must overcome the nationalist, enslaving, chains, and to give itself over to the life of eternal monotheism.
The peoples of the world, in contrast to the Jewish people, strike roots in the soil, so as not to disappear from the world:
The nations of the world... they sink their
roots into the night of the earth, which is in itself dead but life-giving, and
from its long existence, they draw guarantees of their own longevity. (Rosenzweig, Star of Redemption, p.324).
It seems that the great danger lies where "a nation loves its homeland more than it loves its life"; "If nine times this love saves the homeland from the hand of the enemy... on the tenth time, there will remain only the most beloved, the land, but the life of the nation itself will come to an end" (ibid., emphasis mine - G. Z.)., When the nation cleaves to its earth more than to its uniqueness and its mission, the earth, as it were, betrays its mission. This devotion, argues Rosenzweig, is liable to bring about the nation's end.
It seems that two stories provide the background for Rosenzweig's harsh vision of the land shackling its defenders to death, to the oblivion of the nation: the story of German nationalism and its victims, as was revealed to soldier Franz Rosenzweig, the young German-Jewish stationed in the Balkans during the First World War, and in contrast, the Biblical story of the birth of the Jewish people, a story with a totally different message.
The story of the Jewish people begins with the father of the nation, Avraham, who came from afar in obedience to the divine order to leave his land and birthplace for a land which the Lord was to show him. Further on in the story, we meet for the first time the Jewish nation, departing Egypt for the great desert. These narratives of our genesis express, according to Rosenzweig, Israel's non-dependence upon territory, the a-historical message and the non-nationalistic character of this people.
It is made into a nation... in exile, first
in Egypt, and later in Babylon... It always preserves the non-dependence of a
traveling knight, and as he roams in faraway places... and longs for the native
land which he left behind, he is more loyal to his land than he was when he
dwelt in it. (Ibid, p. 324)
In order to understand Rosenzweig's position, one should note his attitude to modern nationalism, specifically to Zionism and to Eretz Yisrael in the light of his general conception of the mission and status of the Jewish nation. Rosenzweig, in "Star of Redemption", compares Judaism with Christianity, and claims that Judaism has already reached the eternal, in contrast to Christianity which is charged with the mission of spreading the truth.
Judaism is comparable to self-feeding fire, whereas Christianity is comparable to the ray of light which "gives light to the world" ("Star of Redemption", p. 356). Therefore Christianity struggles, battles, and conquers - in other words - lives in history. Judaism, on the other hand, having already reached the eternal, realizes itself by its very existence. Christianity is the path of the eternal; Judaism is the life of the eternal.
Zionism is conceived by Rosenzweig to be a dangerous striving for normalization. An abnormal nation cannot solve its problems in a normal fashion (i.e., with the aid of territory). The Jewish nation must build Jewish spiritual organizations, and not a Jewish state.
The last thinker, whose views on the formation of Israel in the desert I wish to mention, is Yeshaayahu Leibowitz. He, too, notes that "the Torah was not given in the land of its mission". (Yeshaayahu Leibowitz, Seven Years of Discussions on the Weekly Parasha, p. 291) The observance of the Torah is not dependent upon a specific land. The Torah, in the words of the Midrash, was given "in public domain", a place not subject to private ownership, a place belonging to all. "Whoever wishes to take, let him come and take." Or, in the words of another Midrash: "Just as the desert is ownerless property [hefker], so are the words of Torah hefker, free for all to take." The aim of the Midrash, says Leibowitz, is:
To dissuade those who think that the worship
of God is contingent upon Eretz Yisrael... The Torah was given to man as man,
and not to a native of Eretz Yisrael or any other place. Eretz Yisrael is the
framework determined for the existence of the Jewish people... but in no way
are the mitzvoth and the validity of Torah tied to territory... This must be
stated in sharpest terms in opposition to all those many good Jews, who, in
their innocence, invest effort to transform the nation of God ["Am
HaShem"] into the nation of the Land ["Am HaAretz"]. (Ibid, p. 291-292, emphasis in the original).
In his acute style, Leibowitz, the Zionist, living in the sovereign Jewish State, points out the danger latent in sanctification of the land. It seems that, even without adopting Rosenzweig's existential-mystical conception of the Jewish people, he echoes the fear of transforming territory from means to an end.
If, despite the historical distance of Rosenzweig's words (who knows? Would he have revised his approach had he lived until the Shoah?) and their naivete, their implied warning for a nation which has long forgotten the desert experience remains valid: The warning not to sanctify dead earth to the point of the extinction of those who dwell upon it.
In Israel's desert development, Leibowitz -
who fought all his life against the sanctification of anything which is not God
(e. i., the State, the army, Eretz Yisrael, etc.) - saw an echo of Judaism's
struggle against idolatry in all its forms. "The giving of the Torah took
place outside of Eretz Yisrael, and there is no doubt that this fact contains a
most import message, to teach us that the matter of receiving the yoke of
the kingdom of heaven and the yoke of Torah and Mitzvot is not a territorial
matter." (Leibowitz, ibid., pp. 291-292, emphasis mine - G. Z.)
Fromm's warning also takes on significance with our taking root in the land, becoming a society with possessions and acquisition. Every affluent society is liable to fall into the jaws of the golden calf. Definition of 'self' or 'the other' by means of property and ownership is a natural tendency for a human consumer society, but in the desert narrative - as in the concept of Shabbat - lies latent the challenge of a different self-definition.
In conclusion, I wish to mention another midrash in the spirit of Fromm's words, one which sees the desert as a spiritual state, one emptied of self-esteem, a state of total attention to the voice of the 'other' (the transcendental, or the one who is nearby).
"And God said to Moshe in the Desert
Sinai" - Whoever does not make himself as an ownerless desert, cannot
acquire wisdom and Torah, therefore those it say "In the Desert
Sinai." (Bemidbar Rabba Parasha 1)
Only one capable of making himself 'as a
desert' to listen to others and to the wisdom of 'the other' can - as did
Moshe - hear the voice of God speaking to him at the Desert of Sinai: "And
the Lord spoke to Moshe in the Desert Sinai..."
On Independence Day, 5727, 35 years ago, a young singer named Shuli Natan climbed onto the stage. She sang the first performance of "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav", which Naomi Shemer had composed a short while earlier.
Like
other songs, this song entered history, because, among other reasons, it
touched a number of emotional and nostalgic motifs. There is no way of knowing
what might have been the fate of this song, had not the Six Day War broken out
a short time later, or if the war would have been waged only on Israel's
northern or southern border.
I
recall a meeting with an elderly Jew, a landsman of my mother z"l,
a long-time resident of this country, shortly after the war. He maintained that
it was wrong to add the stanza which was appended after the war, that it would
have been better to leave the song as an authentic song of aspiration and
longing. At the time, I listened to his words, but I was not certain that I
understood what he was saying.
Today, 35 years after that war, after all the Jewish people in Israel and abroad were emotionally stirred by Rabbi Goren's sounding of the shofar and Motta Gur's proclamation "The Temple Mount is in our hands!" it is possible to admit that that senior citizen, rich in experience, knew what he was saying. If we have to chose between the two versions of the song, which will we choose? Have we really returned to the wells? And what about the market place?
The
phrase "and in its heart, a wall" is interesting and
thought-arousing; there is a physical wall which marks the boundaries of the
Old City, and because of it we read the Megilla on the 15th of Adar,
as in Shushan, "So that Eretz Yisrael will have a remembrance of this
miracle" (Rambam,
Laws of Megilla) but it seems
that Naomi Shemer was referring also - and perhaps mainly - to a different
wall; the complete line is: "The city which sits lonely and in its
midst a wall," a sentence which brings us back to the Book of
Lamentations: "Alas! Lonely sits the city once great with people!"
The
wall, then, is found in the heart of the city which sits
"lonely". Is the heart of the city divided because of the wall?
The
heart is traditionally the source of human feeling, but it is also the source
of understanding; with regard to the Mishkan it is written "In the
heart of each with wise heart I gave wisdom", and the Rambam (Guide I, 39) uses the concept 'heart' in the sense of
"thought" or "opinion".
The
city sits lonely with a torn heart and with opposing opinions, divided by a
wall; all of us - or most of us - thought that the city was united 35 years
ago, and that the physical wall would become a promenade, a point where
different parts of the city connect. It seems that in this respect we were
wrong. It appears that walls of a city cannot be felled by war alone. Perhaps
there are other ways to speak about the heart of a city and about the hearts of
its inhabitants and to unite in true unity. Perhaps, in these days, this seems
like a dream; perhaps today the city, in the words of Naomi Shemer, is
"imprisoned in her dream", but this is not adequate reason to stop
dreaming, to give up hope for the unification of the city, regardless of
whatever political or municipal solution will be found. We pray that in our
times we be privileged to see "A city joined together - a city
which brings all its inhabitants together."
Pinhas Leiser, Editor
Editorial Board: Pinchas Leiser (Editor), Miriam Fine (Coordinator), Itzhak Frankenthal and Dr. Menachem Klein
Translation: Kadish Goldberg
This weekly publication was made possible by:
The
Moriah Fund, the Tisch Foundation and private donors
To our readers:
We will be happy to have you actively participate in "Shabbat Shalom" by:
· Letters to the editor
· Publication of Divrei Torah (in coordination with the editorial board)
For details, contact Miriam Fine (053-920206 or 02-6730196)
If you enjoy Shabbat Shalom, please consider contributing towards its publication and distribution.
· Hebrew edition distributed in Israel $1000
· English edition distributed via email $ 100
Issues may be dedicated in honor of an event, person, simcha, etc. Requests must be made 3-4 weeks in advance to appear in the Hebrew, 10 days in advance to appear in the English email.
US, Canadia or British tax-exempt contributions to OzveShalom may be made through the New Israel Fund or through P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds, Inc.
Contributions should be marked as donor-advised to OzveShalom/Netivot Shalom, the Shabbat Shalom project.
New Israel Fund, POB 53410, Jerusalem 91534 (Please include Israeli address and telephone number)
New Israel Fund, POB 91588, Washington, DC 20090-1588, USA
New Israel Fund of Canada, 801 Eglinton Ave. West, Suite #401, Toronto, Ontario M5N 1E3 Canada (Canadian tax exemption)
New Israel Fund of Great Britain, 26 Enford Street, London W1H 2DD, United Kingdom (British tax exemption)
P.E.F. Israel Endowment Funds, Inc., 317 Madison Ave., Suite 607, New York, New York 10017 USA
About us:
Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom is a movement dedicated to the advancement of a civil society in Israel. It is committed to promoting the ideals of tolerance, pluralism, and justice, concepts which have always been central to Jewish tradition and law.
Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom shares a deep attachment to the land of Israel and it no less views peace as a central religious value. It believes that Jews have both the religious and the national obligation to support the pursuit of peace. It maintains that Jewish law clearly requires us to create a fair and just society, and that co-existence between Jews and Arabs is not an option but an imperative.
Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom`s programs include both educational and protest activities. Seminars, lectures, workshops, conferences and weekend programs are held for students, educators and families, as well as joint seminars for Jews, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians. Protest activities focus on issues of human rights, co-existence between Jews and Arabs, and responses to issues of particular religious relevance.
9,000 copies of a 4 page peace oriented commentary on the weekly Torah reading are written and published by Oz VeShalom/Netivot Shalom and they are distributed to over 350 synagogues in Israel and are sent overseas via email. Our web site is www.netivot-shalom.org.il.
Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom's educational forums draw people of different backgrounds, secular and religious, who are keen to deepen their Jewish knowledge and to hear an alternative religious standpoint on the subjects of peace and social issues.
Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom fills an ideological vacuum in Israel's society. Committed both to Jewish tradition and observance, and to the furthering of peace and coexistence, the movement is in a unique position to engage in dialogue with the secular left and the religious right, with Israeli Arabs and with Palestinians.
Our activities are funded by donations and one part time employee.
OzveShalom/Netivot Shalom Tel./Fax 972-2-5664218
Pob 4433 Email: ozshalom@netvision.net.il
Jerusalem 94310, Israel www. netivot-shalom.org.il