Live in
Israel, even among idolaters
לעולם
ידור אדם בא"י אפי' בעיר שרובה עובדי כוכבים, ואל ידור בחו"ל ואפילו
בעיר שרובה ישראל, שכל הדר בארץ ישראל דומה כמי שיש לו אלוק, וכל הדר בחוצה לארץ
דומה כמי שאין לו אלוק...
Always, one should live in Israel, even in a city
which is mostly idolatrous, rather than live outside of Israel even in a city
which is mostly Jewish, for one who lives in Israel is as though he has a relationship
with Gd, and one who lives outside of Israel is as though he has no
relationship with Gd…[1]
I didn’t make it up – this is a gemara!
One thousand years ago, Rabbi Yehudah haLevi explored this assertion
that one can only have a relationship with Gd in Israel.[2] He
explained that we, the Jewish people, are like a prolific grapevine
which is tailored to flourish in a particular soil, and with particular
cultivation. The acts of cultivation are taught in the Torah, and the soil is
the Land of Israel.
I want to come back to the question of whether one can only connect to
Gd in Israel. First, though, I want to focus on another startling part of this
passage – that I must move to Israel even if that means living in an עיר שרובה עובדי כוכבים, an
idolatrous city!
When I taught this passage in a shiur several weeks ago, one of the
participants challenged me. Is an idolatrous city where our grapevine should be
cultivated? What about all the ways in which Judaism places such a powerful emphasis
on living among good influences, and avoiding bad ones!
·
The Torah demonstrates the
dangers of living in idolatrous societies. Think of Egypt with Avraham and Sarah, the
Philistines with Yitzchak and Rivkah, and Shechem with Dinah. Yosef tells his
brothers to live in Goshen, not among the Egyptians.
·
The gemara records rabbinic
decrees meant to encourage Jews to live away from bad influences,[3] to
avoid joint meals and social drinking,[4] and
so on.
On Rosh
HaShanah we spelled out the importance of איחוד
הנפשות, of bonding
with others in empathy, but did Rav Yerucham Levovitz really envision unity and
empathy with idolaters rather than Jews? How can the gemara tell me to go live among
idolaters in Israel?!
The
risks of community
I believe that
Rav Levovitz’s vision of building a community in which people bear each other’s
burdens is incomplete; more is necessary, because community based solely on a shared
set of actions can become a negative:
·
A community in which people join together to do
good things can become a community of peer pressure, in which people
do right only because deviating would carry a social price.
·
A community which develops norms of practice
can become a community focussed on rules and rote – what Yeshayah[6]
called מצות אנשים מלומדה -
without spiritual depth.
If
community becomes all about doing as the herd does, then we fail the promise of unity.
The
goal of Kesuvos: Communities of beautiful grapevines
I believe that
talmudic passage about living in Israel means to teach us to cultivate a
community of souls who personally connect with Gd as Step One, and who
then communally carry forth that Image of Gd into this world,bearing
each other’s burdens, as Step Two.
To use the
Kuzari’s grapevine metaphor:
·
When our roots are a search for Gd, then we will be
nourished not by peer pressure but by personal spiritual desire.
·
When we are nourished by personal spiritual desire, then
our rules and rituals will not be the essence, but the means of
bringing forth spreading shoots, lush leaves, fragrant flowers and sweet fruit,
the mitzvot and chesed and empathy.
·
And once we unite these grapevines in spiritual communities
which develop the empathy and chesed we discussed on Rosh HaShanah, then we
will benefit, individually and collectively, from the joint influence of so many
human beings growing together and reaching heavenward.
So first
we should seek Gd, as Step One – and then we are able to take Step Two, and
build spiritual communities.
Outside
Israel, we have Yom Kippur
And now I
return to that gemara’s specification of living in Israel to be near HaShem.
We are not in Israel; how can we seek Gd? Does the gemara believe that
all is lost? Would the Kuzari say we are wasting our time?[7] I
think not – because even though HaShem is most available in Israel, we
can seek HaShem, in a life-changing way, in the experience of Yom Kippur,
anywhere.
Through
the rest of the year - whether in Israel or elsewhere - the drive of the
day-to-day and the reality of our religious doubts make it hard for us to
commit to a search for Gd without nagging voices distracting us. “I need to go
to work.” “I have a meeting to get to.” “My phone is ringing.” “My emails are
piling up.” “If Gd is good, how do you explain tsunamis and earthquakes?” “If
Torah cultivates spiritual Jews, what about that rabbi who was arrested?” “I
don’t see Gd anywhere!”
But Yom
Kippur is our Israel, the place where Gd is found. Yom Kippur is a day when
we put aside the busyness and the questions; Yom Kippur is a day of experiential
Judaism. We don’t eat. We don’t wash. Husbands and wives are apart.
It’s all about focusing on Gd. We recite viduy, privately specifying our
mistakes from the past year. It is a personal conversation with Gd. And
the Talmud[8] says
that this is the time when HaShem is near – קראוהו
בהיותו קרוב.
It’s not only that Gd is near to hear our repentance; Gd is here for our
connection, and our cultivation. This is the fertile soil in
which we can cultivate the grapevines of the Jewish people - and even if we currently
live in exile.
What
that connection looks like
What does
that connection look like? What are we looking to cultivate in our hearts?
Shir
haShirim, the ultimate love song between Gd and the Jewish people, describes it
in beautiful and moving terms:[9]
(ט)
מַה־דּוֹדֵךְ מִדּוֹד הַיָּפָה בַּנָּשִׁים מַה־דּוֹדֵךְ מִדּוֹד שֶׁכָּכָה
הִשְׁבַּעְתָּנוּ: (י)
דּוֹדִי צַח וְאָדוֹם דָּגוּל מֵרְבָבָה:
(יא)
רֹאשׁוֹ כֶּתֶם פָּז קְוֻצּוֹתָיו תַּלְתַּלִּים שְׁחֹרוֹת כָּעוֹרֵב: (יב)
עֵינָיו כְּיוֹנִים עַל־אֲפִיקֵי מָיִם רֹחֲצוֹת בֶּחָלָב יֹשְׁבוֹת עַל־מִלֵּאת: (יג)
לְחָיָו כַּעֲרוּגַת הַבֹּשֶׂם מִגְדְּלוֹת מֶרְקָחִים שִׂפְתוֹתָיו שׁוֹשַׁנִּים
נֹטְפוֹת מוֹר עֹבֵר: (יד) יָדָיו
גְּלִילֵי זָהָב מְמֻלָּאִים בַּתַּרְשִׁישׁ מֵעָיו עֶשֶׁת שֵׁן מְעֻלֶּפֶת
סַפִּירִים: (טו)
שׁוֹקָיו עַמּוּדֵי שֵׁשׁ מְיֻסָּדִים עַל־אַדְנֵי־פָז מַרְאֵהוּ כַּלְּבָנוֹן
בָּחוּר כָּאֲרָזִים: (טז) חִכּוֹ
מַמְתַקִּים וְכֻלּוֹ מַחֲמַדִּים זֶה דוֹדִי וְזֶה רֵעִי בְּנוֹת
יְרוּשָׁלִָם:
The
daughters of Jerusalem ask the heroine of Shir haShirim, the Jewish people: Why
is your Beloved different from any other? Why do you seek your Beloved like
this?
And the
heroine responds,“My beloved is pure white and red, standing out even among ten
thousand others. His head is like gold, his coiled hair is black like a raven!
His eyes are like doves by streams of water, bathing in milk, set in a gorgeous
foundation. His cheeks are like a bed of fragrant flowers, mounds of spices;
his lips are like lilies, dripping flowing myrrh. His arms are cylinders of
gold, set with gems; his torso is ivory, inlaid with sapphire. His legs are
marble pillars, founded upon sockets of gold; his appearance is like the choice
cedars of Lebanon. His palate is sweet, he is entirely desirable. This is
my Beloved, This is my friend, daughters of Jerusalem!”
And we
find a similarly beautiful description of that connection each time we repeat
the amidah on Yom Kippur, right before the viduy, in כי
אנו עמך, when we
declare to Gd:
For we are
Your nation, and
You are our Gd.
For we are
Your servants, and You
are our Master…
For we are
Your lot, and
You are our Destiny.
For we are
Your sheep, and
You are our Shepherd.
For we are
Your vineyard, and You
are our Guardian…
For we are
Your beloved, and You
are our Lover.
For we are
Your splendour, and You
are our Friend.
For we
have spoken for You, and You
have spoken for us.
This is
what that gemara wants for us
– not to live among idolaters, but to find Gd - in Israel and on Yom
Kippur! And once we have found Gd, then we can engage in איחוד
הנפשות, bringing
ourselves together to form spiritual communities.
Yizkor,
and beyond
Yizkor is
an especially appropriate time to think along these lines:
·
At Yizkor, each Jew recites the Kel Malei and asks Gd
to remember as we do. Bereavement could be all about personal loss, and not
a religious experience – but Yizkor makes it about Gd. Yizkor is a moment of locating
Gd personally, even within grief.
·
But it is also about community We invoke the memory of
those who created our Jewish world. Victims of the Shoah. Valiant founders and
defenders of the State of Israel. Parents and other relatives. Yizkor is a time
of profound community.
And when
we put back the Torah after Yizkor, and begin Musaf, let us retain that
blend of the two steps. Let us stand as a community of human beings, daven as a
community, sing as a community. But let us also retain that Shir haShirim and Yom
Kippur focus on the private union with Gd, even outside the Land of Israel,
cultivating grapevines that are nourished spiritually, and that flourish
communally.
Derrick
Coleman
One last
note, which might take the level of dialogue somewhat out of the rarefied
spiritual atmosphere we associate with Yom Kippur, but which I hope you will
find as meaningful as I do:
It can be
hard to detach ourselves from the world around us, and experience a union with
Gd. We are surrounded by neighbours and friends and relatives here. We get
distracted, and pausing to re-focus is challenging. And perhaps we have a
history of Yom Kippur davenings which did not reach those heights, telling us cynically
that this day won’t be any different.
The other
day, I saw a video[10] that
really resonated with me on this point. It featured an American football
player, Derrick Coleman. Coleman is deaf, and in the commercial, he talked
about what it took for him to reach his goal of football success. Speaking over
a montage of football scenes, Coleman said this:
They
told me it couldn’t be done. That I was a lost cause. Kids were afraid to play
with me. I was picked on… and picked last. Coaches didn’t know how to talk to
me. They gave up on me, told me I should just quit. But I’ve been deaf since I
was three – so I didn’t listen.
For the
record, Coleman was not drafted by any NFL team out of college. But then he signed
as a free agent after the 2011 season. He became the first deaf NFL offensive
player in 2012, and won Super Bowl 48 at the end of the 2013 season. As of the
start of the current season, he has two more NFL touchdowns than I do.
Sometimes,
all of us need to refuse to listen. Achieving community with Gd is hard – but
even if we have yet to achieve it today, or ever, this Yom Kippur isn’t
over. Coleman concludes by saying, “Now I’m here, with a lot of fans in the
NFL cheering me on. And I can hear them all.” May we merit Coleman’s level
of success in our Yom Kippur, and may HaShem hear us all.
[1] Kesuvos 110b
[2] Kuzari 2:21 specifically cites
this passage, but look more broadly at 2:8-24
[3] Eruvin 62a re: גזירה שמא ילמוד ממעשיו
[4] Avodah Zarah 59b, for example
[5] Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Deios 6:1
[6] Yeshayah 29:13
[7] Of course, Ramban to
Vayyikra 18:25 cites Sifri that mitzvos outside of Israel are really training
for mitzvos in Israel
[8]
Rosh HaShanah 18a
[9]
Shir haShirim 5:9-16
[10] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzQFA2hxyRQ
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