Parashat Lech-Lecha (5761)

With God’s help, on the eve of the holy Sabbath, Parashat Lech-Lecha 5761

Breaking with Exile and Rootedness in the Land of Israel

The portion begins with a sudden command from the Holy One, blessed be He, to Abram, until then an anonymous figure: ‘Go forth from your land

and from your birthplace and from your father’s house to the land that I will show you’ (Genesis 12:1). Abraham is commanded to leave everything he had known,

and to go to a place undefined and unknown to him, a place that the Holy One, blessed be He, would show him in the future. It seems

that in this command the Holy One, blessed be He, intends to separate the process of leaving the exilic environment from

the movement toward the goal, the Land of Israel. Had the goal been identified immediately, it could

have created the feeling that leaving Ur of the Chaldeans was not important in itself, but was meant only to enable arrival

in the Land of Israel; or alternatively, that the Land of Israel is not a goal in itself, but merely an

alternative to Ur of the Chaldeans. These verses teach us that there is value in leaving Ur of the Chaldeans,

and there is also value in going to the Land of Israel. These two are not necessarily dependent on one another, apart from the order of

priority: first one leaves Ur of the Chaldeans, and only afterward can one arrive in the Land of Israel.

So too in the Exodus from Egypt, the people wander in the wilderness for forty years before entering the Land of Israel. All of them

(apart from two) also die in the wilderness, and only the next generation enters the land. So too in the subsequent return to the Land

of Israel, in the days of Ezra and Nehemiah, Israel passes through a stage of leaving the exilic mentality before

they merit reestablishing their hold on the land (they enter into a covenant, send away their foreign wives, and so forth).

The Return to Zion in the last generation sometimes appears as though it fulfilled this command in the strictest fashion. There is

a departure from exile in ways that are ostensibly more complete than in earlier times. The ‘native-born Israeli’ wanted

to look different from his forebears, for whom he sometimes felt contempt, and certainly did not aspire to preserve their way of life

and their mode of thought.

But leaving the exilic mentality is not an external process, just as exile is not an external

condition. Exile is not merely living outside the Land of Israel; it is an inner state of the individual and of the people. Exile is

an artificial condition in which a people lives not in accordance with its inner nature. The direction of the departure also matters. It is not enough

to alter the condition that existed in exile; it must be transformed into a spiritual and psychological state more suited

to rootedness in the Land of Israel.

Part of the change perhaps needed to be a casting off of the constant anxieties of the Jew

in exile, and the acquisition of personal and national self-confidence. That, ostensibly, was done. But a more important part of

the change should have been a return to the essential self, to observance of the commandments and fuller Jewish life

in a fuller sense. That certainly was not done.

More can be said. There is a connection between these two changes. If one does not return to the essential

self, one cannot significantly change the mentality either, and these very days prove it. The people of

Israel, proud and self-confident, possessing a mighty, sophisticated, and well-equipped army, are defeated time after

time by ridiculous forces. All this takes place under a constant fear of escalation and of international

intervention. Today one understands the Jews of the Diaspora better, and one no longer asks why they went

‘like sheep to the slaughter,’ and similar questions. The ‘native-born Israeli’ has reverted to being an exilic Jew as always. There is no point speaking

of a connection to our cultural and historical sources, not only in the religious sense but even in the

national one. The basic goal of Zionism, which was to attain the life of a normal people, an ordinary member

of the family of nations, does not embody a desire to break away from exile, as people once thought,

but rather precisely a return to it. Jews in the United States live in a far more normal way than Jews

in the Land of Israel. True, their lives are private and not national, but what meaning does nationality have

today in the state of all its citizens in which we live?[1]

Whoever wishes to educate on the basis of the ‘Rabin legacy’ (is there even such a thing?), and to build on this basis a culture

and society that are Zionist, will arrive exactly where we have arrived. Ostensibly, this is indeed a complete break from exile,

but one must remember that the exile from which we came was not the Ur of the Chaldeans of idolaters, the

native environment of our patriarch Abraham. It was, as Bialik said, ‘the workshop of the nation’s soul.’

As such, the break from it had to be effected by continuing it while renewing it, and not by

a brutal replacement, as in fact occurred.

In my humble opinion, religious Zionism also suffers from the same illness. It too is raising a community disconnected

from its recent past and connected only to its distant past. For example, in a memorial volume published in memory of Rabbi

Ra’anan, may his blood be avenged, who was murdered in Hebron, there appears, as is customary in such memorial books, a section titled ‘Treasures

of the Ancients’ (that is, Torah essays by leading sages of earlier generations). In this section there appear

essays by ‘ancients’ such as Rabbi Kook, father and son, Rabbi Charlap, and Rabbi HaNazir (figures

who were spiritual giants in their own right, but that is not our concern here). This break, like its secular counterpart,

cannot create a basis for any real rootedness in Jewish nationhood and in the Land of Israel. The break that can

serve as such a basis is a break from essential exile, not from external exile.

It is clear, on the other hand, that some sort of break from exile really must occur in order to create

Jewish nationhood. In this respect, the ultra-Orthodox clinging to the past is also no better a basis for it. We

are apparently called upon to create a less brutal separation, one more closely attached to the past, and only then may we perhaps

reach the rest and the inheritance.

Have a peaceful Sabbath

This may be deposited for respectful disposal in any synagogue or house of study. Comments and responses will be gladly received.

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[1] The debate over a state of all its citizens, exactly like the debate over Jerusalem and Palestinian sovereignty

on the Temple Mount, is being waged with full force, and no one is bothered that people are arguing over matters

that have in practice long been irreversible facts on the ground.

Biton62.doc