Hayyei Sarah (Genesis 23:1 – 25:18)
What was the name of Abraham’s daughter? I imagine many of you are thinking: what daughter? Abraham didn’t have a daughter! Yet many of our sages thought otherwise. The Torah in today’s reading says “v’adonai berekh et Avraham bakol” – “And God blessed Abraham in all things.” What is the meaning of in all things? Rabbi Yehudah said that it meant that Abraham had a daughter. Others went a step further. They understood the verse to mean that Abraham had a daughter whose name was Bakol, and that she was Abraham’s blessing (Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 16b).
Of course, there is another view. Rabbi Meir said that Abraham was blessed in that he had no daughter. Rabbi Meir did not say that because he was a misogynist, nor even because it reflects the plain meaning of the text. Nahmanides explains that the reason that not having a daughter was a blessing for Abraham was because it saved him the grief of seeing his daughter leave the land of Israel.
Abraham insisted that his son marry a woman from Haran. He made his servant Eliezer swear not to take a wife for Isaac from among the Canaanite women. No doubt, if he had a daughter he would have arranged for her to marry a man from Haran. But a married woman would customarily live with her husband’s family. That would have meant that she leave the land of Israel.
Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, asks Abraham about the possibility of Isaac going to Haran. He says: “Perhaps the woman will not want to come after me to this land. Shall I indeed bring your son back to the land you left?” Abraham is adamant that Isaac not leave Israel, even if it means that he will not marry. He tells Eliezer: “If the woman should not want to go after you, you shall be clear of this vow of mine; only my son you must not bring back there.” And so, according to Rabbi Meir, Abraham was blessed in not having a daughter. That way, he was not faced with the dilemma of either sending his daughter out of the land of Israel, or of dooming her to loneliness, and denying her the right to marry in a society that equated a woman’s worth with motherhood.
In viewing Rabbi Meir’s statement in this way, Nahmanides is not merely making a sociological observation; he is making a theological statement that reflects his basic understanding of Judaism, and what we also know to have been a fundamental principle of Rabbi Meir’s worldview: Israel is the center of the Jewish universe.
The role of Israel as the focal point of Judaism has been questioned more than once in the course of Jewish history. The Jews of Babylonia did not all return to Zion with Ezra and Nehemiah. The rabbis of Babylonia challenged the preeminence of the rabbis of Israel on more than one issue.
Yet, although Babylonian Jews preferred living in Persia, they recognized that they were living in exile. “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea we wept, when we remembered Zion....” was not an empty expression of historical reminiscence, but a statement of existential significance.
The Jews of Spain’s golden age did not flock to Jerusalem. But even if they did not admit the primacy of Jerusalem in their day-to-day lives, they acknowledged it as a theological principle and a national ideal. Maimonides did not skip the laws of tithes and of kings in his compilation of Jewish Law. Even Shmuel HaNagid, vizier of Granada and commander of its army, wrote his poetry in Hebrew, and did not hide his yearning for Zion.
But things are changing. In the nineteenth century, the Reform movement claimed that Cincinnati was the new Jerusalem. Jerusalem was taken to be a state of mind, not a geographical location. Israel was not an ideal but an idea; not a place but a concept. The Reform movement has since built a major educational center opposite the Old City walls. It requires its rabbinical school students to spend their first year of studies in the earthly Jerusalem. The Reform movement has undergone an agonizing reappraisal. Elsewhere, however, the idea that Jerusalem and Israel are portable concepts – that they express a state of mind that is with us in all places and all times – is gaining ground.
The popularity of that view among modern Jewish intellectuals is no longer an expression of 19th century emancipation and the rise of nationalism. It is an extension of a 20th century existentialist relativism that focuses upon the individual as its object, and upon the autonomy of the individual as an ultimate value. It is about empowerment. In short, it is about “me”. It is an ethical philosophy founded upon me, my rights, my opinions, my sense of self, my values, my liberty, my freedom, and my interests. It derives all morality and social theory from the premise of the infinite value of selfhood, and extends it from the person to society. It is a fascinating expression of democratic idealism, and it is an understandably attractive philosophy of life.
Its proponents argue that holding up Israel as the ideal implies that for a Jew, living in Israel is somehow preferable to living anywhere else. They are offended by what they sense to be an implicit value judgment that the unsurpassed Jewish society that has developed in the United States is somehow inherently flawed; that it is genetically incapable of perfection by the mere accident of location. The idea that the land of Israel is intrinsically indispensable to Judaism grates upon their democratic sensibilities.
A ritual longing for God’s return to a mythic Jerusalem is an innocuous slight to modern sensibilities. An actual call to return to a rebuilt Jerusalem somehow offends their sense of autonomy, and challenges the validity of their choice to participate fully and unconditionally in the culture of the country of their birth or the society of their preference. The idea of Israel is quaint and comforting and even romantic. The reality of Israel makes some people uncomfortable.
Jewish intellectuals have become like those sensitive individuals who don’t want to know where their dinner comes from. They aren’t about to become vegetarians; they just would prefer to believe that steak doesn’t come from cows.
More than that, they argue that the centrality of Israel is demonstrably false. Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel has extended only over a few hundred of the last three thousand years. The greatest accomplishments of Jewish history are the products of the Diaspora. God revealed Himself to Israel in Sinai. Halakha derives primarily from the Babylonian Talmud, not the Jerusalem Talmud. The great works of Jewish thought and literature are the products of Spain, North Africa, Provence, and Germany.
But the Babylonian Talmud treats endlessly of agricultural practices that obtain only in the land of Israel, it develops laws, rules of evidence and of procedure that apply only to the courts of an autonomous Jewish state. It explicates rituals and religious practices that can be performed only in the land of Israel, or exclusively in Jerusalem. It even treats of the laws of declaring and conducting war. The Talmud may have been written in Babylonia by scholars who never gave a thought to actually moving to Israel, but the ideal of Jewish sovereignty in Israel predominated their thoughts.
Yehuda Halevi’s poem “Libi bamizrah, v’ani b’sof ma’arav” – “My heart is in the east, but I am at the farthest reaches of the west” was not a statement of orientation to an otherworldly idealization. It wasn’t an avowal of religious devotion to a spiritual idea of religious doctrine. It was an expression of a visceral ache for the Jewish homeland. It was written in Spain, but it articulated a defining worldview.
The new theology asks that we abandon the argument of which is better. It proposes that we agree to the inherent equality of all places, and accept the inconsequentiality of geography in our religious perception of self. Rather, we must adopt more lofty goals than petty nationalism and the politics of sand, of stones, of dirt and of bricks. Judaism has higher ideals and more elevated goals.
Perhaps. But few of us agree upon the definition of those ultimate goals. To say that Israel is not the end but the means, and to declare that the end is God, is to say nothing at all, and pose it as a statement of unassailable dogma.
As long as Israel was the sine qua non, and Jerusalem the ideal, a person could be a Jew anywhere, and be kindred to every other Jew. Judaism as a national identity, as the culture of an evolving civilization, united every Jew regardless of what he believed, and whether he believed or not. There was no need to redefine shared ideals and common goals. They were inherent to the national culture. But take away the primacy of Israel and deny the centrality of Jerusalem, and Judaism becomes intangible and indefinable. Every Jew will be empowered, and Judaism will be impoverished.
Take away the reality of Israel in the Jewish psyche, and Judaism becomes ephemeral. It will last as long as its most recent trend is fashionable. Everyone will be a good Jew. But there will no longer be any basis for calling any society Jewish. There will be no common cause beyond the social alliances of shared interests. There will be no Jewish people, and there will be no Judaism. There will just be self-styled Jews. And they will all, no doubt, feel smug and self-satisfied at their liberating achievement of self-destruction.
Avinoam Sharon
Of course, there is another view. Rabbi Meir said that Abraham was blessed in that he had no daughter. Rabbi Meir did not say that because he was a misogynist, nor even because it reflects the plain meaning of the text. Nahmanides explains that the reason that not having a daughter was a blessing for Abraham was because it saved him the grief of seeing his daughter leave the land of Israel.
Abraham insisted that his son marry a woman from Haran. He made his servant Eliezer swear not to take a wife for Isaac from among the Canaanite women. No doubt, if he had a daughter he would have arranged for her to marry a man from Haran. But a married woman would customarily live with her husband’s family. That would have meant that she leave the land of Israel.
Abraham’s servant, Eliezer, asks Abraham about the possibility of Isaac going to Haran. He says: “Perhaps the woman will not want to come after me to this land. Shall I indeed bring your son back to the land you left?” Abraham is adamant that Isaac not leave Israel, even if it means that he will not marry. He tells Eliezer: “If the woman should not want to go after you, you shall be clear of this vow of mine; only my son you must not bring back there.” And so, according to Rabbi Meir, Abraham was blessed in not having a daughter. That way, he was not faced with the dilemma of either sending his daughter out of the land of Israel, or of dooming her to loneliness, and denying her the right to marry in a society that equated a woman’s worth with motherhood.
In viewing Rabbi Meir’s statement in this way, Nahmanides is not merely making a sociological observation; he is making a theological statement that reflects his basic understanding of Judaism, and what we also know to have been a fundamental principle of Rabbi Meir’s worldview: Israel is the center of the Jewish universe.
The role of Israel as the focal point of Judaism has been questioned more than once in the course of Jewish history. The Jews of Babylonia did not all return to Zion with Ezra and Nehemiah. The rabbis of Babylonia challenged the preeminence of the rabbis of Israel on more than one issue.
Yet, although Babylonian Jews preferred living in Persia, they recognized that they were living in exile. “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea we wept, when we remembered Zion....” was not an empty expression of historical reminiscence, but a statement of existential significance.
The Jews of Spain’s golden age did not flock to Jerusalem. But even if they did not admit the primacy of Jerusalem in their day-to-day lives, they acknowledged it as a theological principle and a national ideal. Maimonides did not skip the laws of tithes and of kings in his compilation of Jewish Law. Even Shmuel HaNagid, vizier of Granada and commander of its army, wrote his poetry in Hebrew, and did not hide his yearning for Zion.
But things are changing. In the nineteenth century, the Reform movement claimed that Cincinnati was the new Jerusalem. Jerusalem was taken to be a state of mind, not a geographical location. Israel was not an ideal but an idea; not a place but a concept. The Reform movement has since built a major educational center opposite the Old City walls. It requires its rabbinical school students to spend their first year of studies in the earthly Jerusalem. The Reform movement has undergone an agonizing reappraisal. Elsewhere, however, the idea that Jerusalem and Israel are portable concepts – that they express a state of mind that is with us in all places and all times – is gaining ground.
The popularity of that view among modern Jewish intellectuals is no longer an expression of 19th century emancipation and the rise of nationalism. It is an extension of a 20th century existentialist relativism that focuses upon the individual as its object, and upon the autonomy of the individual as an ultimate value. It is about empowerment. In short, it is about “me”. It is an ethical philosophy founded upon me, my rights, my opinions, my sense of self, my values, my liberty, my freedom, and my interests. It derives all morality and social theory from the premise of the infinite value of selfhood, and extends it from the person to society. It is a fascinating expression of democratic idealism, and it is an understandably attractive philosophy of life.
Its proponents argue that holding up Israel as the ideal implies that for a Jew, living in Israel is somehow preferable to living anywhere else. They are offended by what they sense to be an implicit value judgment that the unsurpassed Jewish society that has developed in the United States is somehow inherently flawed; that it is genetically incapable of perfection by the mere accident of location. The idea that the land of Israel is intrinsically indispensable to Judaism grates upon their democratic sensibilities.
A ritual longing for God’s return to a mythic Jerusalem is an innocuous slight to modern sensibilities. An actual call to return to a rebuilt Jerusalem somehow offends their sense of autonomy, and challenges the validity of their choice to participate fully and unconditionally in the culture of the country of their birth or the society of their preference. The idea of Israel is quaint and comforting and even romantic. The reality of Israel makes some people uncomfortable.
Jewish intellectuals have become like those sensitive individuals who don’t want to know where their dinner comes from. They aren’t about to become vegetarians; they just would prefer to believe that steak doesn’t come from cows.
More than that, they argue that the centrality of Israel is demonstrably false. Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel has extended only over a few hundred of the last three thousand years. The greatest accomplishments of Jewish history are the products of the Diaspora. God revealed Himself to Israel in Sinai. Halakha derives primarily from the Babylonian Talmud, not the Jerusalem Talmud. The great works of Jewish thought and literature are the products of Spain, North Africa, Provence, and Germany.
But the Babylonian Talmud treats endlessly of agricultural practices that obtain only in the land of Israel, it develops laws, rules of evidence and of procedure that apply only to the courts of an autonomous Jewish state. It explicates rituals and religious practices that can be performed only in the land of Israel, or exclusively in Jerusalem. It even treats of the laws of declaring and conducting war. The Talmud may have been written in Babylonia by scholars who never gave a thought to actually moving to Israel, but the ideal of Jewish sovereignty in Israel predominated their thoughts.
Yehuda Halevi’s poem “Libi bamizrah, v’ani b’sof ma’arav” – “My heart is in the east, but I am at the farthest reaches of the west” was not a statement of orientation to an otherworldly idealization. It wasn’t an avowal of religious devotion to a spiritual idea of religious doctrine. It was an expression of a visceral ache for the Jewish homeland. It was written in Spain, but it articulated a defining worldview.
The new theology asks that we abandon the argument of which is better. It proposes that we agree to the inherent equality of all places, and accept the inconsequentiality of geography in our religious perception of self. Rather, we must adopt more lofty goals than petty nationalism and the politics of sand, of stones, of dirt and of bricks. Judaism has higher ideals and more elevated goals.
Perhaps. But few of us agree upon the definition of those ultimate goals. To say that Israel is not the end but the means, and to declare that the end is God, is to say nothing at all, and pose it as a statement of unassailable dogma.
As long as Israel was the sine qua non, and Jerusalem the ideal, a person could be a Jew anywhere, and be kindred to every other Jew. Judaism as a national identity, as the culture of an evolving civilization, united every Jew regardless of what he believed, and whether he believed or not. There was no need to redefine shared ideals and common goals. They were inherent to the national culture. But take away the primacy of Israel and deny the centrality of Jerusalem, and Judaism becomes intangible and indefinable. Every Jew will be empowered, and Judaism will be impoverished.
Take away the reality of Israel in the Jewish psyche, and Judaism becomes ephemeral. It will last as long as its most recent trend is fashionable. Everyone will be a good Jew. But there will no longer be any basis for calling any society Jewish. There will be no common cause beyond the social alliances of shared interests. There will be no Jewish people, and there will be no Judaism. There will just be self-styled Jews. And they will all, no doubt, feel smug and self-satisfied at their liberating achievement of self-destruction.
Avinoam Sharon
