I. 4.
Israel in Exile: Developing the Trends from Babylon
For the vast majority of the world’s Jews, the Land of Israel
increasingly become an abstraction. Although the rabbinic leadership, based
at this time in Babylon, developed a system by which Jews would remain connected
to their historic homeland, these initiatives remained essentially spiritual,
rather than concrete.
- The Rabbis soaked the developing liturgy and other aspects of Jewish life
with mention of Eretz Yisrael - the Land of Israel.
- Similarly, Jewish ritual life was tailored to remind the Diaspora Jew that
he or she was a stranger in a foreign land and should always remember that
“home” was somewhere other than where they were living. This could
not but have a great influence on the Jew. Constantly, s/he was forced to
reflect on the situation in the Land and to lament the fact of their own absence.
An additional factor that contributed to the negation of practical
efforts to return to Zion was the updating of the Jeremian paradigm, by which
Jews were encouraged to be passive and await G-d’s appointed time to
bring the people back from exile. Strictly speaking, there was no discouragement
against individual Jews acting on the strength of their feelings and going
to live out their life in “Zion.” The problem, from a theological
point of view, was viewed in collective terms. The community as a whole, it
was taught, was forbidden to take collective steps to return. To do so would
be to rebel against G-d, whose sole decision it was, it will be remembered,
to decide on the date of the deliverance and the return.
There were a number of ways that the “prohibition”
against the return was explained. The most popular seems to be that invoked
by the three oaths which Israel was said to have taken when they accepted
the punishment of exile. The details (and the text most popularly quoted)
are from the Babylonian Talmud.
What are these three oaths? One that Israel not “ascend
the wall” [Rashi: together, by force]: one that the Holy One, Blessed
be He, adjured Israel not to rebel against the nations of the world: and one
that the Holy One, Blessed be He, adjured the nations of the world not to
oppress Israel overmuch.
Bab. Talmud Ketubot 111a.
These oaths appear to have been invoked whenever there were large
groups of Jews who were interested in leaving the lands of the Exile and
settling in Eretz Yisrael. Although they never appear to have had the
force of Halachah (Jewish law), they were clearly felt to have considerable
moral force. Jews who went in large numbers were typically considered as having
“ascended the wall.”
But there were those who disagreed. The great medieval Jewish
scholar the Ramban, or Nachmanides, certainly took a different line arguing
in a commentary on Maimonides that,
“It is incumbent upon every individual to go up to live [in Israel]”
and that this was no less than,
“a positive commandment incumbent upon every individual in every
generation”.
He himself was one of a very large group of Jews who went up to the Land in
the thirteenth century. Nevetheless, despite the moral authority of the Ramban
and other Olim (immigrants to Israel), the majority appears to have
felt very differently.
According to Aviezer Ravitzky, a Professor of Jewish Thought at
the Hebrew University, the Three Oaths were widely accepted amongst traditional
Jews during the 18th and 19th centuries as arguments against large scale Aliyah
to the Land of Israel.