Tora of Israel, Tora of Exile

By Yoav Sorek

Judaism seems to have become irrelevant to reality. The first step to bringing it back.

The commandments are intended to act upon life and to interact with it, rather than to create an independent realm of “holy life,” such as became familiar to Jews in the dispersion. The majority of the commandments relate to agriculture and commerce, domestic affairs, clothing, interpersonal relations and the legal system. There are also many ritual commandments surrounding the operation of the national Temple and its service—the Temple was not understood as an alternative to life, but as its complement, as the place where this world connects with the source of its vitality, the place from which divine blessings emanate to the mundane world of granary and vineyard, court and crown. The rabbis relate that the windows of the Temple were constructed so that they widened outwards toward the world to teach us that this Temple did not draw resources away from life like a black hole, an idea commonly accepted in pagan cultures. Judaism taught the reverse: The Temple of the Jews imparted life to the world.⁶

The Hebrew Bible—all its aspirations, its rewards and its punishments—concerns itself with the world in which we live. The “world to come” is entirely absent from it; in fact, the Hebrew Bible devotes only marginal attention to the question of life after death. In a world in which cults of the dead were prevalent, in which preoccupation with the world of the dead was commonplace, the Tora introduced the lucid central notion of repairing this life, reforming this world and achieving worldly goals. For even if the fruit of life’s efforts are fleeting for the individual, they are eternal for the nation as a whole.⁷

Of even greater significance is the Bible’s decidedly untechnical nature. True, it offers a wealth of commandments demanding precision. One gets the impression, however, that these resemble more the refinement of the artist, expressing inspiration and responsibility, than the mechanical pedantry that comes from fixating on the technical dimension as the principle itself. The exemplary figures presented in the biblical literature are individuals who successfully applied the religious conception of life to great acts of heroism or benevolence, not to punctilious observance of halacha. There are two reasons for this: First, the value of the commandments resides primarily in their being laws, that is, a pathway intended for an entire public. They are not necessarily a means of spiritual elevation for any given individual. But individuals are lifted to new spiritual heights by the qualities developed by the nation as a whole. Second, since biblical commandments are not technical in nature, a person’s righteousness is not judged on technical performance. The system of commandments found in the Tora established governmental structures, from the monarchy to the judicial system, but nowhere does Scripture require subservience to formal systems when they contradict the values for which they were established. The prophetic rebukes urged the people to return to morality, which in most instances meant acting against the conventions of society and its ruling structures.

From this description, we can see how great are the spiritual forces required to realize the faith of Israel. Those who accept the covenant must be mature, free and strong, so as not to fall under the spell of idolatry and the existential comfort through which it rules its adherents. In fact, the Bible depicts the periodic abandonment of the Creator by Israel, a nation unable to muster and maintain such strength. In the words of the prophet: “They have forsaken me, the Fount of living waters, and carved out for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns which cannot even hold water.”⁸

According to tradition, it was the collapse of the Israel-God covenant that brought about the destruction of the Temple and the ancient Jewish commonwealth. However, Judaism rejects the notion—popularized by anti-nationalists after the Emancipation—that the destruction of ancient Israel presented the Jewish people with a unique opportunity for cultural renaissance. Even though R. Yohanan ben Zakai, in an attempt to ensure that the Jewish faith survived in exile, begged the Romans to spare the academy at Yavneh and its scholars, tradition does not support the notion that the Tora and the Jewish faith emerged unscathed. The rabbis of the Talmud declared: “Since Israel was exiled from its place—there is no greater negation of the Tora than this.”⁹ To them, the exile of Israel meant the negation of the Tora, the destruction of their faith, the desecration of the name of God. The destruction of the physical does leave room for the development of the spiritual—but what a wretched spirit it is which seeks life in physical death. Such a spirit is one of decay, of contradiction between this world and the world to come and between the source of life and the source of truth.

In the wake of the destruction of Jerusalem, Judaism succeeded in preserving its spirit. However, the need to construct modes of life that would preserve the nation in exile led to the creation of concepts which differed in many ways from the original Jewish faith. This recasting of Judaism, based on a constant effort to distinguish between the present reality and the distant ideal, formed the basis of the Tora of Exile. Throughout the religious literature, one began to encounter expressions such as “at this time”—as opposed to “when the Temple stood”—and “this world,” referring principally to the exilic period.¹⁰ This distinction assisted the Jews in preserving the fundamental idea of Judaism, while at the same time enabling them to live with the demands of a different lifestyle.

In our own generation, however, when the time has come to return to the Tora of the Land, most traditional Jews have become so attached to the exilic Tora that they overlook the partial and problematic aspects of its nature. This confusion contributes in no small measure to the difficulties faced by the Jewish people in its efforts to return to a full life in its land.

The most tangible component of Judaism is its system of commandments. Exile, however, caused the system to lose its significance. The commandments were intended to be observed in the land, and their purpose was to create a civilization in which the Divine Presence would dwell. Once the people left its land and the Divine Presence accordingly receded heavenward, the system of commandments became irrelevant.

Nonetheless, Jewish tradition required that the commandments be observed in exile as well. Yet this observance differed radically from observance in the land of Israel. In exile, the commandments no longer constituted a vehicle for the realization of values and for the repair of the world. Rather, they aided in preserving the flame of national identity under the siege of exile. In a famous teaching of the rabbis, God himself gives voice to this idea:

“Although I exile you from the land, let the commandments remain current for you, so that when you return they will not be new to you.” This is comparable to a king of flesh and blood who became angry with his wife, and sent her back to her father’s house. [Her father] said to her, “Adorn yourself with your jewels, so that when you return they will not seem new to you.” Thus says the Holy One to Israel: My sons, let the commandments remain current for you, so that when you return they will not be new to you. Similarly, Jeremiah said [31:20]: “Keep in mind the highway, the road that you have traveled.” Said the Holy One to Israel: For if you see the ways on which you have traveled and you repent, you will immediately return to your cities, as it is said, “Return, Maiden Israel! Return to these towns of yours!”¹¹

This is the first important principle of the Tora of Exile: The commandments are the means of national preservation. Therefore, the purpose of human activity shifts away from its effect on concrete reality. The observance of the commandments, as described in this rabbinic parable, has no intrinsic worth. Rather, its value in the present devolves from its importance in a future era. Thus the dichotomy between “this world” and “the Messianic era” becomes fixed in the consciousness of the nation. The commandments may benefit society, but their goals cannot be achieved in the foreseeable future. This leaves no choice but to concentrate on the effort one puts into one’s actions rather than on their results. Thus the creation of the concept of “this world,” as distinct from the better times foreseen in the national future, inevitably gave birth to the notion of the “world to come”—the afterlife, in which payment is received for what was done in this life.¹²

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