Tora of Israel, Tora of Exile

By Yoav Sorek

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

Second, the rabbis assigned paramount importance to the study of Tora in the life of the individual Jew. This was expressly meant to supersede the centrality of deeds as expressed in the Bible. It was the Sages who first taught that the effort expended on the intellectual clarification of Temple sacrifices, for example, is equal in value to the offering of the sacrifice itself: “Whoever occupies himself with the study of the laws of the sin offering, it is as though he had offered a sin offering himself.”¹⁶ According to the rabbis, the blessings promised in Leviticus as a reward for fulfilling the biblical commandments are dependent upon the study of the Tora. Thus, they interpreted the Biblical statement, “If you follow my laws and faithfully observe my commandments” as follows: “‘If you follow my laws’—that you shall labor in [study of] the Tora.”¹⁷

This idea became so entrenched among the Jews of that era that by the time of the Talmud, the rabbis had begun to recast the figures of the Bible—whose greatness of character and courage had been painted in such glowing colors—as giants of Tora study, lest they be perceived as coarse and inferior individuals. Accounts of the bravery of biblical heroes were widely reinterpreted as manifestations of their scholarly prowess, as exemplified in the rabbinic portrait of Benaya ben Yehoyada—one of David’s warriors—who is described in the Bible as the one who “killed the two [sons] of Ariel of Moab and who went down into a pit and killed a lion one snowy day.”¹⁸ Although this verse is ambiguous, it clearly describes heroic exploits. The rabbis, however, present the smiting of the lion on a snowy day as a reference to Benaya’s breaking the winter ice in order to purify himself before engaging in Tora study.¹⁹ In the rabbinic teachings, both the heroes and villains familiar to us from David’s court were engaged not so much in warfare and acts of heroism as they were in Tora study—the heroes doing so properly, the villains distorting it. The mighty men surrounding Solomon’s couch, “sixty warriors of the warriors of Israel, all of them trained in warfare, skilled in battle,” likewise are depicted as scholars engaged in scholarly disputes.²⁰

Despite these emerging characteristics of the Tora of Exile, the basic melody of the Tora of the Land could still be heard clearly in the rabbinic teachings. The rabbis continued to possess a sympathetic understanding of reality, a sensitivity to the insights of the senses, and an understanding of the world of deeds as one in which one can find spiritual meaning. Although the Mishna and Talmud devoted much thought to abstract legal categories, in no way did the rabbis understand these as irrelevant or distinct from the universal discourse on various topics. For them, the Tora was no autonomous entity whose importance was wholly introspective; rather, it was a body of knowledge that spoke both about life and to it. The Tora of the Sages, the Oral Law, consistently took pains to be up-to-date and was written entirely in the vernacular of the period—the Mishna in Hebrew, the Babylonian Talmud in Babylonian Aramaic and the Jerusalem Talmud in Palestinian Aramaic. The importance of this world to the rabbis is especially conspicuous in the blessings of the amida prayer, the silent devotion instituted by the Men of the Great Assembly, which is still the central prayer in the Jewish liturgy today. All of these blessings are directed at the correction of this world and the attainment of prosperity, justice, healing and wisdom in the earthly realm. Moreover, the rabbis maintained that a person’s spiritual merit depends mainly on his deeds, and less on his faith, the intensity of his prayer or his diligence in study.

Through the Talmudic literature we come to know the rabbis as human beings capable of recognizing the esthetic and sensual values of the physical world, and who did not regard these values as alien or unimportant—whether they were describing the beauty of women depicted in the Bible, the personalities of Talmudic figures, the manners of the various non-Jewish nations, the grace inherent in the human or natural order or the clarity of a fine wine. These Jewish religious leaders possessed the ability to analyze foreign cultures and to contend with them, to speak with insight on matters of commerce and medicine, and were willing to enter into debates and dialogues with the greatest of Roman sages and rulers. In short, the rabbis were men of the world.

The Period of the Rishonim. The medieval period constitutes the second phase in the development of the exilic Tora. From the conclusion of the Talmud to the expulsion from Spain (eleventh to fifteenth centuries c.e.), the exilic Tora continued to develop and gradually came to dominate Jewish life. During this period, the congenial synthesis of cultures present in the Sages disappears, supplanted by an acute awareness of exile—complete exile. With this comes an awareness that the Tora possessed by the Jews differs from “life,” yet does not completely replace it. The dichotomy is total: The Jews find themselves in a state of constant tension between the world in which they live—their efforts to attain success in their ordinary pursuits—and their fulfillment of the Tora.

The cultural backdrop for this development, the medieval Christian and Muslim worlds, provided a suitable context for the sharpening of the split between body and soul, between the needs of this world and aspirations for the next. Here, there was no sharp division between Israel and the non-Jewish nations; instead, the normative divisions in all three societies rested in the alienation of religion from life. Both Jews and non-Jews built their religious worldviews on the principle that God had somehow become divorced from the world.

From this stage onward, the Oral Law no longer existed in its original sense: The now written and canonized Talmud, which directed the life of the Jewish people, had become divorced from continued creativity, growth and renewal—except within the confines of Talmudic scholarship itself. Of course, some rabbis of the period did score impressive achievements in realms beyond Tora study, such as poetry, astronomy, philosophy and affairs of state. Yet such wisdom did not enter the national canon as “Tora” per se, as essentially Jewish learning—in sharp contrast to the study of the Talmud, which became an integral part of the essence of Tora. The sources from which the Sages drew in their pursuit of arts and sciences were not found within the tradition, but in the surrounding culture.

The changed perception of the relationship between the Creator and his people in this period, which remains the norm to this day, is expressed in the liturgical poems (piyutim), lamentations (kinot) and penitential prayers (slihot) written during this epoch—writings that constitute one of the more important elements of the prayer book, especially on holidays. In the model depicted therein, the Jewish people adhere to the commandments despite the straits in which they find themselves, and the Creator protects his people, despite their sins. It is an implicit pact between two partners who have agreed to forgo the customary arrangements and act charitably toward each other. It is a covenant of unqualified devotion to God on Israel’s part and unqualified loyalty to Israel on the part of the Creator—a relationship very different from the covenantal system standing at the center of the Tora of the Land, a system based on communal reward and punishment, in which the loyalty of the two parties depends upon the free choice of the nation from generation to generation. The heart of the old covenantal system did not consist of self-identification as a Jew per se, but of ethical acts and the rejection of idolatry. The new system contains no struggle against paganism and does not emphasize acts of this-worldly significance; its cardinal element is, rather, the very willingness of the nation to identify as Jews and to preserve the tradition as a sign of its continued dedication.

The Period of the Aharonim. The third phase in the development of the exilic Tora is the era extending from the publication of the Shulhan Aruch (c. 1550) to the present day.²¹ During this period, Jewish religious scholars all but ceased to engage in external disciplines; traditional Jews took almost no part in the general culture and showed no interest in it; and the Jewish identity, with all its difficulties, was perceived not only as a beloved identity, but as the only possible one. Jewish law became increasingly technical, detailed and marked by stringent embellishments and ascetic practices. Study became more abstract and complex and developed a strong tendency toward casuistry and inefficient methods of learning, over the objections of leading Tora scholars in each generation. The Tora of Exile dominated both religion and life; indeed, all aspects of life were enveloped by the Tora. More and more Jews revealed a sincere indifference to this world and matched this stance with a greatly increased interest in the practice of commandments and in future redemption.²² Thus began the springtime of the exilic Tora: A harmony developed between the Jewish people and its Tora in this new form—the harmony depicted so warmly in Fiddler on the Roof, for instance.

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