And what was that approach? The land of Israel, as established in the Bible (and contrary to Ben-Gurion’s pronouncements), is not the birthplace of the Jewish people. If anything, that distinction goes to Ur of the Chaldeans, where the Jewish patriarch Abraham was born. Nor is the land of Israel ever described in the Bible as the “mother” or “father” of the Jewish people, or as its wife (it is not for the Jewish, or any other, people to “possess” the land of Israel—that honor goes to the Master of the Universe alone). Rather, the Jewish people’s relationship to the land is formulated in the Bible as a covenant, and not as an automatic, organic kind of belonging.

This covenant may best be understood as a type of rental agreement, with the requisite stipulations determined by every landlord in order to protect his property. “If you heed my laws and my commandments and practice no abominations,” says subsection ‘c,’ “the land will not eject you as it did the nation which came before you.” The nation of Israel was clearly not of the land’s flesh and blood, like the seven nations who were its true natives. Nor did the land of Israel and the nation of Israel belong to one another in some fatalistic fashion. The nation was to live there, always mindful of its status as renter.

Most nations do enjoy ownership rights to their lands; this ownership is pagan. A nation’s view of itself as master of its own domain justifies, even encourages, the exploitation of that land for the fulfillment of the nation’s desires. This view—arguably the natural one—is quite the reverse of the biblical rental contract, which sought to create in the land of Israel a “kingdom of priests and a holy nation”—that is, one that runs counter to nature, and contrary to the tendency to take things for granted.

In initiating an eternal engagement, the biblical covenant required a sense of commitment on the part of the Jewish people akin to that felt by a fiancé toward his lover. Thus it is not coincidental that this pledge of loyalty on the part of the Jews was exacted in the no man’s land between the exile and the land of Israel: The desert. For the desert is not a place in itself, but rather a corridor from one place to another. In this, the desert is the very embodiment of an engagement, with the Tabernacle serving as a type of portable wedding canopy.

Nor, for that matter, was it by chance that the journey was one of extended stops and stays, spanning years and even generations, or that the children of Israel were named for the ultimate fiancé, Jacob, whose longing for Rachel made his many years of servitude seem “like mere days.” The national story begs comparison with that of Jacob and Rachel: Both are narratives of an extended engagement, defined by intense longing and forced separation.

This analogy between personal betrothal and the national story is expressly written in the book of Hosea: “And I will betroth you to me forever. Yes, I will betroth you to me in righteousness, in justice, in loving-kindness, and in compassion, and I will be faithful to you, and you will know the Eternal.” And I will betroth you to me forever: This engagement was never intended to end in a marriage, but instead to remain an engagement for all eternity. For the engagement, and not the wedding—the commitment without ownership, the desire without its fulfillment—is the pact that prevents stagnation. A husband’s lot is the routine of possession; that of the fiancé, of Eros.

This approach, again, is far from bachelorhood; Eros here is not carefree. On the contrary, an engagement to the land of Israel was an expression of solemn responsibility, one that the nation of Israel took upon itself when it settled there. No previous nation had taken this responsibility upon itself, having (mistakenly or sinfully) viewed itself as the owner of the land. Just as the single life is devoid of responsibility, so, too, is that of the owner, who sees himself as accountable to no one else. This arrogance of possession was characteristic of pagan civilization from Sumer to Ramses, and in our day, as Heidegger noted in his essay “The Question Concerning Technology,” of modern industrial culture, as well, which shows little regard for nature and its non-renewable resources.

The Bible loathes this approach. From its very first chapters, the story of Adam rejects the idea of ownership over nature: God designates man a gardener in Eden, whose job is “to work it and to keep it.” Indeed, he is forbidden from eating of certain of the garden’s fruits, emphasizing the fact of his limited rights to the land in which he resides. Here the focus is on man’s responsibilities, as opposed to his desires, a distinction the Bible makes time and again, from the story of Adam through that of Abraham.

God prefers the gift of Abel the shepherd to that of Cain the farmer, because a shepherd’s life is defined by responsibility, not exploitation. The shepherd gives to his flock—by caring for it, protecting it from harm, and guiding it to grazing land—and the flock, in turn, provides him with milk and wool. It is a humble life of give and take, of subordinating one’s desires to one’s duties. The farmer, on the other hand, treats the land as his own, as available for his use. He does not show kindness to the land, but rather plunders it. It is no surprise, then, that throughout the Bible, shepherds and tent-dwellers are presented as beloved by God, while those engaged in agriculture, such as the Canaanites, are presented as defilers of the land on account of their belief in their ownership of it.

The story of the flood is yet another case of responsibility. Noah was saved because he was needed as a savior. The building of the ark was not his own, selfish idea, but rather God’s command. In contrast to Noah’s ark, the tower of Babel manifests the vain approach of technology-oriented civilizations such as that of Abraham’s homeland.

Abraham—like the entire nation of Israel, later on—entered the land of Israel as if it were a gallery or a bus. He viewed the land as a subject entrusted to his care, and not an object for his possession. Thus did he sanctify the land, transforming it into his betrothed.

An eternal engagement to the land of Israel, and not the bachelor’s life in exile—this was the biblical alternative to the pagan notion of ownership. This way of thinking was reflected in the private sphere, in the way men and women were betrothed and married during biblical and, more notably, talmudic times. The oral tradition not only established a ceremony for the institution of engagement, which was completely distinct from that of matrimony; it also made the former institution the more important of the two. The sophistication of the ancient dowry, to the extent that it entailed the drawing up of a detailed marriage contract (ketuba) and the establishment of a waiting period until its implementation, made betrothal and not marriage the primary expression of commitment. The wedding was viewed as merely a final seal of approval.

What the synagogue is to the Tora, the wedding canopy was to the marriage contract: A place in which to read it aloud, in public, and confirm its contents. At the betrothal feast, held a year prior, the women of the community would announce the bride’s engagement, and during the course of the following year, her fiancé would send her gifts. Thus was she considered a “bride on hold,” enjoined to revel in her betrothed status for an extended period before the wedding itself.

“When God brought back those who returned to Zion, we were like dreamers,” it is written in Psalms. “Then our mouths will be filled with laughter, and our tongues with singing.” In other words, the return to Zion is a dreamed-of, longed-for event, not a realistic one in the here and now. In the present reality, we find joy not in the marriage itself, but rather in its anticipation.

“Those who sow in tears,” Psalm 126 continues, “will reap with songs of joy.” Tears, joy—both have their place, and their time, in the narrative of the Jewish nation, just as both have their place and their time at the Jewish marriage ceremony. In talmudic times, the Jewish bride and groom were considered royalty for a day. They wore crowns, gold if they were wealthy, and laurels or roses if not. The tradition of making the bride and groom happy at their wedding achieved the status of a mitzva, or commandment, the details of which were debated by the schools of Hillel and Shamai (“How should one dance before a bride?”).