From the Conservative Yeshiva: Are Jews Obligated to Make Aliyah?

by Matt Plen

Discussions between American and Israeli Jews on the subject of their mutual obligations often become antagonistic. A number of years ago, I gave a dvar Torah to a United Jewish Communities mission of top activist-donors from North America. I discussed the story from Deuteronomy in which the tribes of Reuben and Gad and the half-tribe of Manasseh ask Moses to excuse them from crossing the Jordan river and settling in the land of Israel, because they already have established a livelihood for themselves on the eastern bank. Moses, after blazing with anger at this rejection of God’s promise, reluctantly assents, with one condition. The three recalcitrant tribes are to provide the frontline troops for the assault on Canaan; only after the victory will they be allowed to return to their families and farms outside the land.

Was the tribes’ request legitimate, I asked the group of American Israel activists. Absolutely. How do you feel about the condition Moses imposed on them? The group was ambivalent. What commitments should American Jews make to Israel to legitimize their decision to remain in the diaspora? Here the answer was clear. They give money. The group regaled me with stories of their fundraising campaigns, often launched in response to terrorist outrages in Israel. But, I asked them, is giving money enough? After all, Moses didn’t ask for cash. He expected the diaspora Jews of his day to come and fight. What do you give Israel in terms of personal commitment? Now I’d started to annoy the group. We’ve already told you, they said. We’ve donated hundreds of thousands of dollars! What could be more personal than that?

We’d come to an impasse. They couldn’t understand my problem with philanthropy – and in some cases genuine financial sacrifice – and I couldn’t get past the fact that they thought that sending money excused them from participating firsthand in building up the Jewish state. But the conversation raised a critical question. Did the Americans react with such hostility because they genuinely believed in the unconditional validity of diaspora Jewish existence, rejecting the implication that some kind of sacrifice was necessary to legitimize the good life they were living at home? Or was their antagonism a symptom of the fact that they actually agreed with me that Israel is the place to be Jewish, and if you want to live anywhere else you have to excuse your guilty dereliction of Zionist duty?

This issue is far from new. Almost identical questions are dealt with in an extended discussion in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Ketubot. What light can this text, dating from over 1500 years ago, shed on our contemporary dilemma?

As with all passages of Talmud, this sugyah, or discussion, starts out with a citation from the Mishnah, the earliest comprehensive articulation of the Oral Law, dating from the year 220 CE. Following the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE and the 135 CE defeat of the Bar Kokhba revolt at the hands of the Romans, the Jewish people was dispersed. A major center existed in the northern land of Israel, but significant Jewish communities existed elsewhere, for example in Babylonia and Egypt.

This mishnah begins as follows: “All take up to the land of Israel and all do not take out. All take up to Jerusalem and all do not take out; both men and women.” Rashi, living in 11th-century France, explains: “All take up” means a person can coerce all the members of his household to settle with him in the land of Israel or Jerusalem. “Both men and women” means that this obligation is strictly egalitarian. Even women are empowered to coerce their husbands to make aliyah.

The point becomes even clearer slightly further on, when the Talmud quotes a baraita (baraitot are mishnaic-period texts that were not included in the mishnah itself):

“He says to go up and she says not to go up – she is compelled to go up; and if not – she is divorced with no ketubah. She says to go up and he says not to go up – he is compelled to go up; and if not – he divorces her and gives her her ketubah. She says to go out and he says not to go out – she is compelled not to go out; and if not – she is divorced with no ketubah. He says to go out and she says not to go out – he is compelled not to go out; and if not – he divorces her and gives her her ketubah.”

A woman’s ketubah is a prenuptial agreement that specifies the amount of compensation she is entitled to receive if she is divorced. In other words, in situations where a person has to choose between marriage and living in Israel, Israel comes first. Moreover, such a person, whether it’s the man or the woman, is protected from any financial disadvantage as a result of his or her decision, even in the context of a patriarchal culture that valued marriage above almost any other institution.

But the rabbis did not stop there. The sugyah continues by quoting another baraita:

“A person should always live in the land of Israel, even in a town whose majority is non-Jewish, and should not live outside the land, even in a town whose majority is Jewish.”

In contemporary terms, this means it’s better to live in Um El Fahm, an Arab town in the north of Israel, than in Flatbush, New York; not Jewish community but the intrinsic holiness of the land itself is the decisive factor. The passage continues in hyperbolic terms:

“For all those who live in the land of Israel may be considered to have a God, but all those who live outside the land may be considered not to have a God, as it is written: ‘...to give you the land of Canaan, to be your God.’”

To this outlandish theological proposal, the Talmud responds incredulously: “But all those who do not live in the land have no God? Rather, this is to tell you that all those who live outside the land are as idol worshipers.” Idolatry is one of only three sins that Jewish law dictates it’s better to die than commit; if this injunction is taken literally, it means that every diaspora Jew is guilty of an offence as serious as murder or incest.

Even if we understand this text as a rhetorical device deployed by the rabbis in a desperate attempt to prevent the mass desertion of the land of Israel following military defeat and persecution at the hands of the Romans, the idea that the holiness of the land requires each of us to live in it poses a grave challenge to diaspora Jews.

In the talmudic period, the biggest diaspora community, as well as the center of Torah scholarship, was in Babylonia, modern- day Iraq. How did the Babylonian rabbis cope with the challenge posed by the foregoing texts? Mishnaic sources were considered authoritative – they could not simply be discarded. Taking these texts seriously, while continuing to live outside the land of Israel, required some creative interpretive maneuvers.

The talmudic discussion continues by recording a dispute between two Babylonian sages.

“Rabbi Zera was evading Rav Yehuda because he [Rabbi Zera] wanted to go up to the land of Israel, while Rav Yehuda said: Anyone who goes up from Babylonia to the land of Israel transgresses a positive commandment, as it is said: ‘They shall be carried to Babylon, and there they shall be, until the day I remember them, saith the Lord.’”

Rav Yehuda’s opinion that remaining in the diaspora is a positive commandment flies in the face of the mishnah and earlier beraitot. Moreover, the prooftext he uses suffers from two serious flaws: first, it comes from Jeremiah – the prophets, not the Torah – a definite impediment when trying to establish a rule’s legal validity. More seriously, the preceding verse reveals the context of the quotation: “Yea, thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, concerning the vessels that remain in the house of the Lord….” As Rabbi Zera points out, “that text refers to the Temple vessels” and not to exiled Jews. Moreover, Jeremiah’s prophecy was already obsolete. By the talmudic period, the Babylonian exile had ended and the Temple had been rebuilt (and destroyed by the Romans).

But Rav Yehuda is not easily defeated. He continues by quoting from Song of Songs:

“And Rav Yehuda [said]: Another text is also available: ‘I adjure you, O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles or by the hinds of the field: do not wake or rouse love until it please.’” The Talmud itself does not explicate the meaning of this verse. Its allegorical significance was well known: Do not go up to the land of Israel until the coming of the messiah. Rabbi Zera responds by arguing that the verse’s prohibition is more specific: “That implies that Israel shall not go up ‘on a wall,’” or in other words en masse; individual aliyah is legitimate.

Still, Rav Yehuda is insistent. He continues: “Another ‘I adjure you’ is written.” This argument is based on the fact that the verse under discussion appears three times in the Song of Songs. If so, even if the first verse reflects Rabbi Zera’s interpretation, perhaps one of the others can be interpreted to confirm Rav Yehuda’s claim. Rabbi Zera refutes this possibility by explaining that all three adjurations already have been expounded by Rabbi Yose son of Rabbi Hanina, who said: “What was the purpose of those three adjurations? One, that Israel shall not go up on a wall; 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 idolaters not to oppress Israel too much.” Critically, these three oaths, while providing a theological basis for religious anti- Zionism, do not prohibit aliyah for individuals.

But Rav Yehuda does not concede defeat. Rather, he changes tack: “Rav Yehuda said in the name of Shmuel: Just as it is forbidden to leave the land of Israel for Babylonia, it is forbidden to leave Babylonia for other countries. Rabba and Rav Yosef both said: even from Pumbedita [an urban center of learning] to Bey Kubey [a small village in an outlying area]. One who left Pumbedita for Bey Kubey was put under the ban by Rav Yosef....” Conceding the point that it’s forbidden to leave Israel, Rav Yehuda argues that the same prohibition applies to Babylonia – despite the difference between Israel’s intrinsic holiness and Babylonia’s importance as the center of Torah scholarship. He continues: “One who lives in Babylonia is considered as if he lived in the land of Israel, as it is said: ‘Woe Zion, escape, you who dwells with the daughter of Babylon.’” Rav Yehuda takes the verse as referring to residents of Babylonia as Zion, equating them to those who live in Israel.

Rav Yehuda started off by arguing directly against aliyah; this claim having failed, he attempted to prove Babylonia’s importance by analogy with the holiness of the land of Israel. Either way, Rav Yehuda was grappling with an insoluble problem – the need to justify Jewish existence outside of Israel in the face of holy texts that explicitly negate the diaspora. Yet the need to engage in this kind of polemic indicates that Rav Yehuda accepted the premise of the mishnaic texts. His implicit recognition of the obligation to settle in Israel explains the need to justify his ongoing failure to do so.

In modern times, the Jewish people has faced a similar conundrum. Some early Zionists articulated ideologies in which aliyah was the highest duty. For others Zionism’s goal was to provide a refuge from anti-Semitism; the role of Jews who were secure in their diaspora homes was to support Israel politically and financially. Yet, like Rav Yehuda, many western Zionists felt the need to justify their existence in the diaspora. In recent decades, however, many American Jews have lost this urge. Zionism – understood as a personal participation in the Jewish national movement – has been replaced by a more vicarious form of support for Israel.

Maintaining Zionist principles – including the obligation of aliyah – outside Israel is a recipe for internal conflict and the need for constant self-justification. But the alternative – replacing personal Zionism with support for Israel – while enabling the development of an authentic, non-conflicted American Jewish identity, threatens to drive a wedge between those seen as the doers in Israel and those who take on the role of cheerleaders in the diaspora.