The Cradle and the Crucible: The Meaning of Egypt
For the land to which you are going . . . is not like the land of Egypt . . . it is a land of hills and valleys, from the rain of the skies it drinks water. It is a land that Hashem, your God inspects; the eyes of Hashem, your God, are constantly upon it, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year. (Devarim 11:10–12)
If the first book of the Torah starts with the creation of the world, the second book begins with another genesis, the creation of the Jewish people.7Indeed, it has been suggested that there are important parallels between the early development of mankind and the early development of the Jewish people. I first heard this idea from my friend and colleague, Rabbi Nathaniel Helfgot, who subsequently pointed out that others have also made this comparison. See, for example, Amos Chacham, Da’at Mikra – Shemot (Jerusalem: Mossad haRav Kook, 1991), 16. At the beginning of Shemot, the Torah’s second book, we see the fateful arrival of Ya’akov’s large and distinguished family in the land of Egypt. It is there that we read about this family becoming a nation.
Like the initial genesis of the world, the creation of the Jewish people is not just about proliferation. The history of the Jews in Egypt is the story of the creation of a distinctive identity that would create a new consciousness among the descendents of Ya’akov. How this nation came into being is obviously of great import. Yet the Torah gives us only a basic outline of the process. This is very much in keeping with the terse, nuanced Biblical style, which demands careful reading and skillful interpretation to arrive at its full meaning.
In studying the birth of the Jewish nation, we immediately ponder the significance of the story’s geographical location and whether the foundational experiences of the Jewish people could not have happened elsewhere. In other words, is the fact that this national genesis occurred in Egypt ultimately coincidental or does it add an important dimension to the future shape of the Jewish nation? To address such a question, we will need to look at what the Torah tells us about the land of our national origins, a land that would ironically become the paradigm of all future oppressors of the holy nation to which it gave birth.
What Is Egypt?
It is certainly no coincidence that Egypt is mentioned a great deal in the Bible. In fact, it appears almost seven hundred times. Besides Israel, which is understandably mentioned more than Egypt, the next runner-up, Babylonia, is mentioned only about two hundred and fifty times. If nothing else, this statistic reveals the Bible’s fascination with Israel’s western neighbor.
Egypt’s proximity and its resultant political and military influence over Israel makes its centrality expected. At the same time, the relationship between the Jews and Egypt is much more involved than what is necessitated by mere geopolitics. We might say that classical Jewish culture has a fixation on Egypt.
Egypt serves as a constant place of refuge from famine and conquest, yet it is the only place where Jews are Biblically prohibited to live (Devarim 17:16).8Devarim 17:16. That the Jews in the Bible nonetheless continue to be more connected to Egypt than to anywhere else only serves to create depth as well as irony to the Torah’s prohibition. This country is somehow friend and foe – often at the same time. Whatever it is, however, its intertwining with the Jewish nation reinforces our desire to understand what Egypt is all about.
What does the Torah tell us about the geographical entity we call Egypt? First of all, Egypt functions as a place of economic refuge for those living around it. Both Avraham and Ya’akov go to Egypt when confronted with famine (Bereshit 12:10 and Bereshit 46:6).9Bereshit 12:10 and 46:6, respectively. Yitzchak would have done the same had he not been prohibited by special Divine mandate (Bereshit 26:1-2).10Ibid., 26:1–2. Moreover, we read that other nations would also come to Egypt to find sustenance in times of famine (Bereshit 41:57).11Ibid., 41:57. Were we to know nothing else, these passages immediately show us that even when the rest of the region is experiencing drought, Egypt is somehow spared.
In fact, the fidelity and bounty of Egyptian agriculture is only further brought out by its descriptions in the Torah. The first reference, early on in the book of Bereshit, which compares Egypt to God’s garden (Bereshit 13:10),12Ibid., 13:10. says it all: from a certain perspective, this land is idyllic. The basis for this perspective is explained further in the book of Devarim, where we read that Egyptian agriculture does not require much physical effort (Devarim 11:10).13Devarim 11:10. Still another reference tells us that pots full of meat were available even to the slaves there (Shemot 16:3).14Shemot 16:3. Accordingly, not only is the land easy to work, it also produces great bounty.
Even without the Torah’s descriptions, it is well-known that the Nile River would regularly overflow its banks, creating dependable fertility throughout the whole area. In turn, the agricultural plenty this created allowed Egypt to amass its famous power and wealth, attested to by the great treasures and monuments it left over for all generations to see until this very day.
In turn, Egypt’s wealth allowed it to develop a military capability that afforded it physical security, a commodity unknown to most other nations in the area. The Land of Israel, for example, was constantly fighting with its immediate neighbors as well as trying to escape the wrath of the major empires. Although Egypt also had to contend with the rival empires that would arise every few hundred years, nonetheless, as opposed to God’s chosen people next door, most Egyptians did not need to constantly worry about being attacked by the likes of the Philistines or the Moabites!
Mitzrayim, Son of Cham
One might think that such a fortunate situation would be given to a nation that God favors. At the very least, one might expect this situation to create an intense religious gratitude to the spiritual forces responsible for such tranquility. As we will discover, this is not at all what the Torah saw. And not only did the Torah not see this, it also wanted to make sure that the reader would not even entertain such a perspective.
The land and people of Egypt (Mitzrayim) were named after its ancestor, the son of Cham and the grandson of Noach. As is generally known, Cham is the least illustrious of Noach’s children. This comes out most clearly after the flood subsides and human inhabitation of the earth begins anew (Bereshit 9:18–29).15Bereshit 9:18–29. At that time, when Noach gets drunk, Cham doesn’t help his father in the same way as Shem and Yefet do. Moreover, though it remains unclear exactly what Cham did when he saw his father naked, it was enough to cause Noach to curse him (through his son Cana’an), instead of bless him as he did his two other sons.16While it is not exactly blessings that Noach gives Shem and Cham, certainly when compared to his treatment of Cham, it would be fair here to refer to them as blessings. A simple reading of the text shows that when Cham saw his father naked, rather than cover him he went to tell his brothers. The Midrash suggests that his behavior was much more depraved (Sanhedrin 70a),17Sanhedrin 70a. a reading for which one can find hints in the Biblical text. Yet even the simple narrative ascertains that Cham did not know how to respond appropriately to his father’s nakedness.
Since the Torah commonly considers a person’s descendents to be highly influenced by him (all the more so when we are talking about the father of a nation or nations), if Cham’s weakness lay in sexual depravity, we would not be surprised if the same were true of his progeny. In fact, the Torah gives us several indications that it views ancient Egypt as a nation marked by sexual immorality. The clearest reference to this is when Avraham feels a need for special precautions to protect his marriage with Sarah specifically in Egypt.18Redeeming Relevance in Genesis, pp. 67–68. We conclude from this that so voracious was the Egyptians’ lust and so little did they value human life that Avraham fully expected his new neighbors to ignore the most basic natural law to satisfy their desires – i.e., to murder him in order to get to his wife.
The story of Yosef and Potiphar’s wife a bit later shows that Avraham was not just imagining the problem. From her unusually forward advances, we note that even the women in Egypt were willing to blatantly ignore fundamental moral conventions when engaged in the pursuit of sexual gratification. Taking its cue from these and other Scriptural passages, rabbinic tradition further expands on the theme of Egyptian depravity in rather colorful fashion.19See, for example, Midrash Tanchuma, Parashat Lech Lecha 5 and Mechilta 13 on Shemot 12:33. Thus, when the Bible specifically refers to Egypt, as opposed to any of the other descendant nations of Cham, as the land of Cham, it appears to be emphasizing the ancestral roots of this particular people’s depravity (Tehillim 105:23, 27; Tehillim 106:22.20Tehillim 105:23, 27; 106:22. In that case, Cham’s Egyptian descendents serve as an antithesis to the moral tikkun olam that God would want the Jews to bring to the world.
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Now that we know more about the Biblical view of the Egyptians, we clearly see that when it comes to Egypt, the Torah purposefully portrays a naturally inverse relationship between Divine bounty on the one hand and human virtue on the other.
God wants all of His creatures, including the ancient Egyptians, to live moral and upstanding lives. Nonetheless, He still allows them to follow their own paths. The rabbis say that God actually helps a person accomplish whatever he wants to accomplish, whether good or bad (Makkot 10b).21Makkot 10b. Accordingly, if the Egyptian nation were interested in moral depravity, God would presumably equip them to accomplish their goals.
One of the means that God could use to push us further in the path we have chosen for ourselves is situating us in an environment that will support and even encourage the behavior we are pursuing. The most important component of this is the human landscape of the people who surround us. At the same time, our non-human, physical environment also impacts upon our behavior. To give one example, it is recognized that weather affects crime rates – if for no other reason, inclement weather keeps people indoors and prevents them from hurting others.
Another very common determinant is whether a given region is more suitable for farming than for raising livestock or hunting. From the very first family, the Torah understands that these various pursuits will impact on more than just culinary habits. At the same time, even the latter should not be overlooked as contributing to our ethical makeup – some commentators have suggested that a type of “you are what you eat” concept is what makes certain animals kosher and others not.22See, especially, Rabbi S. R. Hirsch in Chorev, Chapter 68. Most of these variables were even more exacerbated in the ancient world when exportation of food was much less common and climate control almost non-existent. Hence, conditions beyond man’s control can actually raise or lower a nation’s moral standards.
All this being the case, we would expect the Egyptians to be given a land inhospitable to moral and religious growth. That is to say, it would be appropriate for God to give a metaphysically dull land to the spiritually listless Egyptians23An obvious question that this approach would raise is why the equally immoral Cana’anite descendents of Cham should have been the caretakers of the spiritually productive Land of Israel before they were spit out from it. – quite the opposite of the “garden of God” that they received. Moreover, the Torah goes out of its way to point out the close relationship between this people and their land in much the same way as it does with the Jewish people and their land, giving us the distinct impression that we have to think further about how the blessed Egyptian garden may be much less desirable than first meets the eye.
The Land and Its People
Having just mentioned the Torah’s parallel interest in the relationship between the Jewish people and its land, it behooves us to see how that interest is grounded in the text’s very deliberate contrast of the lands of Israel and Egypt (Devarim 11:10–12).24Devarim 11:10–12 (quoted at the beginning of this chapter). As opposed to Egypt, the Torah informs us that the Land of Israel is dependent on rains, a highly variable and unpredictable commodity in the semi-arid Middle East. From a material point of view, a farmer is certainly much better off in Egypt. The Torah immediately continues its description by telling us that the irregularity of rains is indicative of constant Divine involvement in this land’s sustenance. In the words of the Torah, “God’s eyes are constantly upon it.” Here too, it is not so obvious that this makes it a more desirable place to live. Indeed, it is not just the farmer who might prefer to live elsewhere, without the pressures that God’s direct oversight would likely entail.
In addition to the issues explicitly stated above, there is another natural difficulty with this land which the Torah doesn’t mention outright25Although a careful reading of all the Biblical wars and political conflicts forced on Israel as a result of its geographical location would certainly bear this out – as would a reading of regional history in general. – its geopolitical location. Israel finds itself on the only land bridge between Africa and Eurasia. Anyone and, more important, any army that would want to go from one continent to the other would have to pass through it, or at least very close to it. As such, it doesn’t have the luxury of a Yemen or a Norway, tucked away in its own little corner and able to ignore the world. It is true that Egypt was on the other side of this land bridge and subsequently subject to some of the same issues. Still, Egypt had the military power to deter any potential threats created by such a situation. For the weaker Jewish state, however, the only thing that might protect it was . . . the eyes of God constantly upon it.
The same wonder that we had about God’s giving Egypt to its inhabitants comes up with Israel and its inhabitants. Why is this dangerous, uncertain place the type of land that God wants to give to the Chosen People – the ones He describes as his firstborn?
If we look a bit deeper into the contrast set up, we will see that Israel’s portion is a true blessing. The contrast that emerges between the lands of Israel and Egypt is primarily between a place that lacks natural resources and one that doesn’t. Precisely a land that lacks such resources requires God’s attention. Put plainly, something fragile and needy requires more interest than something solid and self-sustaining. Though we just questioned whether anyone would want such potentially overwhelming attention, from a spiritual perspective it is that which gives the most meaning to life. And for someone truly interested in God, this is worth the collateral loss of physical stability.
As opposed to the indulgence the Egyptians could ascribe to their gods, who would feed and protect them no matter what they did, the Jews had a vision of God constantly watching them while deciding how much bounty and security they would deserve in any particular year. If nothing else, this would encourage the Jews to do what God commanded them. But it appears that it did more than this. The prophets and the religious tradition that they handed over to the rabbis bespeaks a nation whose consciousness was saturated with God’s presence and the accompanying importance of acting in a way that reflects man’s Divine image. If the Nile generally seemed to validate the “watchmaker” concept of a God Who sets things into motion and no longer needs to intervene, Israel’s dependence on irregular rainfall gave truth to the model of a God continually involved with His creations. The Jews would eventually understand the need to be challenged and thus appreciate what their land did for them.
For their part, the Egyptians too, with their sensual appetites, were likely just as happy with what their land did (or in this case, did not do) for them. We now see that it is more than predisposition that led the Egyptians to follow their indulgent lifestyle; their relative prosperity and security further enabled them to treat religion as a matter of convenience. When a person’s life or livelihood hangs in the balance, he is much more able to realize his dependence on forces beyond his control. In marked contrast, security allows one to ignore not only one’s latent faith, but also one’s moral conscience. Without an awareness of consequences, most people simply have an easier time indulging in behavior they know to be wrong. And in this regard, Egypt could be seen as a land free of consequences.
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Though much more can be said, we have emerged with some general contours of the Torah’s view of Egypt. It was a land of plenty that both attracted and encouraged the moral mediocrity of its inhabitants. It served as a sort of alter ego for the Land of Israel, whose unpredictability led to the religious introspection and self-critique so characteristic of the Jewish prophetic tradition. With this as our foundation, let us now try to understand the constant involvement of the Jews themselves with Egypt. Most directly, why should this land have served as the crucible within which the Jewish nation was formed?
'Leaving Egypt'
Happiness is a tricky proposition. To be sure, much of both our lives and human history is dedicated to its pursuit, which involves, among other things, efforts to improve our physical condition. Since it is God Who has given us the potential and even the directive to do so, it is perfectly legitimate for man to try to earn a stable and comfortable livelihood. At the same time, the inverse relationship between bounty and morality seen above is also part of the way we are created. The famous warning Moshe gives to the Jews that va’yishman Yeshurun va’yiv’at (When the Jews got fat, they rebelled, Devarim 32:15)26Devarim 32:15. is a graphic expression of that relationship. Even as God wants us to maximize our benefit from His creation, He also wants us to seek such benefit only in ways that don’t compromise our spiritual health. Meeting this challenge is an important part of the Jewish vision.27See Redeeming Relevance in Genesis, Chapter 5.
In order to take on this challenge, the Jews had to be impressed by the temptations of prosperity. Were they to be divorced from any material ambitions, they would never fully know the important human tension between spirituality and physicality.
In this regard, Ya’akov’s family’s coming to Egypt as brothers of the obviously privileged viceroy certainly provided immediate exposure to the ostensible benefits of Egyptian culture. From the get-go, they would be surrounded by the wealth and splendor of Pharaoh. And if royalty is always impressive, there was certainly nothing as magnificent in the ancient world as the glory of the Egyptian court. The preferential treatment they received afforded them the best that Egypt’s wealth had to offer and allowed them to be wholly impressed by the regular bounty of Egypt.
But it may have been something more sober than surplus and luxury that would have impressed Ya’akov and sons: The ability of the Egyptian governmental organization to overcome a pan-regional famine must have had a particularly heightened impact on men who had recently felt their own helplessness in the face of scarcity. It should be recalled that the long-delayed decision to send Binyamin to Egypt came only as a result of Ya’akov’s realization that they would otherwise die of starvation. The notion of Egypt as a land blessed by nature, to the point that rational planning was the only thing needed to make sure that all of its inhabitants would be sustained, is certainly attractive for those who have known starvation in more arid lands. Thus, even more than a land of plenty, Egypt would be seen as a land of economic stability.
Once impressed, however, the Jews’ destiny would require that they extricate themselves from Egyptian culture and even reject it. In other words, the point was not, after admiring the wealth of Egypt, to simply adopt the moral lethargy of the local culture. Instead, the Jews would have to truly appreciate the spiritual challenges of wealth and yet still somehow overcome them.
Just such an attitudinal change was facilitated by the change in Egyptian policy toward the Jews. The group that had arrived as honored guests was to be made into a caste of slaves. Once ostracized from Egyptian society, the Jews could afford to be more critical of the host culture – they no longer had any reason to look the other way in the face of Egypt’s moral turpitude and cruelty.
The Exodus itself was another major step in extricating the Jews from that which Egypt represented. Had they not yet completely appreciated the immorality of Egyptian culture, the unprecedented Divine wrath unleashed during the Exodus must have made a very big impression indeed. The Jews surely understood that the plagues inflicted on Egypt were a barometer of God’s opinion of the nation’s values. Indeed, the very first, and arguably most dramatic of the plagues was meted out against the Nile – the very symbol of Egyptian wealth, stability and self-reliance. Allegiance to the God of the ten plagues would now more clearly mean rejection of Egypt.
But it would take more than Egyptian oppression and the resultant Exodus to completely rid the Jews of their attraction to the stability and materialism they had once enjoyed. The struggles with food,28See, for example, Bemidbar 11:4–10. with gold and with jewelry29The prominent role of jewelry in the construction of the golden calf leads the rabbis (Berachot 32a) to make the claim that the Jews would have been better off leaving such items in Egypt. that would continue to plague them in the desert show that the extraction from Egyptian indulgence, and the religious stance that it spawned, was a process which did not completely end when the Jews left Egypt. Accepting the disadvantages of physical instability in order to reap spiritual benefits is no small undertaking. Accordingly, the Jews’ latent attachment to Egypt’s constancy goes far toward explaining their recurring reluctance to enter the Promised Land, as well as their constant refrain of wanting to return to Egypt.
This resistance is further epitomized by some of the Jews’ strangely identifying Egypt as the land flowing with milk and honey (Bemidbar 16:13),30Bemidbar 16:13. a phrase more commonly used to refer to the Land of Israel. It is also epitomized by the spies’ reference to the Promised Land as a land that eats up its inhabitants (Bemidbar 13:32).31Ibid., 13:32. Beyond resistance to new vistas, such declarations would now also bespeak rebellion against God Who, by taking the Jews out of Egypt, was calling them to meet their spiritual destiny. As a result, once the Jews left Egypt, being a Jew became synonymous with the struggle to remove “Egypt” from within oneself. The Exodus from Egypt would signal a continual struggle to accept at least some instability as the price for heightened spirituality. Indeed, though the Jews got out of Egypt, the struggle to get Egypt out of the Jews has continued for much of Jewish history.
Notwithstanding the continuous internal struggle just described, the antagonistic position toward Egyptian culture that the Jews consolidated as things came to a head in Egypt also allowed them to make a decisive break from that culture. It helped them realize that it would be more advantageous to leave stability behind. This would be a major precondition to their ability to go back to the tumultuous land of their fathers. 32The rejection of Egyptian materialism could additionally provide a novel explanation as to why the Jews may not have been eager to take the gold and silver that God told them to request from the Egyptians (see Berachot 9a-b). It was a reminder of the part of Egypt that they were specifically rejecting via the Exodus.
A Land of Extremes
We came to the land to which you sent us and it is truly a land flowing with milk and honey and this is its fruit. But the people that live in the land are fierce and the cities are very strongly fortified . . . it is a land that eats up its inhabitants. (Bemidbar 13:27–28, 32)
Given what we have discussed so far, the notion that the Land of Israel would be a harsh place to live should be fully expected. Accordingly, it is quite possible, as claimed by Ramban, that the spies who were sent to scout out the Promised Land and came back with a critical report did not lie (Ramban on Bemidbar 13:27).33Ramban on Bemidbar 13:27. It is truly a land of extremes – having bountiful fruit on the one hand and consuming its inhabitants on the other – and living there is no simple matter. As expressed elsewhere in the Torah,34See, for example, Vayikra 18:28. the Land of Israel is more than unstable; it is sometimes downright hostile.35This is in order to destroy the morally corrupt people who dwell in it. Thus, even this consuming of inhabitants that the spies believed to be the Land of Israel’s shortcoming could actually be seen as an additional dimension of its praise.
More difficult to understand is how the Torah could also describe this land as flowing with milk and honey (an association confirmed above by the scouts, who were probably not looking to paint the land in glowing terms). To say that it flows indicates a lack of human effort, reminiscent more of Egypt than of Israel. How are we to understand that the Land of Israel could flow with anything – much less with sweet and rich foods? And how are we further to explain this in view of what we said before, that this land seemed to give its inhabitants only the sustenance merited by their behavior?
In fact, we will need to refine our original analysis. We saw that the Land of Israel responds to the behavior of its inhabitants, but we now see that it does so in a surprisingly extreme way. The unusually large fruits36As indicated by the context of their presentation. The scouts praise the land before they show the fruit, and it is only afterward that they begin their next statement with the oppositional word, “however.” reflect that the Land provides exponential rewards for the merit achieved by its inhabitants.37The Cana’anite inhabitants are not described as particularly upstanding. Still, that is not to say that they never did meritorious acts for which they could have been rewarded. Moreover, this would be in line with the rabbinic notion that evil people get whatever reward is coming to them in the physical realm and not in the spiritual realm (see, for example, Rashi on Kiddushin 39b, s.v. matnitin). At the same time, inhabitants could expect much swifter and more complete retribution for their sins than would be the case elsewhere. In sum, when the Land of Israel’s inhabitants live according to the land’s rules, they are given not only what they need, but much more. When they do not, they bear a disproportionate punishment. If this doesn’t meet the conventional view of objective reward and punishment, it does remind us of a father extremely concerned about properly raising his only son. From this perspective, we could say that the Land of Israel responds to its inhabitants with a type of parental wisdom and care.
Ultimately, however, the scouts’ description of the land only reinforces the impressions we have until now – that Israel is a land of fluctuating extremes, which is another way of saying instability. As opposed to Egypt, which was the epitome of agricultural constancy, Israel was a land of volatility, providing almost effortless bounty to some inhabitants and being barren to others. Yet, in different ways, both lands could be described as flowing with milk and honey. The difference is that whereas in the Land of Israel the flow brings more spirituality, in Egypt it does the opposite.
Common Spirituality
Ideally, we should be able to focus on spiritual matters, regardless of what is around us. Whether we are in “Israel” or in “Egypt” and no matter what our personal needs, we should seek connection with God. Indeed, a great figure such as Moshe was able to reach the heights of spirituality outside of Israel. Nonetheless, our rabbis were quite aware that very few people are like him; most people are not able to serve God without any expectations of His fulfilling their needs. Thus, the rabbis’ highly practical formulation of the standard shemoneh esreh prayer – the backbone of the Jewish daily service – is based on the notion that one who doesn’t focus on real needs is not likely to seek God at all.38So too can we understand the curious wording of the blessing said after minor foods, where we thank God not only for fulfilling our needs but also for creating our physical lacks to begin with.
The common man is down-to-earth. He fills his time with what he must do to survive and flourish. If he doesn’t have rain for his crops, he has to do something about it. In the Land of Israel, doing something means turning to God. In Egypt, such a situation rarely comes up, which means that turning to God is a luxury for which the Egyptian “has no time.” Thus, in the Land of Israel, it is the common man who has the most to gain.
Since God is interested in the heightened spirituality of the entire Jewish nation and not merely its exceptional individuals, there needs to be a supportive physical environment. That environment is the Promised Land . . . of Israel.
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The Exodus from Egypt serves as an important model of going from an inner exile to an inner redemption on a very accessible level. The Jews needed to experience how material stability can threaten their communion with God.39That their relationship with God had deteriorated in Egypt is confirmed in Yechezkel 20:5–8. See also Seforno on Shemot 1:13–14 and Rabbi S. R. Hirsch on Shemot 1:9. First experiencing the draw of material comfort in Egypt meant that they would always know its power. Eventually seeing the opposite in the Land of Israel meant they would forever accept the need to prioritize spirituality. The challenging process of making the transition from one to the other, symbolized by the journey through the desert, is destined to be the struggle of the common man who seeks to live his life in front of God.
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Can one live outside of Israel and still live his life in accordance with the land’s teachings? Conversely, is living in Israel enough to guarantee an approach to life that is fostered by this land? Moreover, today, when rainfall is less crucial to our sustenance, is there still a significant distinction between Israel and other places that have more reliable sources of water?
If globalization has certainly diminished geographical differentiation, Israel remains a uniquely unpredictable place. The return of the Jews to their homeland, intended by the state’s founders to bring greater security to the Jews, has been accompanied by constant conflict. Security is actually only one of a whole list of issues that keeps life in Israel more than a bit unpredictable. Whether this will change before the messianic era we cannot know.
Nonetheless, it would be hard to say that the life of the Jew in Israel today is more unstable than the life of the Jew in the Diaspora for the last two thousand years. Facing one expulsion after another in addition to every type of persecution imaginable, the Jews’ existence outside of their land was at least every bit as precarious as that in their own land. It is as if once the Jews came out of Egypt, their fate would be to live a “Land of Israel” type of existence no matter where they settled.
At the same time, the rational organization and distribution of resources by the modern welfare state is specifically aimed at, among other things, the creation of stability for its inhabitants. Like all such states, modern Israel has been working hard to provide bounty and security for its inhabitants and, on many fronts, it is succeeding. As such, whether within or outside of Israel, the contemporary Jew knows more stability today than he has in a very long time.
The fact that modern society has been able to do much to push away life’s precariousness is a blessing, but it can easily turn into a curse as well. Since we now see that instability can be very productive religiously, we should not be so quick to make our lives so comfortable. In making personal life choices, we can usually take the safest option available. However, this should not always be seen as the wisest option. Beyond making for a rather dull and unfulfilled life, it can end up distancing us from God.
I am certainly not advocating that we act carelessly, flaunting the responsibilities that properly ordered lives require. Still, we should welcome a certain amount of risk in our lives. For most of us, it is exactly that characteristic embodied by the Land of Israel that leads us to seek God.
Minimally, if we have become too soft to take the risks usually needed for intense religiosity, we must make sure to find an alternative strategy that will allow us to achieve the same ends. Otherwise, the most significant religious result of the modern state may end up as va’yishman Yeshurun.