JERUSALEM: CAPITAL OF JUDAISM

ANDRE NEHER: JERUSALEM, JEWISH LIFESTYLE AND MESSAGE
Du Rocher Publishing, 1984

Excerpts reprinted with the kind permission of Mme. Andre Neher

CHAPTER II

There is some ambiguity in one term of the statement: Jerusalem, capital of Judaism. It is in precisely this city of Jerusalem which we find ourselves today, that which tradition calls the "Earthly Jerusalem" ("Yerushalayim shel matah"): earthly, physical, the capital of the State of Israel. But it is not exclusively Judaism which has occupied me: there is also the Jewish people as a sociological entity, and an earthly community. Judaism is, above all, - perhaps exclusively - the spiritual destiny of this earthly community, its calling to be a bearer, a vehicle. It is also a religious community, spiritual, supernal, metaphysical, that which tradition calls, not "ha'am hayehudi," but "knesset Yisrael" (the congregation of Israel).

Consequently, the subject you have assigned me appears to subsume within it the following problematic: There is no question that historically, indicatively, Judaism as "knesseth Yisrael," as the bearer of a certain irreducible spirit, revealed at Sinai and proclaimed by the prophets, must have as its capital Jerusalem. Yet, de facto, does our Judaism of today actually possess Jerusalem as its capital? Has it ever? Or - to further complicate the question - does Judaism still possess it? After having had Jerusalem for millenia - and then, since 1948, for more than 30 years in a manner later legally crystallized in the adoption of the Jerusalem Law by Israel's Knesset - by the very creation of Jerusalem as its capital, no longer of the people, but of the state, has the Jewish community not lost Jerusalem as its capital?

Such is the claim - disturbing as it is - underlying the title of my subject - and I shall attempt to analyze this disturbing question as calmly as possible.

First Point of Investigation:
The Searing Tension Between Real and Ideal

The first factor in question concerning Jerusalem as Judaism's capital is the searing tension between that which is real and that which is ideal, between the accessible and inaccessible. Jerusalem is a city of dual dimensions. There exists a "Yerushalaim shel matah" or earthly Jerusalem, and a "Yerushalayim shel ma'alah" or heavenly Jerusalem. The former is accessible; we are there. The latter is totally inaccessible; we enter it only at the price of an essential overturning of the basic world order - at the price of our earthly lives, in return for the supernal one.

Earthly Jerusalem: Unique Point of Access to Heavenly Jerusalem

This path is forbidden us. Yet the red light blocking our entry into the heavenly Jerusalem is on a route, whose point of departure of this route is precisely our own earthly Jerusalem. The teaching of the "Gemara Taanit" (5a) is well-known: Even G-d himself does not penetrate into the heavenly Jerusalem until He has successfully traversed the earthly one. All the more so in the case of Man. We therefore come to an impasse, although it should not, in any way, provoke despair, panic, or even criticism. Being in the earthly Jerusalem in which we reside as Jews: it is necessarily, by definition not to be in the heavenly Jerusalem. But it is also necessarily, and by definition to be in the only city leading to the heavenly Jerusalem. It is to stand in the "corridor", in the gateway of the heavenly Jerusalem. And it is to be there with G-d - who perhaps at this very instant, is making His own way towards the heavenly Jerusalem.

There exists a psychological and moral danger in applying one's mind to the gap between the reality and the ideal, between the earthly and the heavenly, rather than applying one's efforts to dealing with it.

All human life is an unfinished symphony. The prophets and sages constantly remind us that no human endeavor is ever complete: this is one of the fundamental differences between Judaism and Christianity. Christianity believes that one day, with the Golgotha, "everything will have been completed". Judaism realizes that nothing on this earth has ever or will ever be completed. The source of Jewish hope lies in the Not Yet.

Earthly Jerusalem, our Jerusalem, is not yet the ideal Jerusalem. Which is precisely why it is ontologically, undeniably Jewish. Jerusalem is an unfinished symphony - the Jewish symphony par excellence, of hope and endeavor.

Second Point of Investigation:
Jerusalem - "Sacred City": Between the Sacred and the Profane

To the sense of the average Jew, Jerusalem remains as it always was - the Holy City par excellence. In the IMAGINATION of the Diaspora Jew, Jerusalem is a city of pious images: everyone is religiosly observant in Jerusalem; everyone spends their time praying, reciting psalms and anxiously awaiting the Messiah. This average Jew of healthy common sense is both dumbstruck and revolted when he learns - or ascertains on a trip - that in Jerusalem, some people drive their car on Shabbat; that in Jerusalem, there are restaurants which are not strictly kosher; that in Jerusalem, people have material concerns, conduct business, go to the movies and the theater to see often risque performances etc., etc. Even if our average Jew in the Diaspora is himself non-religious, non-observant - he projects onto Jerusalem his own image of the ideal, religious Jewish community (just as in the most assimilated communities, where congregants expect the rabbi be the very model of strict orthodoxy). Need I say it at this point? In this perceived revulsive intrusion of the profane into the holiness that is Jerusalem, we have long perceived the identifying mark of the constructive, almost messianic contribution of secular, "profane" Zionism to the sacred dimension of Jerusalem.

At this juncture, it is vital to cite Rav Issachar Shlomo Teichtal's monumental work, "Em Habanim S'meha," written in 1943 in Hungary during the Shoa but smothered beneath the ashes (Rav Teichtal died in Auschwitz), and only recently published. It is an overwhelming plea in defense of the secular, profane builders - even profaners - of Eretz Yisrael, together with a concise, in-depth argumentation on several texts of Rav Teichtal's great contemporary whose work and thought have made an indelible imprint on our generation. I refer here to Rav Abraham Yitzhak Kook.

A sentence from "Orot Hakodesh" I, p.64, by Rav Kook will suffice to encapsulate this traditionally Jewish interpretation: "The Divine sanctity [of the city] draws its blessing from the worth of its earthly and profane base (to which it constantly returns in order to purify it)."

The laborers with calloused hands who repair the chinks in the House of Israel are craftsmen in the House of G-d. They are equal to the High Priest, even superior to him. For the High Priest entered into the Holy of Holies but once a year at Yom Kippur, in the Work of prayer - while the laborers enter daily for the Work of repair, termed in Hebrew, "Tikkun."

Third Point of Investigation:
The Jerusalem-Diaspora Dialectic at its Existential Level
(The Rending Tension of the Jew in the Diaspora)

Criticized, disputed, denied by Zionist doctrines, the Diaspora should have succumbed to that which appeared to be the zenith and unequivocable success of Zionism - the creation of the State of Israel. However, for the state's now more than 30 years of existence, not only does the Diaspora continue to exist at the empiric level, but it is further sustained by ideologies whose contents regenerate each day with a virtuosity and vigor that in no way cedes before the ideology of the state.

The metaphor of misunderstanding that springs to mind at this level is that of the Mishna of Baba Metzia with a slight variation: Two people cling to a "talith" (prayer shawl), each exclaiming, "One half is mine!"

In my version, there would be an association, a "partnership" of Jerusalem and the Diaspora in the history and destiny of "Knesseth Israel," each having half the equally divided responsibilities.

These images are very enticing, inspired by the need to proclaim the unity of the Jewish people to which we all swear allegiance. They carry, however, the seeds of a grave misunderstanding, one which makes the Jerusalem-Diaspora relationship appear symetrical, when it is in fact non-symetrical. In short, imposing symmetry upon such a relationship--a relationship defined by its essential asymmetry and uniqueness--would be disastrous. Neither are the risks the same (it has often been said and reiterated), nor the responsabilities; more fundamentally still, nor is the situation.

Having personally experienced both these situations, I think I can testify to the feeling that the Jew in Jerusalem - on the inside - feels, as opposed to the one who is "outside", namely, that in Jerusalem, everything is of capital importance (not a play on words) - everything is essential!

The essential merges with existence. The Jewish essence and the Jewish existence are identical in Jerusalem, while outside of Jerusalem, there is a severance, a scission, a separation, between Jewish essence and existence.

The severance, the theme of severance, is not something I see as separating the Jerusalem Jew and the Diaspora Jew. I believe with perfect faith in the unity of the Jewish people.

But I see the severance in the soul, in the spirit and in the body of the Diaspora Jew, while the Jerusalem Jew is one whole.

In the Diaspora, I was torn ideologically, whether as a man in the street and Jew at home; or conversely, as a proud Jew on the street and a simple person at home.

In Jerusalem, I am simultaneously, unremittingly, at each moment of my life, both man and Jew.

In the Diaspora, I was sentimentally torn: my love for Jerusalem - I sang it to my far-off beloved, but without a harmony, without meeting her.

In Jerusalem: This is the love song to the one whom I love in the rhythm of an encounter or of an everyday dialogue between husband and wife.

In the Diaspora, I was politically torn: the pain of what the others call a double allegiance.

In Jerusalem, I have only a single country, a single capital. Even if there are disagreements, quarrels - and there certainly are - there is a fundamental consensus, that of a feeling of belonging, unwaveringly, to a single "bayit" or house - the House of Israel.

And it is here that another problem arises.

Fourth Point of Investigation:
The Opposition between Space and Time

House ("bayit" in Hebrew). A house requires space. Now is not Judaism, by definition, a doctrine of time?

The clash between Jerusalem and the Daspora consequently becomes an opposition between space and time.

That time is an essential dimension of Jewish thought is undoubted. The striking formula of Abraham Yoshua Heschel, of "the Jews as time-builders", encapsulates and covers a myriad of reflections (to which I myself have made what I believe not a negligeable contribution, in my books and studies on biblical prophecy and the existential value within Jewish history).

This is the danger carried by the ideologies of the Jerusalem- Diaspora relationship I evoked earlier (those of Ahad Ha'am, Ravidovitz, Bernard Henry Levy, Finkielkraut). For, however attractive they may be - testifying to a sincere wish to proclaim the organic unity of the Jewish people - these ideologies all carry an innate danger, all too often exploited in the present political situation. In effect, they divide into unequal parts the time and space between the periphery and the center. The periphery - Babel, the planets, the partner-remainder of the Diaspora - are nourished and strengthened by Time. The center - the axis, the sun, the partner-remainder comprising the state - this is Space. Whereas Time containes within it the seed, the hope - at least the guarantee of endurance and even eternity, Space without time runs the risk of crumbling, of wearing away, even pulverization. Time cannot be erased - but space can.

And so, in these ideologies (an extreme hypothesis for the best-intentioned among them, a moderate hypothesis for the others) is presented an account with the following horrific conclusion: Diaspora Jewry is a stable given; it assures Jewish history its continuation, its mark of eternity. The Jewish State, by contrast, is an unstable given; it is - oh - an accident of Jewish history one we must make every effort to maintain for as long as possible - but for the impossible nothing lasts for ever. The extreme hypothesis of the disappearance of the State of Israel and of its capital, Jerusalem, will never deprive Jewish history of its mark of eternity, whose pledge and promise are transmitted through the Diaspora. Jerusalem, after all, has already known two Tisha B'Avs. Why not a third which the Jewish people could survive as they did the previous two?

Jerusalem, a magnetic axis in space

I would like, at this juncture, to recall with all due gravity the authentic Jewish definition of Israel's historical spacial axis, in order to counter these theses which beckon us so readily. This axis not only exists in real time - embodied today in the State of Israel; it is also more than central - a role which the State of Israel has effectively assumed in relation to the Diaspora: it is, above all, magnetic in its essence.

A philosopher cannot address this subject without rendering himself dizzy in the process. Elsewhere, concepts which are static, distorted, negatived, relegated to obscurity or pulverized to nothing are here found to be mobilized, enlarged and positived. There is an gigantic leap towards Light and Life. The dizziness, however, does revolve around an axis more original in character than even the waves encircling it - namely, the nature of Jewish eschatology in its most intimate and essential specificity - the axis of Space.

The space of this tiny people Israel, the space of this tiny land of Israel, the space of Israel's tiny capital - Zion-Jerusalem: three spaces comprising one, but across which, across which alone, and across which necessarily, fundamentally, sacramentally, has made, continues to make and will make for itself the enormous endeavor of rotation, of meaning, of redemption, of hope and the germination of time. There again, all according to a law radically different from all that has ever been thought or experienced elsewhere - a law which springs precisely from the magnetic character of the State axis in the polarity of the Diaspora-State.

The geo-theology of Judaism

The secret of Zionism is to know, to teach, to proclaim that Jewish man ("Ish Yehudi") does not have as his essential function to be "the wandering Jew" of the Diaspora. In the worst of his wanderings, and surely, in the best as well, he is a pilgrim on the road of Return toward the House, toward his City, toward his capital - Jerusalem.

The great eschatological route of the Jewish adventure has three major milestones: Creation, Revelation, Redemption. Each of these moments is ontologically linked to the space of Jerusalem: Isaiah 65, 18: "Ki hineini boreh et Yerushalayim." "For I, G-d, am hereby creating Jerusalem." G-d "created" Jerusalem. The term, "boreh", is reserved throughout the entire Bible for the creative work of G-d. Man "yotzer", "oseh", never "boreh". Jerusalem therefore has, in the Creation, the status of a work of G-d.

For the Revelation, the verse, "Ki mi-Tzion tetze Torah u-devar Hashem mi-Yerushalayim" (Isaiah 2, 3. Micha 4, 2) is too well-known, too often used in Jewish liturgy to require repetition. The "movement" of the Revelation that emanates from both Zion and Jerusalem, however, must be stressed. It is an Exit, an Exodus, an Exile toward distant spaces.

But the Redemption, the "Geula" carries precisely within itself an inverse motion, that of RETURN: "U-ba le-Tzion Go'el" (Isaiah 54,26). "Bo" is the term of penetration, of a return from the outer to the inner. The Redemption is thus the undertow of the Revelation, born, too, of Creation. The historical rhythm of Life of the Capital - City of Judaism: Jerusalem, in its space, in its incompletion of symphony, is thus the very rhythm of eternal Jewish history.

ANDRE NEHER: JERUSALEM, JEWISH LIFESTYLE AND MESSAGE
Du Rocher Publishing, 1984

Cited in Jerusalem Day: Editors & Authors: Gila Ansell Brauner, Barbara Weill. General Editor: Henrique Cymerman
1987.(C)