Tag Archives: Zionism

Understanding Edom #2: Trump & Herod

What might we expect from Donald Trump in his second presidency and does he have anything to do with Esau and Edom in Biblical prophecies? How did Edom become associated with the Roman Empire to begin with? What does King Herod have to do with it? And why does Isaiah call King Cyrus of Persia “the messiah”? Find out in this second part of the series where we also explore antisemitic conspiracy theories, the mysterious figure Obed-Edom the Gittite, and the secret behind the Western Wall.

For more information, see ‘How Esau Became Rome‘.
For the series of short essays on the Rothschilds, see here.

The World’s Most Legitimate State

In this week’s parasha, Chayei Sarah, we read about Abraham’s purchasing of Me’arat haMakhpelah, the “Cave of the Patriarchs”, for the burial of his wife Sarah (Genesis 23). Abraham approaches the Hittites who live in the area and asks Ephron for the land. Ephron agrees, and even offers to give it to Abraham for free. Yet, Abraham refuses the gift and makes sure to pay Ephron a huge amount, 400 silver shekels, far more than the land is even worth. Why did Abraham do this? One classic answer is so that no one would ever dispute ownership of the land. Abraham wanted to make it clear that he bought the land legally, fair and square; it would be for him and his descendants, and no one should claim otherwise.

There is a deeper reason for paying such an exorbitant amount, too. In his Pa’aneach Raza (on Genesis 23:16), Rabbi Yitzchak bar Yehuda haLevi (c. 1250-1290) points out that the Torah states a chomer of barley fields is worth 50 shekels (Leviticus 27:16). How much is a chomer? Based on what we know of ancient Biblical units of measure, Pa’aneach Raza shows that a chomer is equal to 75,000 square cubits. Thus, 400 silver shekels would have been enough to purchase 600,000 square cubits of land. That’s a significant number because there were 600,000 adult Israelite souls at the Sinai Revelation, and mystical texts always speak of 600,000 root souls for the Jewish people. In other words, Abraham purchased a square cubit of land for every one of his root spiritual descendants. All of Israel have a share in the Cave of the Patriarchs!

In purchasing that plot of land, Abraham set an important precedent. This same precedent would be used by Jews again starting in the 1800s to purchase back the Holy Land with the ultimate aim of re-establishing an independent Jewish state. (Amazingly, Abraham was born in the Hebrew year 1948 AM, and the State of Israel would be founded in 1948 CE! More on that connection here.) Zionists had no interest in conquering the land; they wanted to purchase it legally, fair and square, just as Abraham had done. There should be no dispute as to who owns the land. So this is what they did, purchasing one plot at a time.

Sir Moses Montefiore

Some of the earliest purchases were spearheaded by Sir Moses Montefiore (1784-1885), an Italian-English Sephardic Jew who first visited the Holy Land in 1827. He travelled to the four Jewish holy cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Tzfat. In between these towns, he saw a barren, unused, undeveloped region, and envisioned a Jewish revival. In fact, this visit was so inspiring that he became a ba’al teshuva and henceforth a deeply religious man. Montefiore came back following the devastating 1836 earthquake that destroyed Tzfat and Tiberias, and provided massive sums of money to rebuild them. In 1840, he purchased the site of Rachel’s Tomb and rebuilt the ancient Jewish pilgrimage site. In 1860, he purchased land outside of Jerusalem to establish the Jewish settlement Mishkenot Sha’ananim (his windmill, built to provide cheap flour for all, still stands today), followed by the Ohel Moshe and Mazkeret Moshe neighbourhoods. He also paid for Israel’s first printing press and textile factory.

The Montefiore Quarter of Mishkenot Sha’ananim in 1948, and today. The founding of the town was financed by Sir Moses Montefiore and the estate of Judah Touro. The Montefiore Windmill is visible in the background.

Chaim Amzaleg

Montefiore’s work inspired other prominent Jews to do the same. In 1882, a wealthy Jew named Chaim Nissim Amzaleg (1828-1916), who was working for the British office in Jaffa, purchased 835 acres of land nearby. He gave the land to ten Jewish pioneers from Russia, who established the town of Rishon LeZion. Shortly after, Baron Edmon James de Rothschild sent experts to drill for groundwater and establish agriculture. He did the same for a nearby settlement of 6500 dunams which was then named Zikhron Ya’akov, in honour of the Baron’s father. This area was purchased from a Frenchman who had Christian Arab roots. Rothschild also helped to establish Metulla, Ekron, and Rosh Pina, and poured tens of millions into draining swamps, finding water, and developing the land, including laying some of the first electrical grids.

Rabbi Pines

Another pioneer was Rabbi Yechiel Michel Pines (1824-1913), who settled in Montefiore’s Mazkeret Moshe neighbourhood in 1878, also hailing originally from Russia. In 1884, Rabbi Pines purchased a plot of land from the French government and established Gedera. Three years later, a fellow Russian-born Jew named Yehoshua Hankin (1864-1945) arrived. He had made aliyah as a young man with his parents to Rishon LeZion back in 1882. After helping to get Gedera off its feet, Hankin arranged the purchase of another nearby plot in 1890, establishing the town of Rehovot. A year later, in 1891, he collected enough donations from abroad to purchase another plot, now Hadera (today’s Givat Olga neighbourhood in Hadera is named after Hankin’s wife, a famous pioneer in her own right).

Yehoshua and Olga Hankin in 1910

Hankin’s most famous work was undoubtedly arranging the Sursock Purchases between 1901 and 1925. Much of the Holy Land at the time was owned by the Sursocks, a wealthy Greek-Lebanese Christian family. They had previously purchased the land from the Ottomans in 1872 (for a paltry 20,000 pounds), acquiring about 400,000 dunams or 364 square kilometres. Over the years, Hankin was able to arrange multiple real estate deals with the Sursocks, acquiring most of the Haifa area and the fertile Jezreel Valley.

1944 map of the Sursock Purchases. Dark blue areas are owned by the Jewish National Fund and green areas are owned by private Jewish companies and individuals.

Arthur Ruppin

Hankin’s partner in securing these deals was Arthur Ruppin (1876-1943). He had made aliyah in 1908 to work for the Zionist Organization, and opened an office in Jaffa. Shortly after, in 1909, he arranged the purchase of a small, empty and barren plot of sand outside of Jaffa (with funds from a wealthy Dutch Jew named Jacobus Kann). This plot was divided among 66 Jewish families and became the city of Tel-Aviv. (For more on this critical event, see ‘1909: End of the Jewish Curse and Fulfillment of Prophecy’.) Ruppin helped establish the first kibbutz, Degania Alef, that same year. Together with Hankin, they purchased major chunks of land around the Sea of Galilee. It is interesting to note that Ruppin was originally a dovish personality and sought to help Arabs, too. He was a co-founder of Brit Shalom, an organization seeking to establish a binational state for Jews and Arabs. His philosophy changed after the brutal 1929 Hebron Massacre launched by Arab rioters, after which he abandoned all hope for collaboration.

Lottery to apportion the Tel-Aviv plot in 1909

Jewish National Fund

Hermann Schapira

Edmond de Rothschild would go on to purchase some 125,000 acres of land in Israel. Much of this land would be handed over to the Jewish National Fund, founded by Zvi Hermann Schapira (1840-1898). Schapira was originally a rabbi before deciding to pursue sciences and ultimately becoming a math professor at the University of Heidelburg. He proposed the idea of a unified Jewish National Fund to purchase and settle the Holy Land at the First Zionist Congress in 1897. Unfortunately, Schapira died the following year, but his vision was taken up by Yonah Johann Kremenezky (1850-1934), sometimes referred to as “Austria’s Edison” because he opened the first electric light bulb factory in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Kremenezky was credited with “electrifying” much of Western Europe and laying the first electrical grids and street lighting systems in major European cities like Paris and Vienna. (He also invented what we today call “Christmas lights”!) Meanwhile, Kremenezky became the first chairman of the Jewish National Fund and came up with the idea of the famous JNF “blue box” to collect charity for Israel. The JNF would go on to acquire about 50% of Israel’s current landmass, develop over 250,000 acres, plant some 260 million trees, build nearly 200 dams and reservoirs, and establish over 1000 parks, while also running Israel’s first postal service. (The JNF still owns about 13% of Israel’s land today.)

Johann Yosipovich Kremenezky

In short, despite the “anti-Zionist” propaganda that many have unfortunately succumbed to, Israel is not a foreign colonialist power that forcibly conquered the land, but the product of the land’s own indigenous people returning and buying it back peacefully and legally. (Ironically, buying it back from colonial powers who had forcibly conquered it, including the Arabs which came from Arabia in the 7th century, and the Ottoman Turks who arrived in the 16th century). And although we didn’t need anyone’s “permission” to do this, the world powers of the 20th century initially approved and supported the process. The British Balfour Declaration of 1917 designated Mandate Palestine for a Jewish homeland, and the League of Nations (precursor to the UN) officially approved it at the 1920 San Remo Conference.

The truth is, today’s entire Middle East was carved out of the former Ottoman Empire with Western powers inventing totally new states that had never existed before. For example, Mandatory Iraq was established by the British in 1921, and became the independent Kingdom of Iraq in 1932. This was done with complete disregard for natural boundaries and ethnicities in the region, which is why Iraq continues to be embroiled in bloodshed to this day. (The forgotten Kurds have been fighting for a homeland of their own for decades, and have been called “the country erased from history”.)

Jordan was similarly conjured out of thin air in 1921 by the British seeking to appease the Hashemite Arabs (who came from what is now Saudi Arabia) and handing over to them 77% of Mandate Palestine for nothing. The idea was for the east side of Mandate Palestine to be the “Palestinian Arab” state, while the smaller western portion would be left to the Jews. Jordan is, quite literally, Palestine, and the majority of its citizens today are Palestinian Arabs. In 1948, Jordan’s King Abdullah openly declared that “Palestine and Jordan are one” before annexing the West Bank in 1950! Even long after losing the West Bank in 1967, King Hussein still affirmed in 1981: “The truth is that Jordan is Palestine and Palestine is Jordan.”

Flags of Palestine and Jordan. Walid Shoebat, Palestinian scholar and former PLO terrorist, has said: “Why is it that on June 4th, 1967, I was a Jordanian and overnight I became a Palestinian?”

Nobody questions the legitimacy of all the new states invented by the British and Western powers in the Middle East, yet bizzarely Israel is always under the magnifying glass: The Israel that already gave up 77% to a Palestinian Arab state conveniently renamed Jordan to hide its true origins; the Israel that legally purchased the vast majority of its land and invested countless millions in money, time, and effort to drain the swamps, plant forests, build infrastructure, and revive a dead region; the Israel that was voted for by a global majority both at San Remo in 1920 and at the UN in 1947. The plain and obvious truth is that not only is Israel not an illegal occupier, Israel is possibly the most legal and legitimate state in the world today.

If we can take any consolation in all of the anti-Israel madness, it is that it was prophesied long ago. We read in Ezekiel that at the End of Days, the Jewish people will return to their ancestral homeland following much persecution and resurrect a prosperous state. But the world will then turn against Israel and try to take it all away from the Jews: “In the distant future, you shall come against a country restored from the sword, gathered from among many peoples—upon the mountains of Israel, which have long lain desolate—[against a people] liberated from the nations, and all dwelling securely.” (Ezekiel 38:8) This is precisely what we have seen in the last century. And while it may seem totally upside-down, illogical, and baffling, God assures us that it’s all part of His plan “to manifest My greatness and My holiness, and make Myself known in the sight of many nations. And they shall know that I am God.” (38:23)

The Three Oaths & the Three Gifts

“And it will be, when you come into the land which YHWH, your God, gives you for an inheritance, and you possess it and settle in it…” (Deuteronomy 26:1)

This week’s parasha, Ki Tavo, begins with the command for Israel to go to the Holy Land, possess it, inherit it, work the land, and then give thanks for its wonderful produce. The Torah is clear on the fact that the Jewish people belong in the Land of Israel. In fact, the Talmud (Ketubot 110b) states that a Jew who lives outside of Israel is likened to an atheist that doesn’t have a God:

תָּנוּ רַבָּנַן: לְעוֹלָם יָדוּר אָדָם בְּאֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל אֲפִילּוּ בְּעִיר שֶׁרוּבָּהּ גּוֹיִם, וְאַל יָדוּר בְּחוּצָה לָאָרֶץ וַאֲפִילּוּ בְּעִיר שֶׁרוּבָּהּ יִשְׂרָאֵל, שֶׁכׇּל הַדָּר בְּאֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל דּוֹמֶה כְּמִי שֶׁיֵּשׁ לוֹ אֱלוֹהַּ, וְכׇל הַדָּר בְּחוּצָה לָאָרֶץ דּוֹמֶה כְּמִי שֶׁאֵין לוֹ אֱלוֹהַּ. שֶׁנֶּאֱמַר: ״לָתֵת לָכֶם אֶת אֶרֶץ כְּנַעַן לִהְיוֹת לָכֶם לֵאלֹהִים״

The Sages taught: A person should always reside in the Land of Israel, even in a city that is mostly populated by gentiles; and should not reside outside of Israel, even in a city that is mostly populated by Jews, because anyone who resides in Israel is considered as one who has a God, and anyone who resides outside of Israel is considered as one who does not have a God, as it is stated: “To give to you the land of Canaan, to be your God.” (Leviticus 25:38)

The Talmud then challenges this statement, arguing that it can’t be that living outside of Israel makes a Jew an atheist. So, it gives a better answer: “Anyone who lives outside of Israel is likened to an idolater!” At this point, we are presented with a story about how Rabbi Zeira really wanted to make aliyah, but his teacher Rav Yehuda disapproved. Rav Yehuda took the following verse quite literally: “They shall be taken to Babylonia and there they shall remain until the day that I recall them, said the Lord.” (Jeremiah 27:22) Rav Yehuda believed leaving Babylon for Israel without a clear sign from God was a transgression.

‘The Flight of the Prisoners’ by James Tissot, depicting the Jewish people’s exile after the destruction of the First Temple.

Of course, that verse in Jeremiah is speaking of the period between the First and Second Temples, and had no direct relevance to Rav Yehuda’s generation many centuries later. But this was not the approach that Rabbi Zeira took to refute his teacher’s position. Instead, he reminded Rav Yehuda that the previous verse in Jeremiah is “concerning the vessels that remain in the house of the Lord”. The whole thing is clearly talking about the Temple items, not about the Jewish people, who are always welcome in their own Promised Land.

Rav Yehuda changes course and rebuts with a different verse from Tanakh: “I adjure you [ishba’ati], O daughters of Jerusalem, by the gazelles and by the hinds of the field, that you not awaken nor stir up love, until it please.” (Song of Songs 2:7) He uses this as proof that Jews shouldn’t go back to Israel until it pleases God. Rabbi Zeira counters that this verse refers to an oath (shvu’a, based on the term ishba’ati) that the Jewish nation apparently took upon themselves when going into exile. There are actually three verses in Shir haShirim (2:7, 3:5, 8:4) that begin the exact same way, with the same ishba’ati word that implies an oath. Thus, there were three oaths that God adjured:

First, that the Jewish people should not return to Israel en masse, “like a wall”, through an organized political or social movement. Second, that the Jewish people should not rebel in exile against their gentile overlords. The third oath was that, in turn, the gentile nations would not oppress the Jews too much. In other words, Jews should be allowed to live in relative peace and safety among the gentiles, in exchange for not seeking to go back “like a wall” to the Holy Land. So, Rabbi Zeira believes that while large groups and mass movements of Jews should not make aliyah en masse, individuals and families could make aliyah to Israel if they wish. Rabbi Zeira thus argued that it was permissible for him to move to Israel.

Rav Yehuda didn’t give up, and countered that the phrasing of “not waken nor stir up” in the Shir haShirim verse implies both large groups and individuals. At this point, Rabbi Levi enters the fray and says that the extra language is for a different reason: each oath is actually two oaths, and there are a total of six oaths, not three! The extra three oaths are that Jewish scholars should not reveal when the End of Days and the Final Redemption would come; but that they should also not “distance” the Final Redemption and cause it to be postponed; and finally that Jews shouldn’t reveal “the secret” to the nations of the world. It is unclear what exactly this “secret” is. Rashi suggests it refers to the secrets of the divine Jewish calendar and intercalation of months (as does Yalkut Shimoni II, 986), or perhaps the deeper mystical secrets of the Torah. One might also read it simply as not revealing the secret time of the Redemption to anyone, Jew or gentile.

The Talmud then explains what is the meaning of the latter words in the Shir haShirim verse, “by the gazelles and by the hinds of the field.” Rabbi Elazar quotes God saying to the Jewish people: “If you fulfill the oath, it is good, and if not, I will abandon your flesh ‘like the gazelles and like the hinds of the field.’” In other words, if we don’t fulfil the oath, we will be left alone in the field, without any divine protection, presumably to be hunted down like gazelles. Then Rabbi Elazar adds one final statement before the Talmud moves on to a different discussion about burial: “Anyone who resides in the Land of Israel dwells without transgression…” So, what do we make of this puzzling passage?

Violating Oaths, Fulfilling Oaths

On the surface, the Talmud seems to be telling us that Rav Yehuda held that Jews shouldn’t seek to live in Israel until the coming of Mashiach and the Final Redemption. Rabbi Zeira, on the other hand, believed that Jews should move to Israel and it is praiseworthy for them to do so—but they should immigrate individually, and not as a mass movement. This is evidently the majority position of the Talmudic sages, since the whole passage begins by saying that any Jew who doesn’t live in Israel is an atheist or idolater, and goes on to say how wonderful it is for a Jew to live in Israel. Rabbi Elazar’s concluding opinion is most intriguing, and seems to suggest that while he also agrees Jews shouldn’t move to Israel en masse, if they have already done so anyway then, bedieved, it is fine and they are sinless.

In the previous century, many Hasidic and Haredi rabbis took an anti-Zionist stance because of this Talmudic passage of the “Three Oaths”. Yet, ironically, some of the earliest figures who made aliyah to Israel en masse, “like a wall”, were actually Hasidim and Haredim! (For more on this, see the class on ‘The Hidden History of Zionism’.) The first was probably Rabbi Yehuda haHasid Segal (c. 1660-1700) who led a group of 1200 Jews to Israel from across Eastern Europe and the Ottoman Empire in 1697. Then came 300 Hasidim with Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Vitebsk (c. 1730-1788) in 1777. In 1808 arrived someone from the opposite side of the spectrum, the Litvish Rabbi Menachem Mendel of Shklov (d. 1827), a disciple of the Vilna Gaon, who brought with him 150 Mitnagdim. Meanwhile, the Sefardi world, led by Sir Moses Montefiore, Rabbi Yehuda Alkali, and Rabbi Yehuda Bibas, sent many more Jews to Israel throughout the 1800s. And, of course, the First Aliyah (which began in 1881 and totalled some 25,000 people) was made up almost entirely of Hasidim fleeing the pogroms of the Russian Empire! And this brings us back to the Three Oaths.

The Oaths state that Jews would remain in exile without protest on condition that the nations would not oppress Israel too harshly. Clearly, history shows that the nations did not uphold their end of the deal. Jews were tormented endlessly and brutally, whether by Crusaders or Inquisitors, Almohads, Cossacks, or Nazis. It is clear that the Oaths were violated by the nations, and thus rendered null and void. Jews had no choice but to move to Israel en masse.

The first major wave actually came following the Spanish Expulsion of 1492. It was those Sephardic Jews—coming in the many thousands—that rebuilt the four holy cities of Jerusalem, Hebron, Tzfat, and Tiberias and re-established vibrant communities there in the 16th century. There would be no Shulchan Arukh and no Kitvei Arizal and no Lecha Dodi (all of which were composed in 16th-century Tzfat) were it not for the “wall” of Sephardim that migrated there. The “wall” of religious Jews that came in the 1800s and early 1900s set the foundations for the modern State of Israel, and established some of the most religious Jewish neighbourhoods in the world like Mea Shearim and Bnei Brak.

So, it seems no one made a particularly big deal about the Three Oaths until recently. It was just a little-known idea from a short passage in the Talmud that is almost never mentioned in any other ancient texts. In fact, it wasn’t until Religious Zionism was hijacked by more secular Political Zionism that people started to remember the old Talmudic oaths. Now, one might argue those oaths don’t matter anyway because they are not halakhah, and just part of a personal debate between Rav Yehuda and Rabbi Zeira. (After all, the Jews never literally took any such oaths, and neither did the nations of the world.) However, even if one goes with the position that the oaths were firm and binding, the modern State of Israel still does not violate them.

The Maharsha (Rabbi Shmuel Eidels, 1555-1631) comments here on Ketubot 111a (appropriately, in his Chiddushei Aggadot, not Chiddushei Halakhot!) that there is an exception to ascending “like a wall” to Israel. He connects the mysterious term “like a wall”, chomah, to Nehemiah 2:17, where Nehemiah says to the exiled Jews: “You see the bad state we are in—Jerusalem lying in ruins and its gates destroyed by fire. Come, let us rebuild the wall of Jerusalem [chomat yerushalayim] and suffer no more disgrace.” The Maharsha asks how could it be that Nehemiah was inspiring thousands of Jews to return to Israel “like a wall” and rebuild it? Doesn’t this violate the oath? The Maharsha answers that it didn’t violate the oath because Nehemiah had the king’s permission to do so. This was not an act of rebellion against the nations! Which brings us back to the case of modern Israel.

The Jews that were returning to Israel en masse, starting in the 15th century, were doing so with the full permission of the Ottoman Empire who ruled over the land. In fact, Don Joseph Nasi (1524-1579) was given a charter by the Ottomans to recreate a semi-autonomous Jewish state with its capital in Tiberias, and was given the official title “Lord of Tiberias”. This is essentially the same situation as Nehemiah was in. The Jews in the 1800s were similarly buying plots of land from the Ottomans legally. Then the British took over and became the new overlords of the land. The Balfour Declaration demonstrated the intent of the British to establish a Jewish state in the Holy Land. The San Remo Conference of 1920 adopted and affirmed the Balfour Declaration, with the international powers agreeing to establish a Jewish state in Israel. And finally, the UN voted to establish a Jewish state in November 1947 through the consensus of a majority of nations. (As many have pointed out, far from being an “illegal occupier”, the State of Israel is possibly the most legal state on the planet!) Thus, the creation of the modern State of Israel would mirror the times of Nehemiah and, according to the reasoning of the Maharsha, would not be a violation of the Three Oaths.

Finally, if we go back to the Scriptural source for the Three Oaths, the verses say that we shouldn’t “awaken until it pleases” God. How exactly would we know if it pleases God? Perhaps through a series of miracles and signs? Supernatural occurrences and clear divine favour? Does modern Israel not fit the bill? Turning swamps and deserts into high-tech metropolises, re-establishing forests with literally hundreds of millions of new trees, exporting fruit to the world, desalinating water so that the land and its people no longer have to worry about being parched, and fighting off wave after wave of attack from aggressive neighbours. Do we ignore the miracles of 1948 and 1967 and 1973? Did we forget all the prophecies in Tanakh that have come true right before our eyes? How many more signs do we need to confirm that, indeed, “it pleases God”?

It hasn’t been easy, of course, and there has been a great deal of suffering along the way, but it was never meant to be easy, and Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai told us long ago that three gifts are acquired through pain: “The Holy One, Blessed be He, gave Israel three precious gifts, all of which were given only by means of suffering: Torah, the Land of Israel, and the World to Come.” (Berakhot 5a) We have thankfully already received the first two gifts. Hopefully, the suffering we are experiencing now as a nation is the necessary bit of pain before the third and final gift which is right around the corner.