The land of Israel and the modern state

Overview

Recall questions on the land in Jewish thought, the Babylonian exile, shemittah, the Jubilee and stewardship, the kibbutz, the founding of the State of Israel in 1948, the Six Day and Yom Kippur Wars, Jewish responses to the state, and the promised land against the modern state.

What you need to know

Answer each one before you reveal it.

Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   What does the land signify in Jewish thought, and on what is the claim to it based?

   Model answer

   The land, Eretz Yisrael, known in Jewish tradition as the Promised Land, is promised in the covenant with Abraham and reaffirmed at Sinai and throughout the Torah, so possession of it is understood as a gift from G-d rather than a conquest justified in its own terms. Leviticus states that the land belongs to G-d and that Israel occupies it as resident tenants, which makes the holding conditional and imposes obligations about how it is used. A large body of commandments applies only within its borders, chiefly agricultural, so the land is where a substantial part of the Torah can be fully kept. The prophets make possession conditional on justice, warning that the land itself will expel its inhabitants if they defile it, so the covenantal claim comes with a covenantal threat.

2. 2

   What happened in the exile to Babylon, and how did Jews return?

   Model answer

   The Babylonian empire under Nebuchadnezzar captured Jerusalem, deporting part of the population in 597 BCE and then destroying the city and the First Temple in 586 BCE with further deportations. The exiles were settled in Babylonia, where they retained their identity, and the crisis produced some of the most important biblical material, since a people whose theology tied G-d to a land and a temple had to explain how both could be lost. When Persia conquered Babylon, Cyrus permitted the exiles to return and to rebuild, and a Second Temple was completed around 516 BCE, with further waves of return and religious reform later in the century. The episode established a pattern that shaped everything afterwards: exile is survivable, the covenant continues without land or temple, and return is possible.

3. 3

   What happened to Jewish life in the land between 70 CE and 1948?

   Model answer

   The Second Temple was destroyed by Rome in 70 CE, and after a further revolt was crushed in 135 CE Jews were barred from Jerusalem and the province was renamed. Rabbinic Judaism emerged in response, reconstituting religious life around study, prayer and law in place of sacrifice, which made it portable. Jewish communities spread and flourished across Babylonia, North Africa, Spain, the Rhineland, Poland and the Ottoman lands, enduring expulsions from England, France and Spain among others, and periods of both prosperity and massacre. A Jewish presence in the land never ceased entirely, with communities in Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias and Hebron. Throughout, the land remained central to the imagination and the liturgy: prayers were said facing Jerusalem, mourning for the destruction was fixed in the calendar, a glass is broken at weddings to recall it, and the Passover meal ends with the hope of being in Jerusalem the following year.

4. 4

   How is the land connected to Zionism?

   Model answer

   For religious Zionists the connection is direct: the return is the covenantal promise being fulfilled and the beginning of redemption. For secular Zionists the connection was national and historical rather than theological, but it was decisive nonetheless, which is why the offer of territory in East Africa was rejected. Zionism also transformed the relationship, turning the land from an object of prayer and longing into an object of purchase, settlement, cultivation and eventually sovereignty, and turning the return from something G-d would accomplish into something Jews would do. That transformation is precisely what much of the Haredi world objected to.

5. 5

   What is shemittah, and how is it handled in modern Israel?

   Model answer

   Shemittah is the sabbatical year: every seventh year agricultural land in the land of Israel is to be left uncultivated, its produce made freely available, and debts released. The rationale is that the land belongs to G-d and is entitled to rest, and that regular release prevents permanent accumulation of debt and holdings. It became a practical crisis for modern Jewish farming, and a device was authorised in the 1880s by which the land is notionally sold to a non-Jew for the year so that work may continue, a solution the state rabbinate has used since. Haredi authorities generally reject the device and rely instead on produce grown by non-Jews, imported food, or a communal arrangement under which crops are distributed through a religious court. The argument recurs every seven years and is a good example of halakhah under the strain of statehood.

6. 6

   What are the Jubilee year and the idea of stewardship, and what do they establish?

   Model answer

   The Jubilee is the fiftieth year, following seven cycles of seven, in which Israelite bondservants are freed and ancestral holdings revert to the families that originally held them, so that land cannot be permanently alienated and inequality cannot become hereditary. The Torah gives the reason explicitly: the land is not to be sold in perpetuity because it belongs to G-d and the people are tenants. Stewardship follows from this: human beings hold the earth in trust and are accountable for its use, an idea reinforced by the prohibition on wanton destruction, originally a rule against felling fruit trees in a siege and extended by the rabbis into a general principle against waste. Modern Jewish environmental thought draws heavily on both.

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