Rabbi Norman Lamm
The Jewish Center
New York City
May 1, 1965
The 17th anniversary of the independence of the State of Israel, which we shall
celebrate later this week, affords us the occasion to reexamine our own attitudes and orientations
towards the State.
I do not, in all honesty, believe that full justice can be done to such a significant theme in
the confines of a single sermon. Let us, therefore, merely outline some general principles which
ought to guide such considerations.
This introspection must be characterized, above all, by a radical frankness and an honesty
that may prove painful. In the past, economic exigencies, organizational bias, and the normal
desire to avoid confronting unpleasant dilemmas, have usually deterred us from a self-analysis.
Indeed, such a searching self-examination will probably leave many of us perplexed, and even
deeply disturbed. But it is a blessed perplexity that takes the place of the pedestrian platitudes
that have so long substituted for thinking in the past.
The fact is that American Jews of all persuasions are in a state of crisis concerning their
position and orientation towards the State of Israel. We are beset by certain paradoxes and
contradictions. If I be permitted to paraphrase from Avot 1:2, the world stands on three pillars: on
Torah, on avodah (which means prayer or the sacrificial service), and on charitable endeavors.
So may it be said of the American Jewish world with regard to Israel, that it is comprised of three
groups. First is “Torah”: the Orthodox Jew, whose love for Israel and devotion to the State is part
of the larger context of his commitment to Torah and Judaism. The second is avodah – literally
the word means work, and here I include those who are devoted organizational workers for the
various Zionist groups. The third, gemillat hassadim, comprises those many people whose major
expression of interest in Israel is through financial support, such as the U.J.A. and Bonds for
Israel.
The American Jews whose orientation to Israel is expressed as avodah, that is, the
political Zionists, especially the secular Zionists, are in a state of deep crisis. Their dilemma is
well known: they have, paradoxically, been defeated by success. Their stated purpose was the
creation of an independent state. They succeeded in this goal; because it was fulfilled they
therefore are left without a purpose. It is fairly apparent to all objective observers that without
institutional inertia, these organizations would have disappeared with the emergence of the State
of Israel in 1948.
Gemillat hassadim as an expression of loyalty to Israel is very important. Israel needs our
financial assistance. But all of us hope that the time is not far off when the State will achieve
economic independence from us as well as peace with its neighbors. What then? When we shall
no longer have to contribute financially or politically to the State, how shall we relate to the State
of Israel? Is it conceivable that American Jews will be left with no special relationship towards
Israel?
We Orthodox Jews, whose position in Israel is expressed by the word “Torah,” have been
spared, largely, the crises of the other two. Our love for Israel is independent either of political or
economical conditions. Our program is not merely one of supporting an economy or creating a
government machinery. Our purpose depends neither upon votes nor upon funds, though it may
include both. Therefore, neither independence nor peace nor security constitutes a threat to our
relationship to Israel, for these do not represent the fulfillment of our goals. Our end is nothing
less than the Messianic vision of the complete redemption, a term which includes a spiritual
renaissance of the Land of Israel and the People of Israel according to the Torah of Israel; and,
ultimately, the spiritual regeneration of all mankind in universal peace and justice.
Yet, American Orthodox Jews do face a problem that they cannot continue to avoid
indefinitely. Our critics in Israel, both those who are Orthodox and those who are not, have
pressed this problem upon us, and we ought to consider it seriously and courageously, not – as
we have done – polemically. That is, the act of settling in the Land of Israel is one of the 613
commandments. In a remarkable passage, the late Rav Kook points out that, surprisingly,
Maimonides in his Sefer HaMitzvot does not include as detailed commandments those precepts
which are fundamental to the whole of Torah; and therefore yishuv Eretz Yisrael is not reckoned
by him as an individual commandment because it is an underlying principle of the whole of
Judaism. It is too important to be regarded as just a mitzvah.
In the past, our people did not emigrate to the Land of Israel en masse because of the
extremely difficult conditions that prevailed: hostile government, harsh and forbidding
environment, and the absence of a community large enough and stable enough to absorb
immigrants.
But today Israel is a free and independent State, and is even blessed with a measure of
prosperity. Hence, the question is asked: why not practice and stress this great precept of aliyah?
And we ought to honestly ask the same question of ourselves: indeed, why not aliyah? There has
been some trickle of American Jews emigrating to Israel, but how about the rest of us? How can
we square our religious conscience and intellectual integrity with our apparent non-concern with
aliyah?
There are of course a number of objections to aliyah that are offered as an excuse for our
neglect of this great principle of Jewish life. Upon reflection, most of them are not worth taking
seriously. Let us, for the sake of analysis, consider them briefly.
We are told by some people that American Jews are not in exile, in galut, and that
therefore aliyah is not obligatory upon us. Some of those who propose this comparatively novel
thesis are motivated by an exaggerated Americanism. They fear that the assertion of our
exilehood is an act of disloyalty to the United States. Historically, this is false. There were
amongst our ancestors some who lived in countries of the Diaspora that were blessed with
benign governments that allowed full freedom to Jews and Judaism. Yet they never doubted that
they were in exile, and never were aware of any conflict between their loyalty to their
government and their desire for redemption. Only a totalitarian government insists upon the total
loyalties of its citizens. A democratic government asks only that its citizens perform their civic
duties and affirm their allegiance to the constitution; it does not forbid them to cherish ancient
dreams, present prayers, and visions of a future redemption. It is odd that those who protest
loudest against the idea that we are in exile in this country do so largely because they are afraid
of the impression that will be made upon other Americans if American Jews consider themselves
in exile. What greater exile is there than this?!
Indeed, we are in galut! To deny this is to abandon our hopes for geulah, for redemption,
to scuttle our belief in the Messiah, to make a shambles of our Torah, to invalidate all of our
Jewish past and its sublime dreams for the future, and to reduce our prayers to a kind of
sanctified hypocrisy. Ours may be a comfortable galut, a galut in which we have a large measure
of freedom; but a convenient galut remains a galut!
The Baal Shem Tov once taught this principle in one of his inimitable comments. We
read in Isaiah a verse with which we are familiar because we recite it on Rosh Hashanah:
והיה ביום ההוא יתקע בשופר גדול ובאו האבדים בארץ אשור והנדחים בארץ מצרים והשתחוו לה' בהר הקדש
בירושלים: (ישעיהו כז:יג)
On that day (the day of the redemption) a great shofar will be sounded, and those who are lost in
the land of Ashur (Assyria) and those who are dispersed in the Land of Egypt will return to the
Holy Land. (Isaiah 27:13) But, asks the Baal Shem Tov, will Assyria and Egypt be the only
countries from which the exiles will return in the future? He replies that these two countries
represent two types of exile. He explains these symbols by rearranging the vowels. Egypt, or
מצרים, Mitzrayim, can be rearranged to read מצרים, metzarim, narrow straits, difficulty,
oppression. Assyria, אשור, Ashur, can be read as אושר, osher, happiness, prosperity, plenty. In
other words, there are two types of exile: one of them, symbolized by Egypt, is the classical form
of galut, that of oppression and hatred and bigotry, in which our people are persecuted and
dispersed. But there is also another kind of exile which is just the reverse. It is the one
symbolized by Assyria. It is the exile of Jews in luxury in which we are lost, because our sublime
aims and lofty goals have become deflected as a result of the abundance of convenience and
comfort and plenty and prosperity. As a result, we have lost sight of the great Jewish vision of
redemption. It is from these two exiles, that of oppression and that of prosperity, that Messiah
will redeem us on the day that the great shofar will be sounded.
Indeed, the greatest exile - as one great Jew once said - occurs when we do not know that
we are in exile. The more we forget our exilehood, the deeper we are caught in it. And what is
our condition in America if not exile when we read of the increasing assimilation and growing
intermarriage, when non-Jews nationally proclaim that we are the “vanishing Jews of America”?
One need not be a pessimist as to the future survival of our people in this country to admit that
we are suffering a terrible attrition. Galut indeed! The argument against aliyah because we
American Jews are not in exile is a spurious one, and does not deserve to be taken seriously.
Then there are those who turn the argument around, and would discourage aliyah, or
excuse our neglect of it, because of faults they find in the State of Israel. Israel, they tell us, is
itself not exactly a complete religious state; not all of its citizens are totally observant. The
Israelis too are in galut!
Perhaps conditions in Israel are less than ideal, but this argument is only a semantic trick.
One need not equate the State of Israel with the complete redemption and the ultimate Messianic
state in order to promote the idea of aliyah. The fact is that there is more "Yiddishkeit" and
opportunity for the practice of Judaism in Israel than any place else in the world – Brooklyn and
Manhattan included.
It is true, that to the untrained eye of a tourist, it sometimes seems as if Judaism is in exile
in the Holy Land. However, it requires a special insight, an extraordinary gift, in order to be able
to see the truth: that Judaism is much more vibrant, much more prevalent, much more real in
Israel than it is any place in the world. A great Rabbi once explained, with regard to this special
insight, one of the prayers in our amidah. We pray thrice daily, ותחזנה עינינו בשובך לציון ברחמים may
our eyes behold when you return to Zion in love. Why, he asks, do we pray that our eyes
behold that God returns to Zion; why do we not simply pray that God returns to Zion? The
answer is that even if God returned to Zion, we might not notice it. Sometimes He is there in His
full holiness and glory – only we fail to see it! We are blind to the great and sacred realities of
God’s presence in the Holy Land. Therefore we implore Him “Almighty God, allow our eyes to
see what already is a fact, that you have indeed returned to Zion!”
The only real objection to aliyah is not theoretical but practical. We have made our lives
here in this country. We have settled here, raised our families, struck our roots, built our
businesses, and advanced our careers and professions. Aliyah proves very difficult for us, no
matter how genuine our commitment to it.
This is a more honest position than to attempt to argue away our responsibility and justify
our failure. It is a frank admission of a practical failure, and not an attempt to rationalize our
inadequacy by discarding the ideal as such.
Nevertheless, we must never remain satisfied with merely abstract ideals, for that which
is unrealizable is essentially unreal. Aliyah must be not only an ideal but a principle. It must
govern behavior and conduct. Therefore, if we ourselves, for very practical reasons, cannot
emigrate to the Holy Land, we should encourage and assist those who can.
But that too is insufficient. Such an approach might well lead us into the classical
position of the two Zionists who express their Zionism by deciding that a third must go on aliyah
to Israel. If we are honest about our reasons for not emigrating – that they are practical, not
theoretical – then we must at least see to it that our children will go. We must prepare our
children for aliyah before they are settled here. If not all our children, at least each family must
decide that the one child most fit for emigration ought to be prepared for it. We must decide to
train at least one child in that kind of career or profession or business that will enable him to go
on aliyah. We must imbue him with the spirit of Israel, and create in him that idealism which will
help him fulfill the destiny which all of Israel must ultimately share.
No parent regards it as a tragedy if his child becomes a lawyer in California or marries an
engineer in South America, or goes into business in Alaska. The world is smaller today than it
ever was before. It will be smaller yet ten years from now. We should regard it as a blessing if a
child of ours fulfills our dreams, our duties, our highest spiritual and national vocation, by
directing him to settle in the Holy Land, on aliyah, and live a full vibrant Jewish life.
Our religious integrity requires it. Israel needs olim from the United States. And America
needs it! The American Jewish community will be able the better to survive if it sends some of
the cream of its youth to the Holy Land. American Jewish youth has begun to look elsewhere for
the outlets for its native idealism. We must redirect our children and their idealism to the State of
Israel. These precious olim will be the permanent human bond between Israeli and American
Jewry. For indeed, if we will not be olim, we will be yordim. If we will not go up, we may,
heaven forbid, go down!
The solution is not overly difficult, and it is not too easy. Facing this issue is no easier for
me than for anyone else. But we ignore it at the peril of our own souls and our own integrity.
Now that Israel is independent, we must consider aliyah as an opportunity. The future of
American Jewry itself will be enhanced by such aliyah. We are, in a large measure, dependent
upon Israel's independence.
As seen in this perspective, the question of aliyah is not a problem but a prospect, not a
perplexity but an opportunity. Let this be uppermost in our minds on this seventeenth birthday of
Israel. It can be a most powerful stimulus for the good for us and our children. Indeed, the
numerical value of the Hebrew word for “good” טוב is seventeen – the number of the birthday
of Israel this year! It was Eretz Yisrael that was described in the Torah as “good” – טובה הארץ
מאוד מאוד,” the Land is very very good!"
Let us never lose sight of our attachment to that Land. Let us never substitute for our real
loyalty to it a mere financial commitment or political interest or sentimental association. For the
land is indeed very very good. Through our loyalty to it, may it continue to be very very good for
us, for our children, for all Israel, and ultimately for all mankind.
