Think Positive on Temple: Torah not “Politics”
The entire debate on when Shas should leave and topple the Kadima-Labor regime is misconstrued by being couched in negatives: “when they begin negotiating alienation of parts of Jerusalem, then…” We need to be positive, to leave “politics” and other Hellenistic terms and approaches in favor of Jewish teachings and the deep, root-spark wisdom of Hebrew language about Am Yisrael, the Am Segula [1].
The matter of language is central for Israel’s survival and to attain the joy promised for the world [2]. Consider the damage done to Israel, all Jews and humankind by failing to reject, refuse and dismiss the imperial Roman name, “Palestine” that the British and then the League of Nations applied to Israel, the Land promised by the Creator to the Children of Israel forever. This is but one salient example of an entire culture, a world of imperial and alien Greco-Roman terminology that buries or distorts understanding of the words, concepts, commandments and unified way of being of derekh Yehudi. Politics, oligarchy, diplomacy, globalism, democracy, all are Greco-Roman terms that reflect their culture and its values. This difference is not a topic for philosophers but intrinsic to the geopolitical and cultural burial of Israel by the oligarchs and their media in our days. This choice and change of vocabulary, a choice that would have retrieved history and memory, should have accompanied the renewal of Hebrew as a living language for society. We will return to this point in closing. For now note that the use, the example and insistence on using Hebrew words and concepts, the root sparks of existence are fundamental to the basic mitzvot, both positive and negative that involve affirming, unifying, loving, fearing, sanctifying and praying to the Eternal One and to suppress rather than encourage, however implicitly the world to descend into idol worship and following strange gods and practices. In Israel, instead of Hellenist elections there should be Beit HaBechirah and the honor of being bakhor [3].
Back to our misplaced political debates which actually are a disintegrative spiral, an undoing of creation, a darkening: For more than a year there has been increasing pressure on two ostensibly “right wing” parties, Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu, to quit the expulsion and surrender government. Polls in the late summer and fall of 2006 showed that elections then would have given the Likud about 35 seats and Yisrael Beiteinu, twenty-two. But the leaders of those parties and of Shas preferred to remain with Olmert, Kadima and Labor. About 6200 rockets have been shot into Israel from Hamastan since then and numerous Jews murdered and wounded, traumatized body and soul, not least by the failure of their government to protect them thus violating the prohibition against standing idly by the blood of one’s fellow Jew as well as the requirement to destroy Amalek.
It is clear that the Likud prefers not to lead during this end game / checkmate period; perhaps it is waiting to broom up the debris: this after all is “a generation with the face of a dog,” of pols who pretend to lead while turning back for approval and instruction from their foreign masters [4]. Even if Shas had left this terrible regime of amgushai and gazirpatai before yesterday the discourse is all wrong: we should think positive, should be talking Jewish and Judaism, — about positive duties and deeds, about bed-rock basics of our identity, shaleim, as Jacob was when he returned from Charan to Shechem where the tomb of his beloved Joseph again stands scorched by the enemies of Israel. That is, the direct line from the glory of Jacob, the evening prayer of Israel and gateway to the Apple Orchard to his foundation has been unbalanced; the chariot and throne, so to speak cannot illuminate and invigorate the world as they should. “When the foundations are destroyed, what has the righteous man accomplished?” (Psalm 11:3). “Hashem is in the abode of His holiness” which is not only the heavens but the mikdash, as it states, “they shall build me a dwelling and I shall dwell among them” and, “you shall make a Sanctuary for Me” (v’oseh Li Mikdash, Exodus 25:8) [5]. How can we not interrupt the watch around the Temple, transgressing negative commandment sixty-seven and many others when we do not build it to guard and serve in it? How can we prevent the planting of trees on the Temple Mount when dog-faced politicians, Hellenists, forbid that Jews be sovereign or even pray there, much less build the Temple [6]?
Let’s be positive; let’s be Jewish; let’s report something in the name of him who said it (Avot 6:6), a very great master of Torah. Let’s talk about what we should do regarding the Temple, as suggested by the masters and then Jerusalem and Israel will be fine.
Shimon haTzaddik, one of the last survivors of the Second Temple that the Romans destroyed about 1940 years ago, “used to say, ‘upon three things the world is based: upon the Torah, the Temple Service, and upon the practice of charity” (Avot 1:2). The Jews of Gush Katif were great in charity but their homes and livelihoods, and thus their lives were crushed and there is little national charity, much less justice for them. “For this, the land shall mourn” until rectification is made [7].
Because this essay focuses on talking and doing positively regarding the Hub of Israel and the World, the Temple, consider Rav Shimon’s emphasis on the Torah, much of which focuses on the Temple Service and the latter via another Mishna: Rav Shimon ben Yehuda in the name of Rav Shimon bar Yochai said, “five possessions the Holy One, Blessed be He made especially His own…the Torah, heaven and earth, Abraham, Israel and the Beit HaMikdash” (Avot 6:8). When the Ancient of Days gives dominion to the “high holy ones,” Israel, the fifth kingdom “they will inherit” (vayachsenun) their inheritance (Daniel 7); this will be an “end,” the simple gematria of “they shall inherit” for it will be a cessation of war to the ends of the earth. Hashem alone will be exalted on that day and the gentile nations will learn to live in peace with Israel (Melachim 12:1-2). The terrible end game of the powers who are drunk but not with wine at least has focused the attention of the world on what is most important, dear and foundational, the “five possessions of the high holy one whose mitzvot show that “all Your works are made with wisdom and Your accomplishment fills the earth” (ibid); Torah will go forth from Zion and from Jerusalem, the world of Hashem, the God of Jacob (Isaiah 2, etc).
In the capstone and crown of his magisterial Mishneh Torah, the Yad ha Chazakah, Rambam begins by putting first things first: upon entering the Land, Israel shall appoint a king, annihilate Amalek, and build the Temple” [8]. He then specifies that “the appointment of a king should precede the war against Amalek” and that “Amalek’s seed [descendants] should be annihilated before building the Temple [9]. Rambam is the master teacher who explains that Torah is both metaphysical and practical, that it contains all things and ways of knowing and doing. He shows us, immediately that a king and destruction of the enemies of Israel will precede and enable construction of the Temple and thus full and fitting renewal of the Temple Service, i.e., of Judaism.
Many people might interject, ‘but in the early twentieth century, who would “appoint a king”?’ But the British (and many other peoples have royalty) so perhaps they would have been less hostile during the mandate. ‘Besides,’ they might add, ‘Rambam says that seventy-one elders must appoint the king. Who will designate them? This is the era of politics, political wrangling, big-power imperatives’ (”necessity, the tyrant’s plea” or apologia, Milton called it), of oligarchic scams. Well, Rav Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook, Chief Rabbi of pre-State Israel had enormous prestige with all parties, the hostile British included, and he had consequent abilities. He could have named a council of seventy-one, a de facto Sanhedrin to appoint a king who may initially have seemed like a figurehead but would, in due course, thanks to the perennial designs of Edom and Ishmael have been able to act like the king Rambam describes. Leadership like that would have made the events of the 1940s, and since, very different. Think about leaders committed to ingathering the exiles while quoting Torah and Rishonim; think about a near-total victory in 1948, a total triumph in 1967 and peace thereafter with a full ingathering and the Temple. There would be no end game “war of terror”; think about it.
Man has free will and the power of choice that interacts with the environment and other people’s will in myriad ways [10].
As noted, a king shall be appointed by 71 elders, a nascent or existing Sanhedrin and officially empowered to fulfill all the mitzvot specified in this book and in Yesodei HaTorah, “Foundations of Torah” and the entire Sefer Avodah, “the Book of the Temple and its Service” which includes almost twenty categories of Halacha including, first and foremost, those that honor the Eternal One [11]. Sovereignty and identity are stressed: “You may not appoint a foreigner [as king] but to any of the positions of authority in Israel…all appointments shall be only from your brethren.” Let’s be positive…
Bearing in mind the teaching of Rabbi Shimon haTzaddik about the intertwining of Torah and Temple, upon opening Sefer Avodah and Hilchot Yesodei HaTorah one notes that seventy of the first ninety-one positive commandments of the Eternal One to Israel involve building, revering, guarding, and serving in the Temple; so do about one hundred of the negative mitzvot [12]. Israel is to build the Temple, “keep watch around the Temple” and “not to nullify the watch around the Temple” [13]. This is the true platform for discussion of national issues in Israel because “national issues” are also issues of identity, history, culture, labor, charity, economics and governance, indeed, the entirety of life. The Torah into which the Highest Wisdom and Creator looked to create His creation with wisdom is a Torah Shleimah, as Israel, to exist must strive with all its being to be Yisrael shleimah on every dimension: of souls, of the Throne, and throughout this world; “strategy” too is a Greek word; Israel has mitzvot upon which true freedom and joy are based, as the shofar blast on Yom Kippur in the Yovel should remind [14].
Rambam also shows that in order properly “to tend all the offerings from the diaspora [and] bring them to Eretz Yisrael” they must be brought to God’s chosen House (L’Beit HaBechirah) [15]. All Jews everywhere, Canada, Africa, India, America, France, “from the diaspora” everywhere have a duty and right to see that their offerings to Israel are tended and brought to the Temple for distribution or use. This is vital, the life, the Chai of the Yesod that will be repaired when the Temple Mount is repaired, the Temple rebuilt, and the light – root of Kever Yosef repaired and settled, integrating the sulam of energy and blessings, the chayot and chashmalim, the “life energy,” the “fiery beings that communicate,” binding the bond of life, the essential DNA that Israel brings [16].
Thus we should be talking positively about observing and doing the mitzvot pertaining to Eretz Zion, Yerushalayim. To do so we must use Hebrew words and the related concepts, categories of thought and ways of thinking. A Jewish vocabulary appears immediately in Yesodei HaTorah, the material and spirit the ‘big bang’ dispersed throughout creation, forming time, space and matter. As to Torah and the Temple Service at its core, at the core of the nation and all the worlds, this means word-concept-deeds like building, revering, guarding (“l’shamor Beit zeh tamid…”), to serve, to sanctify, to bless, to offer, to sustain and, encompassing all these, to remember not only by “guarding” in one’s mind so that one can do, but “with your mouths” by speaking about it with your fellows [17]. In Judaism, remembrance includes speaking and doing and is an individual choice – duty that constitutes a national imperative and identity: “like a single man with a single heart.” And to “call out” – “and you shall call out freedom in the land” [18].
As for relations with neighboring peoples and states, because for so long Israel has failed to convene a learned Torah council of seventy-one, appoint a king and fight the wars of God, but rather has engaged in political jostling for a place at the table, its spin masters “calling out, ‘peace, peace,’ when there is no peace,” it is now a time for war as there is a set time for everything needed to balance the world for abundance and peace [19].
When a Torah Jewish vocabulary is used, as in Rambam and sages going back to Moshe and the Avot the greatness of our history will be intelligible to and honored by the world that will gradually learn how dearly they need Torah blessings, those that come foundationally from the Temple Mount and Temple Service; and they will know how beautiful they are: that truth is beauty. They will learn coherence and balance in a Torah vocabulary and mindset that includes Shabbat, Shmittah, Yovel, tamid, serving, offering, celebrating, rejoicing, sanctifying and remembering. Humanity will leave the garish nightmares of Hellenism and Kedar behind and rejoice in the balance and integrity that brings peace to all seventy nations of the world and to all human beings, endowed with soul and splendor and the “specific service assignments” deriving from free will [20]. They will ascend on the flow of healing light that streams from the House of the God of Jacob. With this renewed vocabulary and direction, the policy options and games will yield to positive (and negative, safeguarding) mitzvot, peoples will acknowledge the God of Jacob, the Creator, “and the earth will yield its produce” (Psalm 67). For “the sages did not yearn for the Messianic era in order to have dominion over the world, to rule over gentiles…or to eat, drink and celebrate; rather to be free to immerse themselves in Torah and wisdom… thus in this era good will flow in abundance and all delights will be as common as dust. The work of the whole world will be solely to know Hashem whose wisdom will fill the world with tranquility as the sea fills the ocean bed” [21]; that’s a positive foundation, the cornerstone and capstone of the only new world with a humane future (Psalm 118:22-3).
1. Exodus 19:5-6, “an intimately treasured people,” Mamlekhet Kohanim v’goi kadosh, “a dominion of Priests and a holy nation.” “The root purpose of this service [Torah-mitzvot] is to make man always conscious of God,” Rabbi Moshe Chaim Luzzato (“Ramchal”), Derekh Hashem 1.4.6. On “the roots of all physical things,” ibid. 1.5.2 passim
2. Rambam, Hilchot Melachim 11:4 on Zephaniah 3:9; cf. Melachim 12:5: “the occupation of the entire world will be solely to know Hashem.”
3. Rambam, Yesodei HaTorah #1-9, positive (p.38), and Sefer HaMitzvoth Rabbi Shraga Silverstein (Moznaim 1993), negative commandments 1-45; negatives 39-40 show how sexual perversion is a social, moral and above all, theological matter, a form of idolatry.
4. Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin III (Mesorah 2004, Daf Yomi edition), 97a2 with note from Rav Elchanan Wasserman in Ikvasa DeMeshicha in the name of Rav Yisroel Salanter on ‘dog-like’ politicians. HaRav Shlomo Eidels infers hypocrisy while Yad Ramah and Chida infer insolent and brazen politicians. This reading accords with discussion of the time of the amgushai and gazirpatai discussed in 98a3.
5. Yesodei HaTorah, positive commandment 20, cf. Beit HaBechirah 1; like Jacob when he returned to his inheritance and father, Moshe alone stood shaleim before Hashem in receiving clear knowledge, the form of the soul (see note 16, below), “standing in a composed state” [omeid al amdo shaleim] “to know and comprehend ideas above matter” and “not material,” ibid. 7:6, 4:8-9.
6. ibid. 20, negative commandment 13
7. What the forces corrupted by the oligarchs have done in destroying beit midrashim, however modest and, by expelling Jews to permit Amalekites and worshippers of alien gods to destroy so many is to transgress many positive and negative commandments including “not to destroy the Temple, synagogues, or houses of study,” ibid. negative 65. Noted supra is the desecration of the tomb of Yosef, the righteous foundation and the earthquakes and loss of blessing that results, war, plague, loss of fertility…
8. Hilchot Melachim 1:1a-c (Moznaim 1987), trans. Touger; all the commandments pertaining to the Temple which in turn pertain to the foundational mitzvoth of sanctifying Hashem depend on building the Temple; similarly negative commandment 67, “not to interrupt the watch maintained around the Temple” on Numbers 18:5, “and you shall keep watch over the holy articles,” Sefer HaMitzvoth.
9. Melachim 1:2; Yesodei HaTorah, positive commandments 188-89: “exterminate the seed of Amalek” and “blot out the memory of Amalek.” One notes that while Israel fails to do this, the resulting vacuum fills by modern day Amalekites threatening, boasting and striving to do this to Israel from classrooms to boardrooms to kassams. Failure to observe these positive commandments in effect violates the negative commandment “not to forget the wicked deeds which Amalek committed against us,” ibid. #59, negative
10. Ramchal, Derekh Hashem (Feldheim 1977, Aryeh Kaplan; 1997 corrected edition), 1.3.1, 1.4.1, 1.5.4 passim: “God willed that man should be able to choose freely between good and evil…and arranged things so that not only man’s deeds but even his speech and thoughts in indeterminate ways affect transcendent forces… and when the highest forces are influenced by man’s free will they in turn influence the physical things that are linked to them” [1.5.5-6]. “Man is therefore an active, moving influence and not merely acted upon” even “though the manner in which this occurs is beyond our ability to comprehend.” “The challenge to bring about the Perfected community is the specific service assignment for each individual” as understood “and arranged by the Highest Wisdom” [2.3.3 passim].
11. Rambam, Melachim 1:3-4; Yesodei HaTorah, (Moznaim 1989) translation and notes, Rabbi Eliahu Touger, 39, 114-22
12. ibid. 39-45, 63-74, negative mitzvoth 13, 65-165 almost all of these pertain to the Temple and right service, including prohibitions of forms of idolatry.
13. Beit HaBechirah 1:1, 5, 6
14. Sefer HaMitzvoth, positive commandments 136-8, pp. 182-4 on Vayikra 25:9-10
15. Yesodei HaTorah, positive mitzvah 85 on Devarim 12:26 and our sages.
16. ibid. 2:7; moreover, the “image” or “shadow” (primary meaning, tzeil) in which man was made is the nefesh and ruach, the incorporeal soul-form “enabling man to comprehend ideas that are not material,” that is concepts, principles, abstractions; “knowledge is the form of the soul,” the genetic material, “it is not a combination of the four elements…but is from God in heaven,” a precipitate of the holy chayyot: ibid. 4:8-9, cf. 2:7, “life energies.” This daas of the nefesh and ruach “knows and comprehends knowledge which is above matter” (haglamim), on Ecclesiastes 12:7, “the ruach returns to God” (on Kohelet 12:7).
17. “The entire nation said, ‘everything that Hashem has spoken, we shall do’” (Exodus 19:8, 24:3, “the entire word that Hashem has spoken, we shall do”). Melachim 5:5 “remember – with your mouths”
18. Sefer HaMitzvoth 137, supra
19. Kohelet (“Ecclesiastes”), 3:1-8
20. Derekh Hashem, free will and providence, 1.3 passim
21. And all these positives as we say, with modern slang veering toward Jewish wisdom, are based on our recognition and stance toward the Eternal One, Hashem: “to know, to unify, to love Him, to be in awe, to pray to Him, to imitate His love and generosity, to sanctify His Name” and for Jews to teach gentiles the “light yoke” of the Noahide laws with the caution “that they are not to be allowed to originate a new religion or create mitzvot for themselves based on their own decisions” (Melachim 10:9, 11:4). “They should be involved in the study of their seven mitzvot only” categories which include dozens of mitzvot; Melachim 8-9, 12:4-5 and see Sanhedrin 55-59.