The Land of Promise: The Darkness of Exile

Far from their beloved country, the Jewish people were scattered far and wide to the darkness of exile. From north to south, east to west, they endeavored to lead a proper Jewish life in foreign lands - a life of faith, of observing the commandments, of maintaining the bond to the Land of Israel. It was not easy: the grueling effort, day after day, to survive foreign rule, and to compete with diverse customs, to endure the reluctance of their neighbors to accept those who were different, left emotional and physical scars. The fervent longing for their homeland intensified, and united the Jewish People despite their physical distance.

Following the destruction of the Second Temple - the center of Jewish life for so long - many of the Jewish people's greatest Sages urgently set about collecting, clarifying, and compiling elements of the oral tradition, believed to have been given to Moses on Mount Sinai and passed down by word of mouth through the generations. This monumental work - which became known as the Mishnah - was completed in the 3rd century by Rabbi Judah Hanasi (Judah the Prince), and would become the basis of studies and rabbinical rulings of future generations.

During this time, the spiritual center of Eretz Israel was in Yavneh, the seat of the Sanhedrin - the supreme political, religious, and judicial body in the Land during the Roman period. However, as conditions in the country gradually deteriorated, and in the wake of two failed rebellions against the Roman authorities, the focus of Jewish scholarship and leadership shifted to Babylonia, where the Jews enjoyed a large measure of autonomy. However, they never considered their exile to be anything but temporary, and anxiously awaited the day when God would have mercy on them and return them to the land from which they had been exiled.

In the 9th and 10th centuries, Jewish life spread to the countries of western and central Europe, and the center of the Diaspora began to move slowly away from Babylonia and divide into two: those living in countries under Islamic rule (North Africa and Spain) and those in Christian countries (Italy at first and then Germany and France). Despite their positive social and economic contributions, the policy of expelling Jews was adopted by Christian countries in an effort to force the Jews to convert to Christianity or face separation from the rest of civilization.

The expulsions from England in 1290, from France in 1306 and 1394, and from Spain and Portugal in 1492-97 forced out several hundreds of thousands of Jews from these countries. Yet their confidence in the divine promise maintained the bond between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel. This was expressed daily as all over the world, Jews turned towards Jerusalem and prayed to God three times each day:

Sound the great ram's horn for our freedom, and raise a standard to gather in our exiles, and gather us together from the four corners of the earth to our land... Return in mercy to Your city, Jerusalem... And may our eyes behold Your return to Jerusalem in mercy. Blessed are You, O Lord, Who restores His presence to Zion. Every day their prayers beseeched God to hasten the redemption and return them to the land promised them long ago, in the time of the Patriarch Abraham.

Throughout the exile, the Jewish people voiced their pain and their yearning for the Land through poetry, song, and art. Over the years, these works have become a symbol of the earnest love for the Land, of the wish to be redeemed and return to it. The greatest Jewish poet of medieval Spain was Rabbi Judah Halevi. Born in Toledo (c.1075 CE), his poetry dealt with diverse themes connected to Judaism and religious belief, and, above all Eretz Israel. Even though he lived in Spain during the "Golden Age", the Land of Israel was incomparably more meaningful for the poet. His works expressed, in clear and picturesque language, the exiles' intense longing and craving for Zion - the land promised to them by God. The intensity of Judah Halevi's poems charged them with meaning for Jews all over the world.

The 12th century Jewish poet and philosopher Judah Halevi also wrote the Kuzari, an idealistic account of the conversion to Judaism of the king of the Khazars, a kingdom in Central Asia. Kuzari is written in the form of a dialogue between the king and a rabbi, who answers the king's questions and explains to him the tenets of Judaism.

At one point, the rabbi uses a horticultural analogy to describe the relationship between the People and the Land of Israel: "How about the hill on which you say that the vines thrive so well? If it had not been properly planted and cultivated, it would never have produced grapes... No other mountain might be able to produce such good wine." That hill, he says, is like the Land of Israel to the Jewish people - it is the natural and essential place for their unique spirit to appear and develop.
t (The Kuzari: An Argument for the Faith of Israel, trans. Hartwig Hirschfeld, 1905; II, 10-12)

Another important poet of that age was Solomon Ibn Gabirol, who was born in Malaga (c.1021) and died in Valencia (c.1055). His poetic style also expressed, with great feeling and through agonizing questions, the Jewish bond to the Land and the desire to return to it.

Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra was born in Tudela in 1092. He left Spain in his mid-forties and wandered through much of Western Europe, before he died in 1167. Ibn Ezra marked the end of the period of the learned Spanish Jewish poets and the transition to a new period in Hebrew literature.

These passages are a small sample of the works that grew in the hothouse of the exile, watered by longings and distress. The yearning for the Promised Land, and their bond to it, remained vibrant and passionate throughout the centuries. Whether in Babylon or in the Rhineland, their hearts constantly overflowed with the expectation of redemption and return to the Land.