Hints in the Gemara to our situation today

The challenges facing the Jewish people today are unique in history, and so one would think that Chazal would have left us some hints or guidelines on how to approach them and survive. And indeed, if one looks carefully, one can find such hints throughout Shas.

This page will be dedicated to searching for these hints and deciphering Chazal’s hidden messages. New pieces will be added at the end of the article, IY”H.

Bava Basra 4b

המקיף את חבירו משלש רוחותיו, וגדר את הראשונה ואת השניה ואת השלישית ־ אין מחייבין אותוֹ רבי יוסי אומר: אם עמד וגדר את הרביעית ־ מגלגלין עליו את הכל

The Mishnah says: If one man, A, owns fields on three sides of another man B’s field, and he fences in those three walls, B does not have to contribute to the cost of those fences. Rabbi Yossi says: If B arose and fences in his fourth side, we make him pay for all four sides.

Rashi on the Mishnah explains that we are not talking about the fences between A and B’s properties, but rather the fences on the outside of A’s property that prevent outside animals from intruding and damages the fields.

The Gemara goes on to say (in the last pshat) that the Tanna Kama of the Mishnah holds that if A bought up the fourth side of B’s property and completed the fourth fence, B has to contribute. Until then, he could claim he was not benefiting from the three fences because his fourth side was open and vulnerable. But now he is benefiting from A, albeit against his will.

Rabbi Yossi holds that only if the inside man, B himself, builds the fourth fence do we make B pay for the other fences. By building the fourth fence, he is showing that his previous claim (that he didn’t feel he was benefiting from the first three fences) was disingenuous.

The non-Zionist Jews living in Eretz Yisroel are like the inside property owner (B), and the Zionists, like A, have surrounded them. They used to live in peace with the Arabs, and they had no need for the “fences” (i.e. the defenses: the army, the border walls, the checkpoints etc.) built by the Zionists.

What happens when there is, chas veshalom, an attack? The Zionists go to war and increase their defenses, extending their fences to all the sides. Now we have two approaches. The Tanna Kama holds that now, all Jews living in the state are benefiting from the army. They can no longer say that they don’t need it. To be ideologically consistent, they should either leave the country, or else become Zionists.

Rabbi Yossi disagrees. The non-Zionist Jews are still not hypocrites. Yes, they live under the protection of the state, but they can still justly claim that they don’t need that protection. The Zionist provoke the wars and then proceed to fight the wars, but if it were up to these Jews, they would have gone on living in peace with the Arabs. Only if the non-Zionists themselves build a fence, i.e. join the army, or support the war effort in any way, then it belies their claim. They themselves are joining in now, so they must agree to all that was done until this point.

Kesubos 109a

העורר על השדה והוא חתום עליה בעד, אדמון אומר: השני נוח לי והראשון קשה הימנו, וחכמים אומרים. איבד את זכותו. עשאה סימן לאחר ־ איבד את זכותו

If A disputes B’s ownership of a certain field, and it is discovered that B sold an adjacent field to C, and in the document of sale he listed the four fields bordering that field, and one of them is mentioned as being B’s own field, and A is one of the witnesses signed on that sale, A has lost his case. If A really claimed the field as his own, he would not have signed on any document mentioning, even in passing, that the field belongs to B.

So too, Jews who dispute the State of Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state should not print or allow to be printed any words that imply that we recognize it, for example, “Made in Israel” or “Printed in Israel” in order to avoid implicitly recognizing the existence of the state.

Even U.S. law recognizes this principle. Before 2017, it was United States foreign policy not to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel, instead waiting for a peace agreement that would determine the status of that city. In 2002, Congress passed a law allowing American citizens born in Jerusalem to choose to have Israel listed as their birthplace on passports. However, the Bush and Obama administrations declined to enforce this law, and instructed the State Department to continue printing simply “Jerusalem” without a country name. The 2002 law, they argued, violated the separation of executive and legislative powers laid out in the U.S. Constitution. In successive court battles, culminating with the Supreme Court’s decision in 2015, the executive branch won out and continued to refuse to print “Israel”.

Shouldn’t we as Jews be as meticulous with our words as the U.S. government?

Beitzah 3b

נתערבה באלף ־ כולן אסורות… ביצה חשובה ולא בטלה

If a forbidden egg gets mixed with a thousand others, they are all forbidden, because an egg is important since it is sometimes sold by number.

When the state was founded in 1948, its Jewish population was 600,000. Among them were 400 Torah scholars of draft age, who refused to serve in the army. Ben-Gurion decided to grant them an exemption because they were such a small number and, he figured, they would eventually assimilate into Israeli society. This was known as the “toraso umanuso” agreement.

Since some of these scholars were married, when you count their wives the total is about 600 – one thousandth of the population. Ben-Gurion thought that they would be nullified and eventually be gone. But those scholars were actually the egg that gave birth to today’s rapidly growing traditionally religious population. The Zionist prime minister forgot that an egg is never nullified.

Interestingly, Beitzah-gimel is the same initials as Ben-Gurion.

Beitzah 25b

אמר הקדוש ברוך הוא: אפילו כתורמוס הזה, ששולקין אותו שבע פעמים ואוכלין אותו בקנוח סעודה לא עשאוני בני.

“And the children of Israel continued to do evil in the eyes of Hashem, and served the Baalim and the Ashtaros, and the gods of Aram and the gods of Zidon and the gods of Moab and the gods of the children of Ammon and the gods of the Philistines, and they forsook Hashem and did not serve Him” (Shoftim 10:6). From the words “And they forsook Hashem,” don’t I know that they did not serve Him? Rabbi Elazar said: The Holy One, Blessed be He, said: My children did not treat Me even like this lupine, which must be cooked in water seven times in order to temper its bitter taste and is eventually made so sweet that one eats it as a dessert after a meal.

The Zionist Declaration of Independence begins on a heretical note, claiming that the Jewish people arose in Eretz Yisroel, and proceeds to outline Jewish history and the history of Zionism, without a single mention of G-d. Herzl, the Balfour Declaration, the Holocaust, the UN, and the 1948 war are all mentioned. In the last paragraph, the religious Zionists wanted a mention of G-d or the Almighty, but the anti-religious parties opposed it. In the end, the compromise phrase “with trust in the rock of Israel” was adopted.

The Satmar Rebbe commented, “They didn’t want to mention Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s name in that declaration even like a dessert after a meal, at least the way all the nations besides the Communists do.”

By contrast, the U.S. Declaration of Independence mentions G-d four times, and not just at the end: “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them… 

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights…

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world…

And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.”

The Rebbe continues that their choice of the word “tzur” as a compromise is telling, because the Rambam explains in Moreh Nevuchim 1:16 that “tzur” is not actually a name of G-d; it means a bedrock, a source from which smaller rocks are carved out, and it is borrowed for G-d because He is the source of all existence. Coming at the end of a declaration in which the Zionists trace their history back to Herzl, their fight and their building of the land, it’s easy to see how they could read “tzur” as referring to those sources, which they believed in, rather than G-d, whom they denied.

This, says the Rebbe, is hinted in the posuk in Haazinu, וינבל צור ישועתו – the Jewish people was contemptuous of the Rock of their salvation. (Vayoel Moshe 100)

Shabbos 41a

רבי זירא הוה קא משתמיט מדרב יהודה, דבעי למיסק לארעא דישראל. דאמר רב יהודה: כל העולה מבבל לארץ ישראל עובר בעשה, שנאמר (ירמיהו כז) בבלה יובאו ושמה יהיו. אמר: איזיל ואשמע מיניה מילתא, ואיתי ואיסק. אזל אשכחיה דקאי בי באני, וקאמר ליה לשמעיה: הביאו לי נתר, הביאו לי מסרק, פתחו פומייכו ואפיקו הבלא ואשתו ממיא דבי באני. אמר: אילמלא באתי אלא לשמוע דבר זה ־ דיי. בשלמא הביאו נתר הביאו מסרק, קמשמע לן: דברים של חול מותר לאומרם בלשון קדש.

Rabbi Zeira was avoiding his teacher Rav Yehuda, because he planned on moving to Eretz Yisroel, and Rav Yehuda held that anyone who goes to Eretz Yisroel is transgressing a positive commandment, as it is written, “They will be brought to Bavel and there they will remain.” But Rabbi Zeira said, let me go and hear one last halacha from him before I leave. He found Rav Yehuda in the bathhouse, telling his servant, “Bring me soap, bring me a comb…” By this he was teaching that it is permitted to speak mundane words in the Holy Tongue in the bathhouse.

Rav Yehuda was the ultimate anti-Zionist. He held that even individual Jews are forbidden to go to Eretz Yisroel. Rabbi Zeira and the rest of the sages were anti-Zionist too, of course. They forbade a mass movement to take over Eretz Yisroel; however, they permitted individuals to go (Kesubos 110b).

Rav Yehuda wanted to communicate that his anti-Zionism was purely based on halacha, with no personal agenda. He was not against speaking Hebrew for a mundane purpose, and he even allowed speaking Hebrew in the bathroom. It was only aliyah to Eretz Yisroel that he forbade because that was how he understood the posuk.

This halacha that it’s permitted to speak Hebrew in the bathroom is brought down in Shulchan Aruch Orach Chaim 85:2. The Magen Avraham comments that it is a midas chassidus (extra measure of piety) to avoid it, and the Chasam Sofer theorizes that this is why the Jewish people stopped speaking Hebrew after the destruction of the First Temple: in the Babylonia exile, they were surrounded by idols and therefore piously avoided speaking the Holy Tongue. The Satmar Rebbe (Maamar Lashon Hakodesh 17) objects that they should have at least spoken it at home and in shul, as well as during the Second Temple era when there was no idolatry.

Another problem with the Chasam Sofer is that if it is pious to avoid it, why did Rav Yehuda do it? Wasn’t he a pious man? We must say that the source that it is pious to avoid it is the Sefer Chassidim, a work based on Kabbalah, and this Kabbalah was not yet revealed in Rav Yehuda’s time. If so, the Jews in Babylonian exile definitely didn’t know about this stringency, so why did they stop speaking Hebrew?

Shabbos 96b

תנו רבנן: מקושש זה צלפחד, וכן הוא אומר (במדבר טו) ויהיו בני ישראל במדבר וימצאו איש וגו׳ ולהלן הוא אומר (במדבר כז) אבינו מת במדבר, מה להלן צלפחד, אף כאן צלפחד, דברי רבי עקיבא. אמר לו רבי יהודה בן בתירא: עקיבא, בין כך ובין כך אתה עתיד ליתן את הדין. אם כדבריך, התורה כיסתו ואתה מגלה אותוִ ואם לאו ־ אתה מוציא לעז על אותו צדיק… אלא מהיכא הוה? ־ (במדבר יד) מויעפילו הוה.

The daughters of Tzelofchad told Moshe, “Our father died in the desert, and he was not one of the assembly who rebelled against Hashem – the assembly of Korach – but rather he died for his own sin.” What sin did Tzlofchad commit? Rabbi Akiva said that he was the one who gathered sticks on Shabbos.

Rabbi Yehuda ben Beseira protested, “Akiva, either way, you will be punished for your words. If you are correct, the Torah concealed it and you are revealing it. If not, you are slandering that tzaddik.”

“What then was his sin? He was one of the invaders who tried to enter Eretz Yisroel after the sin of the spies,” the Gemara concludes.

It seems that Rabbi Yehuda ben Beseira held that invading Eretz Yisroel against the command of Hashem (i.e. Zionism) is a lesser sin than violating Shabbos. Why?

Possibly, the answer is that there was a large group invading Eretz Yisroel, so each individual was influenced by the others and was less responsible for his actions. But there was only one violator of Shabbos. Today too, there are unfortunately many Orthodox Jews who are Zionists, so it’s easy for someone to feel that he too can be a religious Zionist. But Shabbos is considered a basic, so someone who is not shomer Shabbos is considered a bigger sinner.

Moed Katan 21b

אמר רבי מאיר: המוצא את חבירו אבל לאחר שנים עשר חדש, ומדבר עמו תנחומין, למה הוא דומה ־ לאדם שנשברה רגלו וחיתה. מצאו רופא ואמר לו: כלך אצלי, שאני שוברה וארפאנה, כדי שתדע שסממנין שלי יפין.

Rabbi Meir said: One who meets his friend after his 12 months of mourning are over, and comforts him, is like a doctor who meets someone whose leg had broken and is now healed, and says to him, “Come to me and I will break it again and then heal it up, so that you know that my medicines are better.”

After the Jewish people suffered in the Holocaust, the nations of the world were ready to treat them kindly. The U.S. and other countries would have taken in the refugees and allowed Jews to live and flourish without persecution. But just then, the Zionists brought the Jewish people into danger. They organized an army, fought wars and said, “What amazing and miraculous victories we accomplished!”

As Rabbi Michoel Ber Weissmandl wrote in 1948, “And now, Daas Torah and good sense would dictate that we should arouse the mercy of the victorious Allies, and ask of them something that the Torah permits, something that they can fulfill, namely: that each of the fifty-one victorious nations should grant refuge, each in its own land, to some of these unfortunate and poor survivors.

Daas Torah and good sense would tell us that, unfortunately, the Jewish people have lost this war even more than the accursed Germans, for the best and greatest part of the Jewish people has fallen. And just as it would not occur to any German to start a new war now, certainly after the loss of the six million, the best of the Jewish people, it is forbidden to launch a new war, to endanger the weak, tiny and homeless remainder of the Jewish people. Rather we must beseech the nations of the world to permit the remaining Jews to settle in their lands, some here and some there.

But this is not the position these Jewish leaders took. They cried out right away: “Only to Eretz Yisroel must all these refugees go, not to any other place in the world! Israel declares war on Britain! Israel declares war on the Arabs! Israel declares war on the whole world!”

…And if you ask: is there any way out now? The answer is yes! 1) We must completely relinquish any claim to a Jewish state. 2) We must accept the compromise [trusteeship] proposed by the United States. 3) We must ask Britain to take part in the government of Palestine. 4) Our representatives must meet with the Arabs face to face and reach an agreement, under the auspices of the United States. 5) We must ask the United Nations, and the U.S. and its neighbors especially, to quickly move all the Jews from the camps in Germany and from the rest of Europe to countries overseas and also to Palestine.

Unfortunately, today we see that the “medicines” of the “new doctor” are not so good, and they are still trying to “heal the patient” to this day. May Hashem have mercy.

Shabbos 111a

החושש בשיניו לא יגמע בהן את החומץ, למימרא דחומץ מעלי לשינים ־ והכתיב (משלי י) כחמץ לשינים וכעשן לעיניםִ לא קשיא… הא והא בחלא, הא ־ דאיכא מכה, הא ־ דליכא מכה. איכא מכה ־ מסי, ליכא מכה ־ מרפי.

If one’s teeth hurt, he may not sip vinegar through them [on Shabbos, because it heals them].

The Gemara asks: Is vinegar then good for the teeth? But Scripture (Mishlei 10:26) states, “A lazy man is to his employer like vinegar on the teeth and smoke in his eyes!”

The Gemara answers: It depends if he has a wound or not. If he has a wound, it heals, but if he has no wound, it weakens the teeth.

Zionism is the same way. For a believing Jew, whose Judaism is intact and unwounded, Zionism is a sin and a form of heresy. But when an unaffiliated Jew (outside the State of Israel) supports Zionism, he is usually not into the ideology, does not know the history or the Jewish sources on the subject, and does not participate in the state; he just cares about his Jewish brethren living there, and wants to help them. It merely shows that he has ahavas Yisroel, a value that may one day lead him to marry a Jew, give his children some Jewish education and eventually return to the fold.