by Rabbi Berel Wein

[For nearly two millennium], Jews were alien sojourners in Christian Europe, and even in Moslem Africa and Asia Minor. They were at best tolerated and exploited for their skills and talents, and at worst hounded, scapegoated, horribly abused and murdered at will.

Nevertheless, the Jew remained curious about his world and vital in his creative activities. The Exile allowed Jews to be cosmopolitan, worldly, relatively well-informed and educated -- while at the same time remaining aloof, isolated and tenaciously insular.

This paradox of being, of living in many different worlds at one time and yet of not being truly part of any of them, gave birth to the Jew of the Exile, the classic "luftmentsch" who eventually became the archetypal Eastern European Jew of literature and reality. The Jews adopted and adapted what was best in their surrounding society; poetry, philosophy and linguistics from the Arabs, a language and behavior patterns from the Germans, wine-making and architecture from the French, astronomy and scientific thought from the Arabs and the Italians, and statecraft and diplomacy from the Berbers. They took everything that the outside world showed them to be valuable, internalized it and Judaized it. If it could be made compatible with Torah values and mores, they incorporated it within the fabulously rich matrix of halacha and Jewish tradition.

The Jews became the most eclectic of all peoples because of their exile. The Jewish world, no matter how scattered geographically, was always small and well-connected at a time when the general world was yet diffuse and unrelated in its various parts. In short, the Exile made the Jew "modern" in the most positive sense of that word long before the general world emerged from the Medieval Era.

GREATEST ACHIEVEMENTS

One of the greatest paradoxes of Jewish history is that the great creativity, diversity and genius of Torah development and cultural achievement which marks the story of Israel has almost always been exile-authored and driven. This is no mere accident of place and geography. It is a reflection of the conditions of Jewish exile. The Jew in exile lived in a world that was not of his making.

But at the very same time, the Jew lived in an imaginary, spiritual, supernatural world that was purely and exclusively of his own making. In this inner Jewish world, where none of the mundane problems of running a government, operating an army, formulating economic and diplomatic policy, policing lawlessness, or guaranteeing the pursuit of happiness existed, there was time and room for unprecedented intellectual and spiritual expansion.

Not being allowed to be preoccupied by the ordinary necessities of societal life, since the alien general society surrounding them always limited Jewish participation in general life (this was true even in the Golden Age of Spain), the Jews were free to devote their talents and efforts to their internal world, the world of Torah and Jewish spirit.

The Jews naturally contributed greatly to the general society, but that program was seen as secondary to their intense devotion to the main agenda of building their own world in the image of God's Torah. The great Talmud Bavli was authored and edited in Babylonia, and far outshone its Palestinian counterpart. Maimonides and Rashi were products of Spain and France. The Tosafists and the great Talmudic commentators (Rishonim) were all citizens of the Exile. Even the great scholarly works written in the Land of Israel in the Medieval Era were essentially exile works, for the Jews were a small, persecuted and despised minority in their own land throughout that time and had almost no input into general life.

The intensity of Jewish life in the Exile, brought about by the combination of Jewish internal devotion and discriminatory non-Jewish exclusion, fostered a climate of fecundity and inspired originality and creativity in Jewish intellectual life. All disputes, humor, social strivings and pettiness, rabbinic and leadership competitiveness and other usual human societal behavior and foibles, were somehow centered about Torah life and study, halachic decisions and works of scholarship.

LOVE OF THE LAND

Jews in the Exile loved the Land of Israel with a devotion that was supreme. They took packets of earth from the Land of Israel into the grave with them. They drew fanciful maps of the country and instructed their children in their use. They painted abstract and imaginary portraits of the city of Jerusalem and hung them on their walls or placed them in the folios of their books. They knew where Rachel's Tomb stood, they visited in their minds the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and they always recited their prayers facing the spot of the Temple Mount.

They searched for esrogim (the ritual citron) from the Land of Israel for use on the holiday of Sukkot. They treasured visitors from the Holy Land and hungrily listened to every word of description regarding the Jewish homeland. They concluded the Yom Kippur services and the Passover Haggadah by exclaiming "Next year in Jerusalem." And even though, rationally speaking, the opportunity for fulfilling "Next year in Jerusalem" was minimal, the Jews meant it with a full heart when they said it.

Jews who somehow settled in the Land of Israel were automatically entitled to the approbation and moral and economic support of the Jews who lived in the Exile. This attitude was automatic and unquestioned. The great Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehudah Berlin dressed in his Sabbath garb to receive a gift of a bottle of wine made from grapes that were grown in the Land of Israel. The Exile implanted within the Jewish people a love for the Land of Israel that even the "great waters" of actual statehood, with its natural and unavoidable governmental shortcomings, in our time, cannot wash away or extinguish.

The love of the Land of Israel was such an integral part of the Jewish Exile that Zionism's initial success in mobilizing the Jewish masses to its banner is readily understandable. Jews in the Exile fulfilled the vow of King David, "If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand fail." The Jews never forgot Jerusalem. Their right hand never failed.

STRENGTH OF CONVICTION

Exile also nurtured and expanded the emotion of Jewish solidarity which was so much a hallmark of the Jewish Medieval Era. There were always more than enough Jewish internal arguments and squabbling to go around. Jews are a contentious, proud, opinionated and stubborn people. If Jews were not that way, there is no way they could have survived the long, taxing and depressing exile. Therefore, halachic disputations, public policy disagreements and wide differences in custom and outlook were constant companions of ordinary Jewish life in the medieval exile...

All of these disputes, and countless others as well, were conducted with passion, heat, intensity and industry. Yet the impression left upon an observer of the Jewish Middle Ages is one of overwhelming internal solidarity. Jews cared deeply for one another. They attempted always to take care of their own, to be compassionate and helpful to their less fortunate brethren, no matter where they were, and also in most cases, no matter who they were.

The Exile also forced Jews to truly examine their beliefs and world outlook. It is one thing to be a small minority faith when residing as a sovereign nation in one's own country. The insularity of one's own home and environment, even in today's "global village," allows confidence and even smugness in the rectitude of one's own beliefs and behavior patterns. Not so when one is stateless, part of a small minority and radically different religion, living in the midst of the larger, hostile and overwhelming general society. There is little room for flippant self-confidence or any hint of smugness under such conditions.

The Exile annealed the Jewish belief in the Divinity of their Torah in the fire of debate, conflicting ideas and values, and endless persecution. To remain Jewish in the Exile, Jews had to convince themselves of the basic truths of their beliefs and positions. This required an intensity of scholarship and a commitment to unrelenting and continuing self-analysis. These traits became important components of the Jewish psyche and makeup...

It was the Exile, with its challenges, tragedies and accomplishments, and vast diversity of climate, culture and conditions, that vindicated the statement attributed to Saadya Gaon that "our nation is a nation by virtue of the Torah alone." The Exile proved conclusively that it was only the spirit of Israel that held it together in the wearing climate of the dispersion.