The Talmud tells us that, during the Roman siege of Jerusalem (70 CE), Rabbi Yohanan Ben-Zakai managed to remove the sages and leaders of the Jewish people from the city and bring them to Yavneh. However, his actions could not prevent the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple, which ended Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel.

Evelyn Gordon and Hadassah Levy tell us: “The Torah was clearly intended for a sovereign people in its own land: numerous commandments, such as those related to the Temple service or agriculture, can only be carried out in the Land of Israel. Many others, from matters of trade to legal issues, are enforceable only in a sovereign state.”

Gordon and Levy continue: “As time passed, it became clear that the exile would be prolonged. The rabbis therefore began the process of converting Judaism into something capable of surviving outside its homeland. The Temple service was replaced by prayer. The festivals were reinterpreted. A fixed calendar was established. Torah study became the supreme value. And the importance of sovereignty, of being an independent nation, was downplayed: for the sake of Jewish survival, the message was that sovereignty was not essential as long as rabbinic leadership remained.” This process of conversion took shape by writing down the oral law, first in the Mishna and finally, after four centuries, in the Talmud. This ensured uniformity in the principles of halakha and the authority of the rabbis.

But with the establishment of the State of Israel, the sovereignty of the Jewish people over their land was restored, and halakha must now adapt to the new conditions. Just as Ben-Zakai and his successors transformed Judaism from a religion of sovereignty to a religion of exile, Judaism must now reverse the process and reconstitute itself as the religion of a sovereign nation. How should a Jewish country and army function? How should a Jewish state regulate marriage and divorce? What are the rules for acquiring citizenship? Can employees of public services, such as electricity, the army, the police, and hospitals, work on Shabbat? How should agriculture, education, and the legal system function? The answers are not obvious.

Halakha must now create new ways of interpreting the Torah in the State of Israel. Rabbi Eliezer Berkovits tells us: I believe we can say that halakha has the wisdom to be able to adapt, with intelligence and common sense, the written word of the Torah to the new circumstances of the Jewish people. This wisdom and its implementation cannot be rigidly restricted to any code. No written word can foresee in advance the countless situations and changes in circumstances that occur in the history of men and nations. But this change has not occurred. As Berkovits says, all the years of diaspora have made us lose the capacity to resolve situations as a nation. We still have the halakha of the shtetl, of exile, when we should already have the halakha of the State of Israel.

By Marcos Gojman.

Bibliography: Evelyn Gordon, Hadassah Levy, “Halacha’s Moment of Truth,” and Eliezer Berkovits, “Not in Heaven: The Nature and Function of Halakha.”