VISITING ISRAEL

QUESTION:

A couple saved for years to visit Israel for a month. But now they plan to use the money for the college expenses of their children. Have they the right to do so? Is it not a supreme, religious duty to go to Palestine? (Asked by Rabbi Allen S. Mailer, Culver City, California.)

ANSWER:

A PERSON nowadays may want to go to the land of Israel and consider his visit to be a moral obligation. In that case it is a matter for him to decide as to how important this is to him in comparison with other uses for his money. But the question here is a deeper one than a sense of group commitment or pride. It is a question of religious duty. Is it a religious duty to go to Palestine and does one violate any religious duty if one fails to do so?

This question of whether it is a religious obligation to settle in the Holy Land has been discussed since the Middle Ages and, interestingly enough, has become again from the Halachic point of view the subject of a rather heated discussion in our day. The Chassidim, especially the Satmar group, who consider themselves the most completely and uncompromisingly religious of all Jews, are also bitterly opposed to the modern state of Israel. It is therefore necessary for them (and for those who are like-minded) to come to terms with this religious question. Because of this deep concern on the part of these anti-modern-Israel Orthodox Jews a considerable literature has grown up on this subject. The most important is the collection by Moses Bloch in three volumes of a work called Dovev Sifse Yeshenim, in which he gathers all the opinions of the Orthodox rabbinate of the last hundred years against a modern Jewish state and the plans to establish it. The very first letter in the first volume is typical and representative. It is by the famous scholar Jacob of Lissa, addressed to the pioneer protagonist of religious Zionism, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalischer. Virtually all the Orthodox arguments on the anti-Zionist side of the question are marshalled here (as they are in the subsequent letters).

It is important in our attempt to solve this question of religious obligation to go through the law systematically. The basis of the law is the very last Mishnah in the tractate Ketuboth in which we are told that a husband can compel his wife to emigrate with him to the Holy Land. If she refuses he can divorce her without even giving her the money stipulated in her Kesubah. To which Rashi (in the Talmud, Ketuboth 110b) says this means a man may compel not only his wife, but his entire family to settle in the Holy Land.

However the Tosfos to this passage says that this law is not applicable today because it is dangerous to travel there (this was the eleventh century). The Tosfos further quotes Rabbi Chayim who gives a second reason why it is no longer a religious duty to settle there: namely, that there are so many important commandments which are applicable in the Holy Land and which a man may not be able to fulfill nowadays.

This negative point of view is contravened by many other authorities. Nachmanides counts settlement in the Holy Land as one of the Mitzvoh. Isserlein (14th century) in his Pesakim # 8 8, acknowledges the great dangers of settlement, but says a man should judge whether he can endure and fulfill the commandments; and if he can, he should settle there. The Mordecai (Mordecai ben Hillel) 14th century, quotes the Tosfos as to the danger of travel and settlement and says that the law therefore is that a husband cannot compel a wife to go with him there. Caro (Shulchan Aruch, Even Hoezer 75, 4 & 5) first states the law definitely that a husband can compel a wife to settle in the Holy Land with him, but adds, then, “Some say it is dangerous and a man has no right to bring himself or others into danger; therefore (if the journey is short) from Alexandria eastward, he may compel his wife to go with him; but if they live west of Alexandria, he may not.” Hayim Benvenisti (Turkey, 17th century) in his Keneses Hagdola to Bes Joseph, Even Hoezer 75, marshals all the arguments on either side and tends to agree with the above compromise opinion taken by Caro in the Shulchan Aruch.

There is an interesting discussion of the question from Prague at the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century. It is a responsum by Jonah Landsofer in his Mil S’daka, #26. The cir cumstances are interesting enough to deserve mention. A group of three men decided to settle in the Holy Land and take with them their young children of the ages of three and four. Many people raised the objection that they have no right to endanger the lives of little children on this perilous journey. Landsofer answers that the commandment to settle in the Holy Land is an eternal commandment. As for the danger, that may vary from time to time and place to place and must, of course, be considered when we discuss the question as to whether a man can compel his wife to go with him. But aside from the question of the rights of his wife, if there is not too much danger, it will be just as safe for the children as for the adults. A fair statement of the law is to be found in the balanced opinion arrived at in the Be’er Hetev, (Judah of Tiktin) to the passage. He says, “Since the question of whether or not it is a religious duty is a subject of disagreement among the great teachers, it is clear, then, that a husband cannot compel his wife to move with him to the Holy Land. Cf. also, Igros Moshe, Even Hoezer # 102 (end) where he says that it is a Mitzvah only for Palestinians to dwell in Israel, but there is no mandatory Mitzvah for others to live there.

Clearly the question of the religious duty to settle in the Holy Land can be considered a moot question in which, therefore, compulsion of husband against wife cannot be applied. For completeness’ sake it should be mentioned that there is a great deal of Halachic debate on the reverse of our question, namely, whether a person already settled in the Holy Land may emigrate in order to live in the diaspora. For a full discussion of this question see A Treasury of Responsa, page 167 ff., where there is an account of the responsum on this subject by Yom Tov Zahalon (1557- 1638), Rabbi of Safed.

Returning to the case discussed here, it is not even a question of settling in the Holy Land but a question merely of going there for a brief visit. In that regard there is not, as far as I know, any authoritative opinion at all to the effect that a brief visit is to be considered as a religious duty.

Now as to the children, if it were a question of the study of the Torah, let us say it was a choice between the parents’ going to Israel and the children studying in the Yeshiva, that question could possibly enter into the discussion. Isserlein cites the fact that in his day there was very little Talmudic study in Israel and that fact was used as an argument against settling there. But the secular education has no standing in the Jewish law (although under special circumstances it is permitted) and therefore college education, unlike Talmudic education, could not be weighed against settlement. Nowadays, of course, with the many Yeshivos there, there is a large Orthodox settlement from the Yeshivos in America, according to the recent Mizrachi official magazine. But these Yeshiva heads and Yeshiva students are confident that they can fulfill their religious duties all the better in Israel and hence follow the caution of Israel Isserlein.

But in the case mentioned, it is first of all not a question of settlement, but of a visit which is no par ticular Mitzvah; and secondly a question of secular education, which is of no concern in Jewish religious law. In this case, therefore, the parents can do as they wish.