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Parshat Be'halot'cha
By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron

בס"ד

לשכנו תדרשו

Cleaving to the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land

ויהי בנסוע הארון

 

At the end of the book of Shmot we discussed the various locations the ark and the Mishkan traveled through in the Land of Israel before the building of the Temple in Jerusalem. We also discussed the holy status of Jericho as being a preliminary holy city before Jerusalem and taking on a status similar to Mount Sinai, where the Torah was given on Shavuos. Here we would like to discuss the locations that took on some of the functions of Jerusalem after its destruction.

Our Sages taught that the Holy Presence traveled through ten locations after the Temple’s destruction before it rose to Heaven due to the sins of Israel. Our Sages continue by saying that the Sanhedrin in a parallel nature also traveled through ten locations before it ceased. Since the Holy Presence’s ten-stepped exile was almost entirely  within Jerusalem and then in the desert, therefore we will study its parallel, the Sanhedrin in its ten-stepped exile.

The first place outside of Jerusalem that the Sanhedrin reached was the city of Yavneh, as R. Yohanan ben Zakai requested of the Romans at the destruction: “give me Yavneh and its scholars”. It seems that the name Yavneh itself indicates the wish to re-build the Temple and the Sanhedrin’s original status therein, as Yavneh can be read “yibaneh” ( with change of vowels), meaning ‘it (the Temple) will be rebuilt’. Indeed, it is in this location that R. Yohanan ben Zakai instituted a number of laws that commemorate the Temple even in it destruction. For example, the Rabbinic obligation to take the four species on Sukkot for the full seven-day period of Sukkot outside the Temple,  and not only the first day which is Biblically mandated in all locations, was one of the enactments instituted in the era of Yavneh. R. Yohanan ben Zakai wished that this enactment would serve as a reminder of the Temple, where these four species were taken the full seven days on a Biblical level, as its says “and you shall rejoice (by taking the four species) before HaShem your God (before His Presence in the Temple) seven days.”

On the other hand, it seems that the methodology of Torah study in Yavneh was different than Jerusalem. One example of this was in the way the scholars sat in Jerusalem versus the way they sat in Yavneh. In Jerusalem the scholars sat together in a half-circle, which seems to emphasize the united and highly inter-connected relationship between the scholars and their method of study. However, in Yavneh, the academy of study was called “Kerem (‘vineyard’) BeYavneh”, for there the scholars studied row-by-row, similar to the structure of a ‘vineyard’. This structure seems to reflect a methodology that emphasizes the individual to a greater extent than the Temple’s structure. It may be that R. Yohanan ben Zakai wished to strengthen the individual greatness of each scholar, hoping that through this method  the spiritual vigor of Israel would be renewed and bring the rebuilding of the Temple.

It seems that this shift of emphasis can be traced to the lack of the Holy Presence in Yavneh in comparison to Jerusalem. When this Presence is dominant the individual human level is of lesser degree, since this Presence is a dominant factor in the Divine inspiration of the collective whole of the Sanhedrin. However, when this Presence is lessened the importance attached to the human individual’s effort and study is greatened. In a similar way we may say in comparing the Torah of the Diaspora versus the Torah of the Land of the Holy Presence. In the inspiration of this Presence scholars of the Land of Israel are much more inter-connected in their study, as our Sages say “that scholars of the Land of Israel  are pleasant to each other in halachic discourse (versus scholars of the Diaspora who ‘batter’ each other in such discourse)”.

As we have shown many times, Hebron evokes the Land of Israel in general. Indeed, this is the message of Hebron, the City of Unity (hibur), evoking the Land of Unity at large, whose scholars are united in Divine inspiration before the One God.

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Real Stories from the Holy Land #175

“I asked HaShem for more honorable and better-paying work, along with the ability to study Torah in a kollel alongside work.  Soon after a friend of mine suggested I try for a job at the City Council.. It ‘turns out’ that I had already received a position at this same job a while ago, but in the end, I was detained from this position. However, now I was received easily into this position, which fits exactly to just what I wanted, and now we are in the process of negotiating the specifics in the working conditions...” (Y.A)

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