Parshat Ekev
The Extraterritoriality of Shuls and Batei Medrash
Devarim 11;21, the end verse to what we call the second paragraph of Shema, says keeping mitzvot will give us long life on the Land Hashem promised. Kli Yakar opens his comment with a story from Berakhot 8a, where R. Yochanan was surprised to hear there were elderly Jews in Bavel, because our verse limits Hashem granting old age to us in Israel. When told they go to shul early and stay late, he accepted the explanation.
Kli Yakar wonders how that helps, since it is still not Israel, as the verse said. To explain, he takes us to Megilla 29a, where the Gemara expects batei kenesiyot u-batei medreshot, synagogues and study halls, of the diaspora to eventually be moved and established in Israel. He says it means they are already the Land of Israel for certain purposes, such as ours, to be a venue for life extension. If they’re going to be taken to Israel, their land must already be sanctified. Going to shul early and staying late after Maariv counts as if the person was there all day, living in Israel, and eligible for the blessing of long life.
The idea explains another quirk of the verse, the Torah’s saying Israel is the Land promised the Patriarchs to give to them, a promise to be fulfilled only at the resurrection of the dead—exactly when these venues will move to Israel. The promise to the Avot reminds us the shul or Beit Midrash will then be a piece of the Land of Israel.
[The idea caught my eye, I think, because it is not the first time I have seen an important Jewish thinker suggest there are elements of the Land of Israel we can experience even in exile. Perhaps total disconnection from the Land was too difficult for these greats, leading them to search for ways to maintain some sense of the Land in our current exile.]
Reasons to Fear the Convert and How to Overcome Them
Devarim 19;10 requires Jews to love converts, because we were foreigners/ strangers in Egypt. Chatam Sofer dislikes Rashi’s explanation, that our past as newcomers should sensitize us to their situation [I think he thinks it is too far in our past to have a real effect on our experience of them]. Instead, he argues the next verse clarifies the prohibition, despite its being a seemingly unrelated call to fear God and serve Him.
To explain, he turns to Kiddushin 70b, which says converts are hard on the Jewish people, and Tosafot gave contradictory reasons, either their lesser observance will hurt the community as a whole, or the opposite, some converts are so careful they put the rest of us to shame, leading God to punish us. The verse Chatam Sofer brought into the equation gives the solution to this second problem; if we focus better on our own observance, we will be the equal of those super-religious converts, and there will be no shaming or punishment.
Attaining Observance Can Take Time
It's the solution to the first kind of resentment I found more surprising. He says we should not take umbrage at converts’ insufficient observance, because we ourselves had to make our way back to observance after Egypt. With the advantage of our having the legacy and example of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Ya’akov, we yet fell fully under the sway of Egyptian beliefs and mores.
The convert came by his/her connection to idolatrous worship more excusably, so if s/he decided to join the Jewish people, we can all the more so expect him/her to eventually find the way to full belief and observance (as did the Jewish people, he means, an optimistic view of the history of Jewish observance).
If they’re better than us, we just need to be better. If they’re worse, well, we were worse, too, and we made it. So give them time, with love.
Two Misguided Reasons for Overconfidence
A chapter earlier, 9;4, Netziv sees two reasons for a thought of the Jewish people’s, too, although with a contrasting view of Jews’ connection to observance. Moshe Rabbenu warns us not to think Hashem brought us to the Land, and is giving it to us, because of our righteousness. Such thoughts might fuel overconfidence, the certainty we would never sin significantly, such as by worshipping a power other than God, God forbid.
Don’t be so sure, Netziv sees Moshe telling us in verse eight, where he reminds us we descended to idolatry while still camped at Sinai, where we had “seen” Hashem and received the Torah. It fits the reminder in Avot 2;4, Rabban Gamliel the son of Rebbe, not to believe in ourselves until the day we die. Excessive trust causes us not to be careful about the steps on the path to sin, and then we’ve sinned.
For the second error, God is so invested in our taking over Israel that He would never exile or destroy us, the rest of the verse reminds us Hashem spoke of wiping us out after the Golden Calf, where only Moshe’s dedicated forty days of prayer on our behalf averted the catastrophe.
For Netziv, Moshe worried about Jews’ being too sure of themselves, where for Chatam Sofer if Jews had the confidence to know they can do better, indeed had done better over time, they would welcome converts more wholeheartedly.
Leaving Kli Yakar on his own, with the view of shuls and batei Medrash as locations of some status as already part of Eretz Yisrael.
