Thesis: The naturalistic concept of Divine Presence accounts for territoriality in Judaism.

Author: Jeff Pfeiffer

Date: 30 December 2007

Key Words: Judaism, territoriality, Divine Presence, Palestine, naturalism, sacred space, profane space, traditional societies

Israel’s Fight for the Land

Introduction

Throughout history more men have died in the seemingly endless war over the land of Palestine than over any other country in the world. The headlines of international news overflow with the constant battling in the Middle East that seems to be perpetuated by an intrinsic quality of this ancient land. The Land has been given the status of sacred or holy, a place for those seeking purity and restoration, knowledge and understanding, control and power.

There is no religion with a historical consciousness as tied to a piece of land as is that of Judaism. For thousands of years the Jews and their forefathers have fought over this land in the Middle East that is no larger than New Jersey. The Jewish battle for ownership and presence in Palestine, present day Israel, shows the unbreakable connection between their God and the Promised Land. The Jewish passion to reside in and control Palestine is intricately embedded and is inseparable from their religion and identity because it connects them to Yahweh, God of the Jews. This deeply rooted religious connection to the precise geographical location of Israel demonstrates a naturalism which implies that God’s earthly presence is manifested in a particular place. Experiencing the nature of God in this way is the root of the Jewish struggle for the land of Palestine. The naturalistic concept of Divine Presence in Judaism has a special focus on the city of Jerusalem, and then again central to Mount Zion and the Holy Temple. This Jewish concept is held by their historical ancestry and Holy Scriptures that involve the choice of God to be present in a particular way. The naturalistic concept of Divine Presence accounts for territoriality in Judaism.

For the sake of clarity I will specify the definitions of certain key terms used in this essay. Naturalistic concept will denote the developed perceptions of something as it is directly related to place. It is necessary to note that this definition is in contrast to other definitions that may be associated with the term, and do not apply in this essay. An example of such non-applicable definitions would be naturalistic concept as “pertaining to naturalists or natural History” (dictionary.com). Divine Presence refers to the manifestation of God on Earth. The term territoriality is defined here as a pattern “consisting of the tendency to defend a particular domain or sphere of influence and interest” (dictionary.com). As demonstrated above, the land of present day Israel will be referred to in this paper by several nominal terms or phrases such as: Palestine, Canaan, Holy Land, and the Promise Land. There will also be discussion of sacred place or land as opposed to profane space. Sacred land designates a geographical area that gives way to divine influence, whereas profane space refers to geography devoid of spiritual significance. Sacred land will also be referred to as the center, or naval, of the world being that it signifies, in religious context, the place where the divine creator poured out life and order into nothingness and chaos.

Jewish History of Experiencing God

The Jewish Scriptures claim that God chose to be present on Earth in a particular place. Jewish tradition claims the divine choice fell upon Canaan as the place for His Shekhinah or Presence on earth. Shekhinah is the English spelling of a Hebrew word that means the dwelling, or settling, of God. The Shekhinah is a “Talmudic concept representing God's dwelling and immanence in the created world” (Jewish Library). This residence on earth transforms the region from a profane space into a sacred space. It is important to emphasize that in Jewish theology the land is sacred as a result of the Lord’s will and not the will of the Jewish ancestors. The Jews believe the Lord gave them the Holy Land making them the chosen people. Therefore, in the Jewish mind their claim to the land is by Divine appointment. This claim, justifies in their eyes, the seizing of the Land from any current occupiers. The Jewish experience of Shekhinah through spatial means can be tracked all the way back to Abraham, the patriarch of Judaism.

Pre-Mosaic History

God appeared to Abraham while he was still in Mesopotamia and told him to leave his country and his people, “and go to the land I will show you [Canaan]” (Genesis 12:1). The first interaction between Yahweh and Abraham demonstrates God’s emphasis on land. So Abraham left the land of the Chaldeans and settled in the land of Canaan, thus commencing the endless journey of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. It was there, in the Holy Land, that God made his covenant with Abraham giving ownership to him and his descendants. Yahweh continued to reveal his desire to express Himself through spatial mediation to the Hebrew leaders: “The land I gave to Abraham and Isaac I also give this to your descendants after you” (Genesis 35:12).

Time of Moses

According to Jewish tradition, when Moses was eighty years old God appeared to him in the flames of a burning bush. The Lord’s Shekhinah transformed that place into sacred space: “‘Do not come any closer,’ God said. ‘Take off your sandals, for the place where you are standing is holy ground’” (Exodus 3:5). As witnessed here, in the Jewish tradition it is through a natural object that the supernatural communicates with mankind. The importance of the Land is continuously reiterated by God throughout their history. As the Hebrews sojourned from Egypt to Canaan, they carried the Tablets of the Law given by Moses in an ark. Also considered to be in the Ark was the actual presence of God, his Shekhinah. The use and perception of the Ark as transporting God from place to place illustrates perfectly the naturalistic concept of Divine Presence in Judaism. Once Moses’ generation passed away scriptures tell of how Yahweh led the Hebrews in a conquest of the entire Canaan territory to make a place for his permanent dwelling:

“But you will cross the Jordan and settle in the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and he will give you rest from all your enemies around you so that you will live in safety. Then to the place the Lord your God will choose as a dwelling for his Name…” (Deuteronomy 12:10-11).

These conquests represent the beginning of Judaism’s territorial nature.

Post-Mosaic History

Many years passed before the birth of David, who was the greatest king of Israel, chosen by God to establish the land as the Lord’s permanent dwelling place on Earth. It was David who first established the city of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. This is an important story in 2 Samuel 6, because it testifies to the importance of a specific place in the Jewish experience of Yahweh. It begins with David ordering the Ark to be brought into the city of Jerusalem. At this time the City of Jerusalem is identified only with David’s conquests and is not part of the kingdom yet. Along the way, the oxen carrying the Ark stumbled and Uzzah, who had been the keeper of the Ark since it was brought back from the Philistines, reached out his arm to steady it. Uzzah was immediately struck down by Yahweh. Six verses later, it is recorded that David brought the Ark of the Lord into the City of Jerusalem and danced before it. Bruce Warshal, in his article “Israel’s Stake in the Land,” claims that the Uzzah incident carries much significance in Jewish theology (Warshal, 417). Uzzah merely touched the Ark and was killed. Yet David removed it and danced before it. Afterward, David explains the situation to Michal, Saul’s daughter: “It was before the Lord, who chose me rather than your father or anyone from his house when he appointed me ruler over the Lord’s people Israel…” (2 Samuel 6:21). Through this story we see that only the divinely appointed can touch the Ark. Warshal explains that the story supports the notion that God not only has a chosen place but a chosen people:

God, represented by the ark, chooses King David and chooses the City of Jerusalem. In no certain terms, we have an example of the divine right of kings. More important, we also have a chosen city where the ark was deposited and where the Temple was built. (Warshal, 417)

However, it was David’s son, Solomon, who built the Temple in which God would dwell within. First Kings 8, gives witness to this at the inaugural ceremony of the Temple when the Ark of the Lord’s Covenant was brought into the Holy Place:

When the priests withdrew from the Holy Place, the cloud filled the Temple of the Lord. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled His temple.

Then Solomon said, “The Lord has said that he would dwell in a dark cloud; I have indeed built a magnificent temple for you, a place for you to dwell forever.” (2 Kings)

A few years after the Temple was finished and dedicated, Solomon disobeyed the Lord’s decrees and worshipped other gods. So, in Jewish tradition, God split the nation into two kingdoms, the northern kingdom (Israel) and the southern kingdom (Judah). Much time passed and the Israelites continued to disobey Yahweh’s commandments. As a result of this disobedience, Jewish scripture states that the Lord raised up mighty enemies to remove them from the Holy Land. Over the course of the period, the northern kingdom was dispersed leaving the two tribes of the southern kingdom. The Babylonian exile began in the sixth century BCE and marked the beginning of the continuing Jewish struggle to reclaim their Promise Land.

Territoriality in Judaism is spurred from a desire to defend its connection of faith and identity to the land. This connection was established through their extensive historical journey expressed above and is still present today. One can even go as far as to say that Jewish personal identity, which is unquestionably religiously based, is given to them by Yahweh through the Holy Land. In other words, to separate the Jewish mind from the concept of sacred land would cause a loss of religious and cultural identity. Therefore, Jewish understanding of themselves is centered in and around the Holy Land.

Nature of traditional societies and Judaism

Traditional Societies is a phrase used to describe the culture of indigenous people specifically in the work of Mircea Eliade, one of the greatest authorities on myth, symbol, and ritual. Traditional, or indigenous, societies tend to distinguish their inhabited territories as sacred. They experience space as having different qualitative values, and not as being of equal uniformity. Space is only made sacred by divine power or the ‘wholly other’ as Rudolph Otto refers to it in his book, Ideas of the Holy. They consider the ‘wholly other’ to be of a higher quality than that of the natural world, because by its power the natural world was forged. The world is considered by them to be a creation, and therefore nothing it contains can be its creator. For them, the creative power must transcend the natural world because it existed before the world and, in fact, created the world. That is to say, the essence of the wholly other is thought to be more real than that of nature. It is totally different, and unlike anything human or cosmic. When the wholly other manifests its presence in a certain place, that place is thought to be transformed. The manifestation of the sacred can be referred to as a hierophany, where “something sacred shows itself to us” (Eliade). In traditional societies, it is thought that only by the divine power of the ‘wholly other’ can profane space be transformed into sacred space. Belden Lane addresses this approach to understanding traditional societies in his book, Landscapes of the Sacred:

The ontological approach, exemplified by historians of religion like Mircea Eliade, began with field research among indigenous peoples, asking how place and time were understood in the earliest mythic tales of tribal wisdom. From this perspective, a sacred place is radically set apart from everything profane; it is a site recognized as manifesting its own inherent, chthonic [of the earth] power and numinosity. It is a place of hierophany, where supernatural forces have invaded the ordinary. (Lane, 43)

The revelation of space as being either sacred or profane is necessary to begin to understand the culture and religion of a traditional society.

Understanding World through Sacred Space

According to Eliade, an acknowledgement of sacred space causes a culture to be religious. Thus, the religious man lives in a world of heterogeneous space that is expressed in terms of sacred and profane. According to Eliade the religious man “experiences interruptions, breaks in [space], some parts of space are qualitatively different” (Eliade, 20). This sacred quality offers a connection to the ‘wholly other,’ or ultimate reality. Without perceiving the natural world as possessing different levels of significance, religious man has no point of reference for discerning his surroundings. The sacred represents the power that breaks through the barrier of confusion for these archaic societies. This gives the religious man a point of contact with something of worldly transcendence allowing him to live in more real terms. As stated by Mircia Eliade:

Revelation of sacred space makes it possible to obtain a fixed point and hence to acquire orientation in the chaos of homogeneity, to ‘found the world’ and live in a real sense. The profane existence, on the contrary, maintains the homogeneity and hence the relativity of space. No true orientation is now possible, for the fixed point no longer enjoys a unique ontological status; it appears and disappears in accordance with the needs of the day. Properly speaking, there is no longer any world, there are only fragments of a shattered universe, an amorphous mass… (Eliade, 23)

In other words, a people’s experience of sacred space in a sense ‘creates’ the world in which they live to be birthed in the sense of giving it formation and structure, a world that can be better understood. Without being in contact with the sacred (profane existence) traditional societies are outside of their cosmos and are unable to recognize or distinguish their surroundings. Sacred space is thought to be the meeting of two worlds–natural and sacred. Here the two worlds are at odds with one another, but at the same time the paradoxical space also allows the two worlds to commune. It is much like the intersection of a Venn Diagram, where one circle represents the natural world and the other represents the ‘real’ or sacred world. According to Eliade, “Every sacred space implies a hierophany, an interruption of the sacred that results in detaching a territory from the surrounding cosmic milieu and making it qualitatively different” (Eliade, 26).

Constituting Civilization Around Sacred Space

The physical location of a hierophany is solely a result of the ‘wholly other’s’ choice. It is only natural for mankind to want to be as close to the sacred place as possible in an effort to be closer to the deity. Sacred place thus serves as a point of orientation or center, an axis on which the world spins. For traditional societies this point of reference is often thought of as the Center of the World. In fact, it is not uncommon for traditional societies to consider the Center of the World as the place creation began—the Earth’s naval. In other words sacred place is where the divine created the cosmos by pouring out its power into chaos. When in contact with the sacred through place, cultures can understand the world in which they live by using the sacred place as a reference point. Again Eliade addresses this longing for inhabiting sanctified territory:

Religious man’s desire to live in the sacred is in fact equivalent to his desire to take up his abode in objective reality, not to let himself be paralyzed by the never- ceasing relativity of purely subjective experiences, to live in a real and effective world, and not in an illusion. This behavior is documented on every plane of religious man’s existence, but it is particularly evident in his desire to move about only in a sanctified world, that is, sacred space. (Eliade, 29)

It is a congruent custom among traditional societies to claim sacred place as their own, in order to ensure, that they may live closest to the gods and to heaven. Once a society claims the country, which lies at the midpoint of the world, they tend to continue to specify the physical location to smaller geographical areas, such as a city and then again to a sanctuary or temple. At each successively narrower location, the place is considered to be more saturated with the sacred. Hence, it is the sanctified temple that is seen as the holiest of sacred places. This is a result of the consideration that the temple lies on the very spot that the divine entered into the profane world and “spread out to the four horizons” (Eliade, 64). The temple is given a new valorization as the house of the gods, giving connection to the gods at the most specific place possible. It is inside the temple that the sacred is most potent and accessible. In fact, the temple is so pure that from this location the sacred continually re-sanctifies the world, because it represents and contains the world: “…[I]t is by the virtue of the temple that the world is resantified in every part. However impure it may have become, the world is continually purified by the sanctity of sanctuaries” (Eliade, 59). This custom of world sanctification and re-sanctification by way of the temple is possible because that the sanctuary is considered to be a celestial model. This means that the temple represents, for lack of a better phrase, ‘heaven on earth’. It is an exact recreation of the transcendent world. The architectural plan of the temple is thought to be work of the gods, and therefore is the closest thing to heaven. The temple serves as a representation of how the rest of the world should be constructed: “The transcendent models of temples enjoy a spiritual, incorruptible celestial existence. Through the grace of the gods, man attains to the dazzling vision of these models, which he then attempts to reproduce on earth” (Eliade, 59). The desire to imitate the celestial model and to exist near it expresses traditional man’s longing to exist only in a pure and sanctified world. This desire is also considered to be the root of hostility and territoriality found in traditional societies. Being that once they have taken up their abode in ‘objective reality’ they are very unwilling to give it up.

Judaism is a Traditional Society

The Jewish culture and religion is that of a traditional society. The Hebraic people understand space as possessing various qualitative values and not as being homogeneous. No space on earth being more sacred and relevant to them than the land of Palestine. In following Jewish tradition, this is the geographical place where Yahweh chose to break the plane between the natural world and His own world—the sacred world. It is at this overlapping of worlds that, in the Jewish mind, creation first began, and in effect Palestine became the Center/Naval of the World as it is called in the Book of Jubilees 8. This place of origin is thought to be the location where Yahweh created the cosmos out of chaos, and birthed life out of nothingness:

Hebrew tradition is still more explicit: ‘The Holy One created the world like an embryo. As the embryo grows from the navel, so God began to create the world by the navel and from there it spread out in all directions.’ And since the ‘navel of the earth,’ the Center of the World, is the Holy Land, the Yoma affirms that ‘the world was created beginning with Zion.’ (Eliade, 44)

Because Yahweh is the Jewish creator, he is considered by them to be qualitatively distinct from this world. In respect to traditional societies, Yahweh represents Otto’s notion of the ‘wholly other.’ Their acknowledgement of sacred space causes it, as it does for all who acknowledge it, to be religious. The concept of sacred space has been present since the birth of Hebraic religiosity during the time of Abraham and in fact it is part of Judaism’s very foundation.

Jerusalem and the Temple

The tradition in archaic societies of focusing sacred place into more specific locations is prevailing in Judaism. The broadest Jewish concept of the sacred extends to include the ancient land of Canaan. The precise geographical boundaries of this land can be found in the Book of Genesis and Joshua. Judaism then focuses the Sacred more precisely to the Holy City of Jerusalem, then even more precisely to the Temple on Mount Zion, which is the heart and soul of the Holy Land. The Jews even applied this concept of specification to the inner chambers of the Temple as it does represent a celestial model of the universe for Jewish believers. The Temple consisted of five courts and each successive court grew more selective as it was closer to the center and hence became more sacred. The focusing of Yahweh’s manifested presence to an exact location culminated at the inner-most sanctum of the Temple—the Holy of Holies. The Jews believed this room to be so saturated with Yahweh’s presence that only the High Priest could enter once a year without his heart stopping. Expert Roetzel comments, “It was from this epicenter of sanctity, the Jew believed, that the entire cosmos received its shape” (Roetzel, 80). In Jewish legend it was on Mount Zion that Yahweh stood when creating the world, and in so doing Mount Zion was made the Center/Navel of the World providing the place for interaction between the divine and humans. From this ‘holy nucleus’ the surrounding land was sanctified and the world created. Eliade asserts, “This multiplicity of centers and this reiteration of the image of the world on smaller and smaller scales constitutes one of the specific characteristics of traditional societies” (Eliade, 43). This is to say that any space not somehow related to the Temple Mount is viewed by the Jews as profane.

Deriving Identity from the Land

The Jews not only believe that Yahweh chose a specific place in which to sanctify the world, but a specific people to inhabit that place. In other words, Yahweh wanted a chosen people for the chosen land. These chosen people being those that dwell in the sacred land and in the very midst of the Sacred. They are those thought to live in the realest of terms, and to be made holy through their presence in the land. The Jewish people accept this anointing. They believe themselves to be the only ones with this anointing; they are God’s elite. Their worldly understanding and their cultural identity are derived from their inhabitation of the Holy Land. This revelation of sacred place by the Jewish people has allotted them a point of reference to distinguish themselves from the rest of the world.

Of course, this statement draws much opposition. Although no one argues that land is historically significant to the Jews, many would argue that the identity of Judaism is centered on the Torah and on obedience to it, not on a geographical location. In so doing they deny that Judaism remains a traditional society. Jews have been living out of the Promise Land for thousands of years and have not forsaken or lost their Jewish identity in the Diaspora. Reform Judaism claims that the Jewish faith has evolved from its ethnocentric beginnings of a land based traditional society, and is now a highly developed modern religion that no longer limits their God to a specified location. They believe God is present and accessible anywhere. To find evidence in support of this opposition we need not look too far. European Jews in the pre-World War II era flourished economically while never losing touch with their religion or cultural identity. American Jews also serve as proof that Judaism is not tied to the land. In fact, New York actually has a larger Jewish population than Israel! The fact that Jews have not only survived in the Diaspora but thrived proves that the Jewish understanding of themselves as Jews is not based on their geographical location.

However, even in the Diaspora Jewish identity is still based on and is not separate from the Land. The Land is so infused with the concept of Yahweh, the undeniable source of their identity, that it is impossible to distinguish between the two in Jewish Scripture. Even for a Jew in the Diaspora or a Reformed Jew it is impossible to completely extract the idea of land from Judaism: “Judaism developed a special relationship, not only to the entire land of Israel, but to the city of Jerusalem in particular. The Jewish religion is still tied, almost by an umbilical cord, to that Holy City” (Warshal, 418). Although, the admission to the idea of Jewish identity being derived from the Land of Israel is negated in Reformed Judaism, the bond with Israel and Jerusalem is still very present. Everyday, even Reform Jews recite this prayer: “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: may they prosper that love thee. Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.” Reformed or not, their tie to the Land and to the Holy City permeates all Jewish culture. Bruce Warshal discusses this unbreakable connection between identity and land in Judaism in his article, “Israel’s Stake in the Land”:

To separate the land of Israel and the City of Jerusalem from Judaism would be as impossible as to separate the life of Jesus or the crucifixion and resurrection from Christianity. Both represent the core of their respective religious systems. (Warshal, 419)

The fact is, one cannot deny the Jewish scriptures explicitly demonstrate throughout its context that without at least the pervading thought of the Promise Land, Judaism would be lost in the profane world of homogeneous space. They cannot understand God apart from place; hence they lose their point of reference to which they understand themselves. Without it they would be consumed in the confusion and chaos of an unthinkable cultural identity crisis. A Psalmist cries out in the 137^th Psalm as he tries to cope with his identity in Babylonian captivity:

By the rivers of Babylon we sat and

wept

when we remember Zion.

There on the poplars

we hung our harps,

for there our captors asked us for songs,

our tormentors demanded songs of joy;

they said, “Sing us one of the songs of Zion!”

How can we sing the songs of the Lord

While in a foreign land?

If I forget you, O Jerusalem,

May my right hand forget its skill.

May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth

If I do not remember you,

If I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.

In exegesis of this Psalm, which is a landmark in Jewish theology, it is evident that the place of Jerusalem is what gives the Jewish people their identity and purpose. If Jerusalem is taken away, both physically and mentally, their identity and purpose will also be lost. An interesting aspect about this Psalm is that the author seems to intimately relate the Holy City to Yahweh—“[T]hey said, ‘sing us one of the songs of Zion!’ How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign land.” The Jewish psalmist refers to the songs of Zion requested by the Babylonian captors as the songs of the Lord making the terms interchangeable in the psalmist’s thought. Another curious aspect that is important to point out is the usage of the term Jerusalem. In this psalm the city is personified and even deified as the object of the author’s prayer giving it the quintessential value of Yahweh: “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill.” The latter part of this verse equates a man’s identity to his skill. One may conclude that the Holy City of Jerusalem is not separate from the presence of Yahweh. It is not possible to conclude that the psalmist has deified the place apart from Yahweh seeing that Judaism is a monotheistic religion. The Jewish psyche is incapable of distinguishing between sacred land and Yahweh. All of Judaism’s interaction with Yahweh throughout history and scripture has been meditated through the notion of land. However, Yahweh is not mediated through just any land, but only through the chosen ancient land of Canaan. Therefore, Jewish territoriality over the land of Israel is spurred from their desire to be in the presence of their God, to possess a point of reference, and to live in the realest of terms.

Encountering God in Judaism

Jewish tradition says the Jews must be in Canaan/Palestine to be in the presence of God. These are the covenantal terms specified by Yahweh throughout the Hebrew Bible. It is obvious from these scriptures that Yahweh’s plan is to gather the Jewish people in the land of Canaan so that He may dwell among them for all time. The divine plan is very exclusive in Jewish belief, not only to the Jews, but to their inhabitation of the specified land. It is not farfetched to conclude from their holy scriptures that the Jewish communication with Yahweh is possible only through the spatial mediation of the Holy Land. This is as much as to say that their very status as God’s chosen people is connected to a particular place. Yahweh even makes this correlation himself, when addressing Ezekiel: “Say to the people of the land: ‘This is what the sovereign Lord says…” (Ezekel 12:19).

A further look into the Book of Deuteronomy reveals that the Jewish concept of the Divine Shekhinah or Presence as being naturalistic is a result of the divine will, making it a theological as well as a cultural pillar in Judaism. The book of Deuteronomy is one of the first five books in the Hebrew Bible, the most sacred part of the Hebrew canon, giving it validity to all realms of Judaism. The twelfth chapter displays Yahweh’s desire to interact with his people through spatial means. He has made this clear by allotting a single place of worship for His chosen people. The first verse of the chapter depicts well the relationship between Yahweh’s blessing and the land. “These are the decrees and laws you must be careful to follow in the land that the Lord, the God of your fathers, has given you to possess—as long as you live in the land” (12:1). The author, who is traditionally thought to be Moses, the Law giving patriarch, bestows the decree of the Lord to the Hebrews. This decree gives the Lord’s consent to the forceful taking of the land of Canaan. The notion of the Jews having a ‘manifest destiny’ in regard to this Holy Land is still very present in the Jewish struggle for the Land today. The author continues his emphasis on Jewish communication with Yahweh in spatial terms by revealing the fact that there is only one place of worship. There is only one place to give sacrifice and only one place to be in the Presence of God:

But you are to seek the place the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes to put his Name there for his dwelling. To that place you must go; there to bring your burnt offerings and sacrifices, your tithes and special gifts, what you have vowed to give and you freewill offerings, and the firstborn of your herds and flocks. There, in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your families shall eat and shall rejoice in everything you have put your hand to, because the Lord your God has blessed you. (12:4-7)

The author reiterates throughout the chapter this concept of sacred place as the only place for encountering God. He even warns the people in verses 13 and 14 to be careful not to give offerings at a place of their choosing, but to observe his words carefully by offering them only at the place of the Lord’s choosing.

These warnings were deemed so important that they were delivered long before the Hebraic people ever entered the Promise Land: “…since you have not yet reached the resting place and the inheritance the Lord your God is giving you. But you will cross the Jordan and settle in the land the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance…” (12:9-10). Throughout the book, the connection of Shekhinah to a designated place is made repeatedly in order to form the unbreakable bonds between the people, Land, and Yahweh: “Instead, you are to eat them in the presence of the Lord your God at the place the Lord your God will choose…” (12:18); “But take your consecrated things and whatever you have vowed to give, and go to the place the Lord will choose” (12:26). The nature of God in Judaism is revealed through sacred place as a result of the Divine’s will. The relationship between the Hebrews and the Land given here, and many other places, serves as undeniable proof that the Lord has chosen to communicate with his people in spatial terms.

Jewish Disconnect from God’s Presence outside of Land

In fact, in close study of Hebrew scripture, Yahweh is only considered to be with His people when they are in the Land. The blessing of the Land and the opportunity to dwell in the presence of God is directly conditioned upon the obedience of the Jewish people. According to the terms of the Covenant, as long as the people obeyed the Lord they would prosper in the Land and would be protected. Hence, every time the people strayed from the ways of the Lord, God would raise up an enemy to take control of the Land and oppress the people. The first removal of the Jews came as a result of their reluctance to fulfill their half of the Lord’s covenant. The scriptures show that God punishes them for their sins by casting them out of His Land. The prophet Jeremiah, the ‘weeping prophet’, was chosen to deliver the Lord’s command. The command ordered the Jews to submit to Babylonian captivity and exile. Jeremiah gave reason for the exile of the Jews from the Holy Land in Jeremiah 9, he writes:

The Lord said, ‘It is because they have forsaken my law, which I set before them; they have not obeyed me or followed my law. Instead, they have followed the stubbornness of their hearts; they have followed the Baals, as their fathers taught them.’ Therefore, this is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, say: ‘See, I will make this people eat bitter food and drink poisoned water. I will scatter them among nations that neither they nor their fathers have known, and I will pursue them with the sword until I have destroyed them.’ (Jeremiah 9:13-16)

Although it is obvious the Babylonian exile was the consequence of Israel’s sin, the belief that God is not with them in the Diaspora is not so universally shared within all Jewish theology. In fact, the exile could be considered the beginning of the next step in the development of Judaism by separating Yahweh’s Shekhinah from the land. “According to a Rabbinic tradition, the Shekhinah shares in the exiles of the Jewish people” (Jewish Library). Many Jews at the time had doubts that they could worship God outside of the Land, but Jeremiah reassures the Babylonian exiles they are not alone. In his famous letter found in chapter 29 of his book, he writes:

This is what the Lord Almighty, the God of Israel, says to all those I carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon… ‘Also seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the Lord for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper’… ‘Therefore, hear the word of the Lord, all you exiles whom I have sent away from Jerusalem to Babylon.’ (Jeremiah 29:4,7,20)

Jeremiah’s letter is a cornerstone in Jewish theology and reveals the evolution of Jewish normative continuity is no longer dependent on land. As shown in this letter, the prayers of the exiled Jews are still heard by the Lord and are considered effective. Not only does Jeremiah claim that the exiles can effectively pray, but that they can ‘hear the word of the Lord’! Thus, Jeremiah is implying that their absence from the land does not translate to an absence from the Lord’s Shekhinah. In the next chapter, Yahweh clarifies this confusion himself, “I am with you and will save you…Though I completely destroyed all the nations among which I scattered you, I will not completely destroy you” (Jeremiah 30:11). Ezekiel’s vision in chapter 10 of his book is of the ‘glory of the Lord’ or the Shekhinah leaving the Temple. Ezekiel’s vision is another landmark in Jewish theology and the separation of Lord from land. The departure of God’s glory from the Temple is the consequence for Israel’s sin, but also carries theological implications. The Glory’s departure is very important in Jewish Reform theology to demonstrate the notion that Shekhinah is no longer limited to sacred place.

However, the Jewish scriptures do not imply that God is wholly with them in exile. This is to say that even though God may hear and answer their prayers as well as speak to them, He is not directly and completely with them. There is still an aspect of the Shekhinah that is only accessible through the inhabitation of the Holy Land. This aspect of the Almighty is not available to them outside of the land. The removal and restriction from the land was an action of God meant to punish Israel for its sin by not allowing them complete access to Himself. As the Lord says in Jeremiah, “I gave faithless Israel her certificate of divorce and sent her away because of all her adulteries” (Jeremiah 3:8). This verse compares the relationship of the Jews and God to a marriage, the most intimate of all relationships. To end a marriage in divorce is to break that unparalleled bond of intimacy between a man and a woman. That is what Jeremiah is getting at in this verse. God will no longer give Himself wholly to the Jews as a husband gives himself to his wife. To do that He must send them away from His direct presence to effectively break the intimacy He shared with them. The author of 2 Kings speaks of God’s exile as an act of divine separation between the Jews and God in a more literal fashion:

So the Lord was very angry with Israel and removed them from his presence [Shekhinah]. Only the tribe of Judah was left, and even Judah did not keep the commands of the Lord their God. They followed the practices Israel had introduced. Therefore the Lord rejected all the people of Israel; he afflicted them and gave them into the hands of plunders, until he thrust them from his presence. (2 Kings 17:18-20)

As this passage clearly indicates, God removed the people of Israel from the land in order to remove them from his presence. This implies that God’s earthly presence dwells only in the Land.

Jewish hopes for the Land in Exile

It is important to note, as well, that Jewish attachment to the land of Palestine did not cease during the Diaspora. In truth, history and scripture shows the attachment to the land increased and was even reinforced in Judaism rather then giving witness to a separation between Lord and land. Abraham Isaac Kook, author of “The Land of Israel’”, states, “A valid strengthening of Judaism in the Diaspora can come only from a deepened attachment to Eretz Israel [land of Israel]” (The Soul, 202). Hope for their redemption from exile became the life of Judaism.

This hope of future restoration to the land of Israel is a pervading theme throughout the post-exilic Jewish scriptures. Nehemiah remembers the promises of restoration to the land with great nostalgia in his prayers: “but if you return to me and obey my commands, then even if your exiled people are at the farthest horizon, I will gather them from there and bring them to the place I have chosen as a dwelling for my Name” (Nehemiah 1:9). The hope for restoration to the land was much more for the Jews than a homecoming. It carried great theological significance. It was the permission to be in the presence of Yahweh again, to once again be His chosen people:

‘The days are coming,’ declares the Lord, ‘when I will bring my people Israel and Judah back from captivity and restore them to the land I gave their forefathers to possess… I will surely save you [Israel] out of distant place, your descendents from the land of their exile…So you will be my people, and I will be your God.’ (Jeremiah 30:3, 10, 22)

The connection that Jeremiah makes in this chapter shows the Jewish theological concept that the Shekhinah or Presence of God is revealed to the Jews in a naturalistic way. Their territoriality and passion for ownership of the land is not a secular desire of mere historical sentiment. It is far more than that; it is a longing to be with their God, to be immersed in Yahweh’s Shekhinah. Abraham Isaac Kook describes this longing in Judaism:

The hope for the return to the Holy Land is the continuing source of the distinctive nature of Judaism. The hope for the redemption is the force that sustains Judaism in the Diaspora; the Judaism of Eretz Israel is the very redemption. (The Soul, 202)

This hope for restoration to land and to God has lasted throughout history until 1947 when the Promise Land was once again controlled by Jews and is still the life of the faith today.

Modern Events: Territoriality Is Still A Result Of A Naturalistic Concept of Divine Presence

The ancient notion in Judaism of experiencing the Divine Presence through the Land is not only still present in the faith and the derivation of Jewish identity, but is also a main source of Jewish territoriality over the Land of Israel today. The fight for the Land even now is a mask concealing their longing to be connected with their God. The Jews are not merely fighting for a place to call their own, as some may believe. They are fighting to live in the presence of God. This longing is exemplified through the sacred status still adorned to the Wailing Wall. The Wailing Wall is the only remaining piece left of Herod’s edifice to the second Temple, which was thought to be inhabited by Yahweh’s Shekhinah. This place is considered by the Jews to contain more than mere historical significance because of its ability to be used as a direct mediatory to God. Their plans and desire to one day rebuild the Temple as a fulfillment of prophecy is rooted not in a desire for preservation or political agenda, but in the Jewish desire to experience and interact with God through the naturalistic means of sacred place.

The argument in opposition of this claim is that Israel is not fighting for religious reasons at all, but the goals of the Israeli government in recent history have been purely secular. The modern Jewish fight to reclaim the homeland is referred to as Zionism. The Zionist movement was a response of the nineteenth century European Jews to rampant anti-Semitism across the country. Although this movement is based, in part, on the religious tradition that links the Jews to the Land of Israel, it is considered to be a secular movement. It merely supports a homeland for the Jewish people in the Land of Israel, without making claim to any religious motives. The Israeli government itself claims to be secular. The territoriality in Judaism is still very present, but is no longer accounted for by religious or spiritual factors.

However, this opinion that the Jews are fighting for a homeland to avoid anti-Semitism, which is a secular purpose, is not supported by modern events. In 1903, in an effort to appease the Zionist movement, Great Britain offered the land of Uganda to become the modern Jewish nation-state, but the offer was refused. The only land that is sufficient to the Jews has always been the land of Palestine, which is considered to be given to them by Yahweh so that He would dwell with them. Abraham Isaac Kook passionately addresses such a claim in his piece called “The Land of Israel’”, “To regard Eretz Israel [Land of Israel] as merely a tool for establishing our [Jewish] nation unity…is a sterile notion; it is unworthy of the holiness of Eretz Israel” (The Soul, 202). The deep relatedness between Lord and land in Judaism exists still today and accounts for territoriality in the religion.

Conclusion

The naturalistic concept of Divine Presence is the root of territoriality in Judaism. The Jewish passion to inhabit the land of Palestine is deeply embedded in their religion, and thus their identity. This is noted throughout Jewish history since the birth of Hebraic religiosity with Abraham. The Jews have always interacted with God by way of spatial mediation. Also, the Jewish culture and religion is that of a traditional society. Meaning they view the space surrounding them as being heterogeneous or having different qualitative values. Hence, the emphasis on place being the vessel in which the Sacred presents itself to the Jewish people. Only in the presence of the Holy Land are Jews able to understand themselves. Some may argue that Judaism has so evolved from this primitive beginning of a land based archaic society, and has become a highly developed modern religion, which no longer limits their God to a specified location. However, the Jewish Holy Scriptures as well as orthodox and reform practices do not support such a claim. Jewish territoriality over the land of Israel is spurred from their desire to be in the presence of their God, to possess a point of reference, and to live in the realest of terms. The Jewish concept of the Divine Shekhinah or Presence as being naturalistic is a result of the divine will, making it a theological as well as a cultural pillar of Judaism. Since Yahweh is considered to have chosen the land of Palestine, the Jews cannot experience Him apart from the land. Experiencing the nature of God in this way is the origin of the dominant territorial aspect of Judaism

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