3.1 Historical Praise of the Land’s Ahistorical Holiness
One of the avenues the Land-discourse of the sages takes, especially in rabbinic statements transmitted in Palestinian corpora, addresses the meaning of the Land by praising its unchanging holiness. According to the Encyclopedia Talmudit, medieval authorities contrast the Land’s ‘intrinsic’ holiness1 with historical instances of sanctification of the Land.2 Yet the late antique texts themselves do not use this terminology.3 How then do the texts themselves convey this idea of the Land’s unchanging holiness, of an atemporal or mythical sanctity unaffected by the vicissitudes of Israel’s history, a sanctity in which neither ordinary human beings nor even rabbis play an active role?4 This Land-holiness is related to the notion that the Land contains the holiest place on Earth, and this is not dependent on a particular time; the Land is the ur-place, the setting for the creation of the world; it was chosen as God’s land prior to time itself.
3.1.1 On Holinesses and the Direction to Face While Praying
Rabbinic literature does not use the expression ‘holy land’ to identify the land of Israel as holy.5 The locus classicus on the Land’s holiness in early rabbinic literature is the first of four consecutive anonymous mishnayot in Mishnah tractate Kelim, the first of which reads as follows:
There are ten degrees of holiness. The land of Israel is sanctified (mequdeshet) among all the lands. And what [is the nature of] its holiness? From there they bring the ʿomer, the first fruits, and the two loaves of bread, which they do not bring from any other land. (mKel 1:6)
The reason for the Land’s holiness, according to this mishnah, is the fact that it is the agricultural produce of this land exclusively which enables one to observe three of the so-called land-commandments related to the Festival of Weeks.6 It is not part of the Mishnah’s agenda to pose the question of whether observing these commandments is actually possible at the time when the Mishnah was redacted. This special characteristic of the Land sets it apart from the rest and therefore makes it holy.7
Within the Land itself, ten (further) degrees of increasing holiness are described as spaces to which people with corresponding degrees of cultic purity have access. The centre of this hierarchy is the holy of holies in the Temple.8 Here and elsewhere in rabbinic literature, holiness is described with reference to the concepts of purity and impurity.9 The immersion pools (miqvaʾot) in the Land are pure because the Land itself is pure (mMiq 8:1). Rather than being unholy, the lands with which the land of Israel is contrasted, which are referred to as ‘land of the gentiles’ (erets ha-ʿamim) or ‘outside of the Land’ (chutsa la-arets), are impure and convey uncleanness.10
However relevant to the question of the land of Israel’s significance in rabbinic Judaism these anonymous mishnaic statements appear to be, they were in fact seldom expanded upon in later rabbinic corpora.11 The tradition of a hierarchy of holiness is found in the halakhic midrash Sifre Zuta, which makes direct use of mKel 1:6 in the context of an interpretation of Num 5:2–4.12 Here God gives Moses laws pertaining to the purity of the camp in the midst of which the Tabernacle sits. The threefold mention of the expression ‘camp’ in Num 5:2 is interpreted in SifBem Zuta as referring to three distinct, concentric areas within the Israelite camp, each with a different degree of purity. This scriptural precedent is said to be the reason why the sages divided space—in the sense of the territory of the Earth—into ten degrees of holiness, as formulated in mKel 1:6–9, a text which is then quoted, with the addition of a second degree of holiness: The land of Canaan is said to be holier than Transjordan—both of which constitute the land of Israel—in that only Canaan ‘is worthy of the house of the Divine Presence’. A late parallel to this midrash is found in a homily on Num 5:2–4, transmitted in Bemidbar Rabbah, which suggests that the three areas in the camp are equivalent to three areas in Jerusalem: ‘Just as in the wilderness there were three camps, the camp of the Divine Presence, the camp of the Levites, and the camp of the Israelites, so there were in Jerusalem three camps’ (BemR 7:8).13
The fact that this tradition of concentrically disposed spaces of holiness that diminish in holiness the farther one gets from the Temple is transmitted only in Palestinian texts is telling—even though, as Martin Goodman argues, it is likely (though not provable) that diaspora Jews in the Roman period also shared this notion.14
A shorter version of this hierarchical list of holy spaces is preserved in the Tosefta, in a tradition that describes the directions Jews are to face while praying (tBer 3:15–16).15 The list begins with those standing outside of the Land, who are to pray with their hearts directed towards the Land, and proceeds to those within the Land, who are to direct their hearts towards Jerusalem; those in Jerusalem, who are to direct their hearts towards the Temple; and those in the Temple, who are to direct their hearts towards the holy of holies.16 This hierarchy of directions in which one must stand while praying is transmitted anonymously in the Tosefta and also in its parallel in the Bavli, but it is attributed to Rabbi Eliezer ben Jacob, a sage of the post-Bar Kokhba period, in some of the Palestinian parallels.17 Although this attribution is in line with Gafni’s argument concerning the beginnings of a discourse promoting attachment to the Land in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt,18 it is also noteworthy that the two tannaitic texts containing the list of directions for prayer, as well as their Palestinian parallels—in contrast to a number of sources I will examine in chapter 4—depict the possibility of living somewhere other than the Land in a neutral light.
While the concept of the Land’s holiness reflected in these lists may strike the reader as having no relation to time, such holiness is indeed temporal to the extent that it presupposes the existence of the cultic centre in the Land, which has its starting point in the history of Israel—after receiving the Torah at Sinai or establishing the sanctuary in Jerusalem. Another strategy used to emphasise the atemporality of the Land’s holiness involves linking it to a cosmological myth—to the time before time.
3.1.2 The Land’s Temporal Priority
A passage in the halakhic midrash Sifre Devarim describes the land of Israel as the very first space created:
The land of Israel, which is the most precious of all, was created before all else, for it is said, when he had not yet made earth (arets) and fields[, or the world’s (tevel) first bits of soil] (Prov 8:26). Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai says: ‘World’ means the land of Israel, for it is said, Rejoicing in His world, His land (be-tevel artso) (Prov 8:31). Why is it called ‘world’? Because it is improved (metubelet) by every thing. For every land has something lacking in other lands, whereas the land of Israel lacks nothing, for it is said, where you will lack nothing (Deut 8:9). Another interpretation: ‘Earth’ means all the other lands, ‘fields’ means wildernesses, ‘world’ means the land of Israel. Why is it called ‘world’ (tevel)? Because of the spice (tevel) that is in it. And what spice does it contain? Torah, for it is said, Among the nations is no Torah (Lam 2:9). From this [we learn that] the Torah dwells in the land of Israel. (SifDev 37)
The hermeneutic context of this passage is the comparison between the Land and Egypt in Deut 11:10: ‘For the land that you are about to enter to occupy is not like the land of Egypt.’ The midrash claims that whatever is the most precious of its kind precedes the rest.19 This is said to be valid for the Torah, for the Temple, and for the Land. Apart from having existed prior to any other land, the land of Israel is read into the scriptural expression for ‘world’ (tevel) in two verses in the book of Proverbs, the polysemy of which the sages exploit: The word form is interpreted to mean not only ‘world’, but also ‘spice’, and the sages praise the Land as refined by a spice20 which they in turn identify as the Torah.21
The idea that the Land is the centre of the world and that it also contains its own centre is no innovation of rabbinic literature. The book of Ezekiel (38:12) already conveys the notion that Jerusalem is the centre or navel of the world.22 The land around this centre is also a mythical chronotopos (rather than the backdrop of history)23 in the book of Jubilees (8–10), the setting for a cosmological myth whose protagonist is Israel’s mythical ancestor. In later rabbinic literature the navel metaphor reappears in the company of another cosmological motif, that of the foundation stone:24
When you come into the land and plant (Lev 19:23). This is what Scripture says, I made myself gardens and parks[, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees] (Eccl 2:5). Do not all human beings plant what they need? Whatever a man plants in the earth, it brings forth either peppers or something [else]. If someone plants [plants] they produce, but no one knows the [appropriate] place of each and every plant, where it is to be planted. Solomon, however, because he was wise, he planted all sorts of trees[, for it is said, I made myself gardens and parks, and planted in them all kinds of fruit trees] (Eccl 2:5). Rabbi Yannai said: Solomon planted even peppers, and how did he plant them? Solomon was wise and knew the root of the foundation of the world. Whence [do we infer this]? Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth (Ps 50:2). Out of Zion has the entire world been perfected. Why is it called foundation stone (even shetiyah)? Because the world was founded (hushtat) on it. (TanB Qedoshim 10)
This midrash interprets the reference to planting in the lemma verse25 Lev 19:23 by connecting it to another verse, Eccl 2:5. This text is understood to refer to Solomon’s role as a wise landscape architect. The wisdom of his gardening is explained as directly related to his familiarity with the point in space where the world was made perfect—namely, Zion or, more specifically, the foundation stone.
Another interpretation: and planted in them … Just as a navel is set in the middle of a man, so the land of Israel is the navel of the world, for it is said, Who live on the navel of the earth (Ezek 38:12). The land of Israel sits at the centre of the world, and Jerusalem is in the centre of the land of Israel, and the Temple building is in the centre of Jerusalem, and the sanctuary is in the centre of the Temple building, the ark is in the centre of the sanctuary, and the foundation stone, out of which the world was founded, is before the sanctuary. Solomon, who was wise, stood upon the roots that went out from [that stone] into the whole world and planted all sorts of trees in them. Therefore he said, I made myself gardens and parks (Eccl 2:5). (TanB Qedoshim 10)
In a second part the midrash links the motifs of the foundation stone and the navel of the world26 in an interpretation of the lemma based on an analogy between the human body and the world. The human body’s centre is its navel, and the world’s is the land of Israel. In this late midrash, as in mKel 1:6–9, the land of Israel is the first item in a list of spaces arranged concentrically. With the exception of the Temple building, which contains both the sanctuary and the foundation stone,27 each of the other items on the list has one centre. Unlike other rabbinic texts which feature the foundation stone,28 this one explicitly situates it in the Land. The Land and the spaces it encompasses constitute the navel of the world, and for this reason they are central in both cosmological and protological perspectives.29
3.1.3 God’s Choice of Permanent Possessions and Their Selection
In several other midrashic contexts, the land of Israel’s holiness is expressed less in terms of spaces related to degrees of holiness and levitical purity or to a mythical past, and more in the form of lists of God’s personal possessions, as it were. The explicit connection to God means that the items in this type of list appear as unequivocably holy. With respect to the order of the items, it is remarkable that the Land is seldom mentioned as the first item on these lists. There are exceptions, however, such as the following passage in the halakhic midrash Mekhilta deRabbi Yishmael, in which a second-generation tanna mentions the Land as the first of six rewards for Israel’s observance of the Sabbath:
And Moses said, eat that today (Exod 16:25). Rabbi Joshua says: If you succeed in observing the Sabbath, the Holy One, blessed be He, will give you three festivals, Passover, Weeks, and Tabernacles. Therefore it is said, And Moses said, eat that today, for today is a sabbath to the Lord; today you will not find it in the field. Rabbi Eleazar of Modiʿim says: If you succeed in keeping the Sabbath, the Holy One, blessed be He, will give you six good portions (lit. ‘measures’): The land of Israel, the future world, the new world, the Kingdom of the house of David, the priesthood, and the Levites’ offices. Therefore it is said, eat that today etc. (MekhY Va-yassaʿ 530)
The Land is also mentioned in the halakhic midrash Sifre Bemidbar, as part of a list of prooftexts adduced to interpret Num 11:6 as alluding to the permanence of anything which God describes using the inflected preposition li:
So the Lord said to Moses, Gather for me seventy of the elders (Num 11:16). Why is this said? Because it [Scripture] says: I am not able [to carry all this people] alone (Num 11:14). The Omnipresent said to him, What you demand I have given you. Gather for me (li), so that there is a Sanhedrin in my name, for wherever it is said li, see this remains for ever and ever and ever. Regarding the priests it [Scripture] says, [and consecrate them, so that they may serve] me (li) as priests (Exod 28:41). Regarding the Levites it [Scripture] says, [you shall separate the Levites from among the other Israelites,] and the Levites shall be mine (li) (Num 8:14). Regarding Israel it [Scripture] says, For to me (li) the people of Israel are servants[; they are my servants whom I brought out from the land of Egypt] (Lev 25:55). [Regarding the Land it [Scripture] says, The land shall not be sold in perpetuity,] for the land is mine (li)[; with me you are but aliens and tenants] (Lev 25:23). Regarding the firstborns it [Scripture] says, For all the firstborn among the Israelites are mine (li)[, … . On the day that I struck down all the firstborn in the land of Egypt I consecrated them for myself] (Num 8:17). Regarding the sanctuary it [Scripture] says, And have them make me (li) a sanctuary[, so that I may dwell among them] (Exod 25:8). Regarding the altar it [Scripture] says, [You need] make for me (li) an altar of earth [and sacrifice on it your burnt-offerings …] (Exod 20:24). Regarding the anointing oil it [Scripture] says, This shall be my (li) holy anointing oil (Exod 30:31). Regarding the kingdom it [Scripture] says, for I have provided for myself (li) a king among his sons (1 Sam 16:1). Regarding the sacrifice it [Scripture] says, [Command the Israelites, and say to them: My offering, the food for my offerings by fire, my pleasing odour, you shall take care] to offer to me (li) at its appointed time (Num 28:2). Wherever it is said li, see this exists for ever and ever and ever. (SifBem 92)
The exegetical occasion for this text, which is preserved here as an anonymous tradition, is the mention in Num 11:16 of seventy elders, who are identified as the Sanhedrin and with whom the midrash opens a list of eleven items. The fifth item, the Land, is actually not mentioned in the Sifre Bemidbar manuscript Horovitz used for his edition, but rather in MS Vat ebr. 32. Given that this list is transmitted in later midrashic compilations in a slightly modified form that includes the Land, it may in fact have been included in the original list.31
The fact that the items listed are considered permanent because God has selected them as God’s particular possessions is emphasised in yet another text, which applies the same hermeneutic rationale we find in SifBem 92: whatever is mentioned in connection with the inflected preposition li must be permanent because God himself utters the expression self-referentially:
Tell the children of Israel [to take for me an offering] (Exod 25:2). It is not written here ‘to take an offering’ but to take for me (li) an offering (ibid.). Anything about which li is said, [belongs to God] in this world and in the world to come. The land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for the Land is mine (li) (Lev 25:23), in this world and in the world to come. [For all the firstborn among the Israelites are mine (Num 8:17), in this world and in the world to come. And the Levites shall be mine (Num 8:14), in this world and in the world to come], and also the priestly share, [belongs to the Holy One] in this world and in the world to come. (TanB Terumah 3)
Like the offering, the firstborn, the Levites, and the priestly share, which is the focus of this passage,32 the land of Israel is said to belong to God in this world and in the world to come. Interestingly, of all the scriptural verses adduced here, the only one which is explicit about the unchanging character of God’s possessions is the one pertaining to the Land, with its adverbial expression litsemitut (‘in perpetuity’).33
In other exegetical contexts we find lists including the land of Israel that focus on the act of selection itself—that is, God’s selection of what are said to be his permanent possessions. For example, as part of an interpretation of Deut 11:12, Pirqe de-Rabbi Elieʿzer transmits a list of seven choices God makes, each of which implies separating one item from a larger set of seven created things:34 firmaments, lands, deserts, seas, ages, lamps, and days. The number seven is related to the chapter’s general topical agenda, which is a discussion of the institution of the Sabbath—the one day chosen out of seven—and an interpretation of Exod 31:17 in particular, a verse which refers to the Sabbath as ‘a sign forever between Me and the people of Israel.’ For each choice, the text quotes one or more scriptural verses as confirmation of the selection. God is said to have chosen the land of Israel out of seven countries he created (the other six remain unnamed):
The Holy One, blessed be He, created seven lands, and He chose from all of them the land of Israel only, for it is said, A land [that the Lord your God looks after.] The eyes of the Lord your God are always on it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year (Deut 11:12).35 (PRE 18)
Also in the context of a list, the late midrash Seder Eliyahu explains the land of Israel’s special, holy character. In a dialogue between an anonymous wandering rabbi and a recurrent non-rabbinic other,36 the rabbi explains that God not only rewards human beings according to their deeds, but that in doing so he himself also finds reward in his creation:
And whence [do we infer that] He [God] receives His reward from the world He created? From The Lord’s portion is His people etc. (Deut 32:9), and [also where] it is said, Delightful country has fallen to my lot[; lovely indeed is my estate] etc. (Ps 16:6). They told a parable. What does the matter resemble? It is like a king of flesh and blood who built a palace and perfected it so that in the joy with which he rejoiced in it he finally decided [to have] in it his dwelling. Such is the reward [given] the land of Israel, in the midst of which the Holy One, blessed be He, stood and created all the lands, every one of them; He set apart (hifrish) Israel, the heave-offering (terumah) from out of all the peoples; and from Israel He set apart the Tribe of Levi [to serve in the Tabernacle]; and out of the Tribe of Levi He set apart Aaron the priest. He sanctified him, anointed him, and adorned him with the garments of priesthood, with the diadem on the mitre, with the Urim and Thummim—all this for Aaron who stands before God and year after year makes expiation for Israel. And He brought Israel, who are the heave-offering from among all the peoples [of the world], to the land of Israel, which is singled out (perushah) among all the lands. Then He brought the Tribe of Levi, which He set apart from Israel, to Jerusalem, which is the land of Israel’s heave-offering. And He brought the children of Aaron, whom He set apart from among the Tribe of Levi, to the Temple, which He set apart from Jerusalem, to stand and do His will wholeheartedly, for it is said, He stood, and measured the land, He looked and made the nations tremble (Hab 3:6). (SEZ 173)
In answer to a rhetorical question concerning the scriptural evidence for the notion that God’s world is a reward for him, the rabbi quotes two verses claiming that the people and land of Israel constitute this reward. The parable that follows, and particularly its application—which echoes traditions about the Land as the navel of the world—illustrate how the Land itself was rewarded. From this point on, the language of reward gives way to one of separating offerings, making heave-offerings of human resources (Israel, the Levites, the priests), and geographies (the Land, Jerusalem, the Temple).37 Each of the human heave-offerings is assigned a separate space with its own degree of holiness: Israel-Land, Levites-Jerusalem, priests-Temple. Thus, we can read the entire passage as a midrashic elaboration on the first pair of verses quoted at the beginning. That all the items on the list are holy is evident not only from the fact that God chooses them, but also by virtue of the wording used for the act of selection.38 It is not merely the peculiar phraseology which makes this text about the Land as a chosen space stand out. As the rabbi continues his speech, he problematises the apparently unchanging character of the selected spaces and human groups:
And it [Scripture] says, his ways (halikhot) are everlasting (ʿolam) (Hab 3:6). From here they said: Whoever studies the laws (halakhot) can be confident that he is a son of the world to come (ha-ʿolam ha-ba). Some say that in the place whence the earth for the first man was taken the altar was built, for it is said, then the Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground (Gen 2:7). And it [Scripture] says, You need make for me only an altar of earth (Exod 20:24). From here they said: As long as the Temple stood, the altar within was [what made] expiation for Israel wherever they dwelt. And outside of the Land the sages and the disciples of the sages are [the ones who make] expiation for Israel wherever they dwell. For it is said, If you bring a grain-offering of the first fruits to the Lord etc. (Lev 1:14). And it [Scripture] says, A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing food from the first fruits to the man of God etc. (2 Kgs 4:42). But was Elishah a priest? There was neither Temple, nor altar, nor High Priesthood there. Elishah was rather a prophet and disciples of the wise would sit before him, either in Dotan or in Samaria. From here they said: Whoever is attached to the sages and to their disciples, Scripture credits it to him as if he were offering first fruits and doing the will of his Father who is in heaven. (SEZ 173)
This second passage adduces rabbinic theology in a commentary on the first passage: The one who pursues Torah study is rewarded; the group of people who deserve such a reward are the sages and their followers; after the destruction of the Temple, the connotations of ‘in the Land’ and ‘outside of the Land’ have changed. In both locales, the sages and their disciples assume the roles that were reserved for the priesthood in Temple times. The sages are in charge of making expiation in the wider world, where Jews live in the diaspora.
3.1.4 The Land in Lists
The passages discussed in this section, which are primarily of Palestinian provenance, are representative examples of how the sages treated the theme of the Land’s unchanging holiness, which the Encyclopedia Talmudit designates as ‘intrinsic’. The strategy of including the Land as one of a group of entities receiving praise due to their relation to God recurs in both early and late rabbinic corpora and works.39
In mKel 1:6–9, the Land is the first space worthy of mention in a list of holy spaces that culminates in the holy of holies. Other lands are not explicitly valued as less holy or impure in this context—they are simply ignored. Not only this mishnaic passage, but also later rabbinic texts refrain from acknowledging the fact that the holiness they address is related to a defunct cultic system. They do not conceive of the Land’s sanctity as affected by the course of history. This is not surprising when the chronological setting is a mythical one, in which the exegetical narrative is concerned with the world before Israel’s salvation history began (e.g., SifDev 37; TanB Qedoshim 10), or when the Land is mentioned as an item on a list of God’s permanent possessions (SifBem 92; TanB Terumah 3) or as part of a selection thereof (PRE 18; SEZ 173). The one text that turns back on itself and introduces history—after describing God’s selection of spaces and their people—is the late midrash Seder Eliyahu, which exalts the rabbinic class as in charge of expiation in post-Temple times in ersatz terms, wherever Jews may live.40 Rather than a polemic on Palestinian rabbinic authority, it seems this late midrash is an attempt to acknowledge the Land’s ahistorical holiness while also affirming the sages’ role in Jewish history.
The texts containing lists differ with respect to their exegetical occasion, the list’s topical focus, the order and number of the listed items, and their use of scriptural prooftexts. The Land appears in various positions on these lists, and while it is seldom the first or last item on the list,41 the fact that it is repeatedly mentioned in these texts about choices42 in both early corpora and later works of the rabbinic period is evidence that its status as an object of praise among the sages was a constant. Several other passages in rabbinic literature represent historical praise of the Land as an ahistorically superior space without explicitly setting it in relation to God, as in the examples discussed above. In these texts, the Land is inherently superior43 or provides a backdrop for the discussion of aggadic or halakhic subject matter, as is the case in other sources discussed elsewhere in this book.
3.2 Sanctifying the Land in History
Inasmuch as the land-holiness generates the land-commandments, the removal of the land-holiness as a result of the destruction and exile means, in effect, that God has declared that the land-commandments are no longer valid commandments. The nature of the relationship between God, the people and the Land has changed.44
The idea of the promised land’s holiness is expressed in different ways in the Hebrew Bible, even if the text itself seldom actually calls the land holy. As David Frankel points out, even though texts attributed to the Holiness School mention a sanctification of the sanctuary, the priests, and the Sabbath, ‘God never sanctifies, or calls upon Israel to sanctify, the land.’45 As mentioned above, rabbinic literature also does not characteristically resort to calling the Land holy. However, several passages reveal that this literature is concerned with the notion of the land of Israel as holy land, with its sanctification, and with sanctifying it by addressing these topics by means of rabbinic discourse itself. While we saw in the previous section that one of these discursive strategies places the Land’s holiness outside of time—the land is ahistorically holy—Israel’s agency in conquering the Land where they were to be faithful to the covenant takes place within historical time. It is to texts concerned with how the sages reflect on the way in which Israel singled out the Land by observing the commandments that I now turn.
The scriptural basis for the notion of a historical sanctification of the Land, understood as enacted by human beings, is partly attested in the way Scripture repeatedly links the people of Israel’s entry into or presence in the Land with the observance of the commandments there, using the formulas ‘when you come into the land’ and ‘when the Lord has brought you into the land.’46 Rabbinic tradition singles out some of these commandments as a category of ‘commandments dependent on the Land’ (mitsvot ha-teluyot ba-arets). These are precepts related to the Land’s agricultural produce that regulate how the Land was subject to a sort of ‘holy tax’.47 The earliest treatment of these commandments in rabbinic literature is found in the first order of the Mishnah, Zeraʿim (lit. ‘seeds’).48
As Alexander Dubrau points out, and as we will see in the texts discussed in what follows, unlike ahistorical sanctity, this historical sanctity is largely dependent on the decisions taken by the rabbis and transmitted in rabbinic discourse, in which the rabbis themselves are agents.49
This is a sanctity that depends on the Land’s existence as a Jewish polity, and it becomes an idea (and at times an ideal) upon which the sages reflect after the revolts of the first and second centuries CE and the ensuing diasporisation of the Jews, both in their ancestral homeland and abroad.50 By maintaining their reflection on these historically changed commandments for several centuries, Palestinian tannaim, Palestinian and Babylonian amoraim, and the anonymous redactors of the rabbinic corpora acknowledge with their very discourse the relevance of the commandments and the notion that their observance distinguishes the Land where they were once fully observed.51
In the context of their discussion of these commandments, the sages develop ideas about the Land’s sanctity as subject to change. This sanctity has a beginning, it evolves over the course of time, and it is dependent on human agency. These are the main questions the sages address when they discuss the land-commandments:
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What are the land-commandments, and how are they different from the rest of the commandments? What commandments are understood as constituting exceptions to the general distinction?
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Are the land-commandments valid in the rabbinic present? Where? What determines that certain areas that were once obligated to adhere to these commandments cease to be obligated? Are such areas perceived as part of the land of Israel once the land-commandments are no longer valid there?
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What is the status of countries other than the land of Israel with respect to these commandments?52 What different ‘diaspora’ regions ‘outside of the Land’ (chutsah la-arets) do these sources distinguish?
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What difference does it make whether the obligation to observe a land-commandment originates in Scripture or is part of rabbinic law?
3.2.1 Introducing the Land-Commandments to the Land
According to mKel 1:6, the land of Israel’s holiness derives from the fact that three commandments may be observed only with agricultural produce from the Land. As we have seen above, the mention of the land of Israel in this mishnah stands at the beginning of a list of holy things, and nowhere in this list does the Mishnah hint at the fact that the ʿomer, the first fruits, or the two loaves may not be offered because there is no place to which to bring them. It appears that the various levels of holiness that the Land encompasses are still intact at the moment the document was redacted, in the early third century. Similarly, in another mishnah, in the text which probably comes closest to a definition of the land-dependent commandments, we read:
Any commandment that does not depend on the land may be observed in the Land or outside of it; and any commandment that depends on the land may be observed in the Land. Except for the laws pertaining to the fruit of young trees (ʿorlah) and to mixing species (kilʾayim). Rabbi Eliezer says: Also the law of new produce (chadash). (mQid 1:9, MS Kaufmann A 50)53
This mishnah divides the commandments into two categories54—non-agricultural (valid both in the Land and abroad) and agricultural (valid only in the Land). It also divides the Jewish world into two regions55—one whose Jewish inhabitants are obligated to observe only the first type of commandments, and one where they are to observe both these and the land-commandments.56 Seen from a practical perspective, such a distinction was a dubious honour with which Jews residing in the land of Israel had to come to terms;57 yet from an ideological perspective, the opportunity to observe these commandments could be perceived as a privilege not granted to Jews living elsewhere. A question related to Jewish identity that arises from the Land-dependency of these commandments, and which rabbinic literature addresses for the first time after the destruction of the Temple, can be paraphrased as follows: If it is only possible to observe all the commandments of the Torah in the Land, does it then follow that as long as the land-commandments are valid, it is only possible to live a halakhically perfect Jewish life within the territory of the Land?58 For ancient Jews living outside of the Land, it might have been challenging to know that some of the commandments could not be observed unless one was in the Land and was part of an agricultural society.59 Evidence of this is the fact that even though the Babylonian Talmud does not have a Gemara on the agricultural tractates of the order Zeraʿim which deal with these precepts in the Palestinian corpora, i.e., in the Mishnah, the Tosefta, and the Yerushalmi, it does find ways to engage in their discussion.60
What does later rabbinic literature have to say about the broad classification of mQid 1:9 and the commandments singled out therein, either anonymously (ʿorlah and kilʾayim) or by Rabbi Eliezer (chadash)?61 Three texts are closely related to this mishnah, either using it as part of a midrashic argument (SifDev 59) or expanding upon it in the Palestinian and Babylonian Gemara (yQid 1:9 [61c], bQid 37a). All three of these texts link the meaning of the mishnah with Deut 12:1: ‘These are the statutes and ordinances that you must diligently observe in the land (ba-arets) that the Lord, the God of your ancestors, has given you to occupy all the days that you live on the earth (ha-adamah)’—the verse that opens the legal corpus in the book of Deuteronomy. The first of these texts, transmitted in the halakhic midrash Sifre Devarim, reads as follows:
These are the statutes (Deut 12:1): these are the interpretations; and ordinances (ibid.): these are the regulations; that you must observe (ibid.): this refers to study; to do (ibid.): this refers to performance; in the land (ibid.): one could think that all the commandments are observed outside of the Land—Scripture [however] says: to do in the land (ibid.); one could think that all of the commandments are observed only in the Land—Scripture says: all the days that you live upon the earth. Once it has extended, Scripture limits. This we learn from what is said on the subject. What is said on the subject? You must demolish completely all the places [where the nations whom you are about to dispossess served their gods] (Deut 12:2). Just as it is special about [the prohibition of] idolatry that it is a personal commandment (mitsvat ha-guf, lit. ‘commandment of the body’) and not dependent on the land,62 observed both in the Land and outside of the Land, thus any personal commandment and not dependent on the land is observed in the Land and outside of the Land, and the one dependent on the land is observed only in the Land, with the exception of the laws pertaining to the fruit of young trees (ʿorlah) and to mixing species (kilʾayim). Rabbi Eliezer says: Also the law of new produce (chadash). (SifDev 59)
In an atomising interpretation of Deut 12:1,63 the anonymous voice of the halakhic midrash interprets the last segment of the verse, ‘in the land’, as a corrective to the notion that all the commandments may be observed outside of the Land. It claims that it is precisely because the verse states ‘in the land’ that some of the commandments are to be observed exclusively there. The midrash then introduces mQid 1:9, contextualising the quotation of the mishnah by referring to the commandments that are not dependent on the land with terminology that is not found in the mishnah: mitsvat ha-guf, a law binding on the individual—sometimes paraphrased as a ‘personal commandment’.64 The midrash asserts that a handful of these special commandments were expected to be observed outside of the Land as well, but it does not delve into the reasons for such a distinction.65
An amoraic text that preserves a parallel on the distinction between commandments dependent on the land and commandments that are not dependendent on the land is transmitted in the Yerushalmi. Whereas SifDev 59 is related to mQid 1:9 in its interpretation of Deut 12:1, the Yerushalmi makes use of the midrash in order to comment on that mishnah (and mShevi 6:1). It takes up the question of whether the commandments not dependent on the land may also only be observed in the Land:
It is written, These are the statutes and the rules of law which you will be required to follow in the Land (Deut 12:1). In the Land you are required to follow them but not outside of the Land. Still we say obligations dependent on the land apply only in the Land. One could think that commandments that are not dependent on the land should be observed only in the Land. Scripture says, Take care, or you will be seduced [into turning away, serving other gods and worshipping them,] for then the anger of the Lord [will be kindled against you and he will shut up the heavens, so that there will be no rain and the land will yield no fruit; then you will perish quickly from the good land that the Lord is giving you.] etc. You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul (Deut 11:16–18). Even if you are exiled, You shall put these words of mine in your heart and soul (Deut 11:18). You must say, for example, [in connection with the obligation to wear] phylacteries and the study of Torah: just as phylacteries and the study of Torah do not depend on the land and apply both in the Land and outside of the Land, so everything not dependent on the land applies both in the Land and outside of the Land. (yQid 1:9 [61c] par. yShevi 6:1 [36b])66
In this case, the Palestinian sages’ argument appears to be as follows: Because we say that land-commandments apply only in the Land, we may be tempted to think that this reasoning also applies to the rest of the commandments. As an example of the latter, broader category, this text mentions the obligation to wear phylacteries and to study Torah rather than the prohibition of idolatry. Interestingly, neither SifDev 59, nor SifDev 44, nor the Yerushalmi in the quoted passage are concerned with the three ‘exceptional’ commandments mentioned at the end of the mishna.
The Babylonian Talmud’s commentary on mQid 1:9 also presents us with an understanding of the commandments that are not related to the land as having to do with the person rather than with the soil of specific locations:
What is [the meaning of] ‘dependent’ and ‘not dependent’? Shall we say that dependent refers to [those precepts] where ‘coming’ is written, and ‘not dependent’ [refers] to those where ‘coming’ is not written? But [the obligation to wear] phylacteries and the [redemption of the] firstling of an ass (Exod 34:20) are practised both in the Land and outside of the Land, even though ‘coming’ is written in connection with [both of] them? Rav Yehuda said: This is the meaning: Every precept which is a personal obligation (chovat ha-guf) is practised both in the Land and outside of the Land; but what is an obligation of the soil (chovat qarqaʿ) is practised only within the Land. Whence do we know these things? (bQid 37a)
The anonymous voice of the Talmud hypothesises that one explanation for the existence of the two types of commandments mentioned in mQid 1:9 may be connected with the use of the verb ‘to come’ in scriptural verses concerning certain precepts. However, the subsequent discussion reveals this voice’s awareness that the clause ‘when you come into the land’ introduces commandments that are not obviously related to the produce of the soil.67 The subsequent explanation, provided by the Babylonian amora Rav Yehuda, echoes the argument in SifDev 59: While some commandments are binding exclusively on the person, and therefore valid wherever a person may reside or temporarily happen to be, others are binding on the soil of the Land’s territory. The rhetorical question in Aramaic, which follows Rav Yehuda’s distinction in Hebrew, introduces yet another Hebrew text as a baraita, a close parallel to the passage in SifDev 59:
These are the statutes (Deut 12:1): these are the interpretations; and ordinances (ibid.): these are the regulations; that you must observe (ibid.): this refers to study; to do (ibid.): this refers to performance; in the land (ibid.): one could think that all the commandments are observed in the Land only. Scripture says: all the days that you live upon the earth (ibid.). If ‘all the days’, one could think that they are [all] observed both in the Land and outside of the Land. Scripture says: in the land. Once it has extended, Scripture limits. (bQid 37a)
The order of some of the midrashic units in the halakhic midrash is reversed in this version, and this modification goes hand in hand with a different interpretation of Deut 12:1: while the Talmud agrees with the halakhic midrash in that two of the phrases in Deut 12:1 signal two movements—Scripture extends and limits—the two rabbinic passages appear to disagree on the question of the wording with which Scripture extends and limits, as well as the sense in which this is done. In the halakhic midrash, Scripture is read as extending (or being inclusive) when it states that all the commandments are practised in the Land, and as limiting when it states that this is valid only as long as the people of Israel reside on the territory of the Land. In the Talmud, Scripture extends when it states that the observance of all the commandments is binding always and therefore also everywhere, and it limits when it claims that they are all binding only in the Land.
The commentary on this part of the mishnah comes to a close with the example of the prohibition of idolatry as an obligation independent of geography. The three exceptional commandments mentioned at the end of the passage in SifDev 59—ʿorlah, kilʾayim, and chadash—are not treated as part of the baraita in the Gemara, but the mishnaic segment on the three exceptions is commented upon separately.
3.2.2 Three Exceptions?
When the Babylonian rabbis interpret the meaning of the last part of the mishnah, they spell out the disagreement between the anonymous tannaitic voice, which singles out ʿorlah and kilʾayim as special precepts, and Rabbi Eliezer, who adds a precept to an existing list. What does this disagreement tell us about how the voices of both the anonymous tannaim and Rabbi Eliezer decided with respect to these exceptional land-commandments? According to a first hermeneutic scenario, the anonymous tannaim meant that although the precepts of ʿorlah and kilʾayim are ‘charges of the soil’, they are observed both in the Land and abroad, following a halakha based on tradition. The reason why the tannaim do not mention chadash, while Rabbi Eliezer adds it and rules stringently, may be related to their different readings of the expression ‘dwelling’ in the verse with which the section on the prohibition against partaking of new grain (Lev 23:9–14) ends: While the former hold it to be obligatory only in the Land, Rabbi Eliezer regards it as obligatory wherever Jews live.68 On the other hand, it may also have been the case that the anonymous tannaim did not mention chadash because they thought it was self-evident that it had the same status as the other two, i.e., that all three are obligatory in the Land and abroad, following a law given to Moses at Sinai.69 Had this been their reasoning, Rabbi Eliezer would then have ruled leniently, stating that chadash is only obligatory in the Land, like the majority of the land-dependent commandments which the first clause in the mishnah describes.70 Both ways of understanding the meaning of the mention of chadash reveal how the Talmud spells out what the Mishnah merely suggests—namely, that the Land-dependency of the land-commandments could be questioned, for example, by extending the valid territorial area for at least some of these commandments.71 In the discussion that follows, the Talmud’s anonymous voice endorses the first interpretation, according to which Rabbi Eliezer would have ruled that chadash is obligatory wherever Jews live. Thus, with the aid of a Palestinian voice, the Babylonians appropriate for their land an obligation originally reserved for the soil of the land of Israel.72
Further down in the sugya, a tradition attributed to the Palestinian Rabbi Simeon ben Yochai again takes up the exceptional character of the three commandments in question (bQid 38a): They are commandments given upon entry into the Land but are logically valid everywhere.73 Historically the three commandments may have been dependent on the soil of the Land, but in the rabbinic present they are agricultural commandments in force both in the Land and abroad. Furthermore, as an anonymous tradition goes on to explain, mQid 1:9 presents their shared exceptional character as land-commandments, even though each of the prohibitions is understood as valid based on different types of authority (bQid 38b).74 Despite this distinction, it becomes apparent that all three exceptional commandments are considered part of a life lived halakhically outside of the Land.
While the first part of the sugya was concerned with chadash, the final section focuses on ʿorlah and kilʾayim, and it brings more Babylonian voices into a literary and diasporic dialogue with Palestinian ones (bQid 39a). When so-called keen scholars of the academy of Pumbedita75 claim, based on a chain of tradition said to date back to the Palestinian tanna Rabbi Eliezer, that the prohibition of ʿorlah is not observed at all outside of the Land, and their ruling reaches the land of Israel, the amora Rabbi Jochanan himself condemns those who believe that this precept is invalid outside of the Land. Thus, by allowing a Palestinian authority to explain the mishnah to Rav Yehuda, the Babylonian Talmud reclaims a land-commandment for Babylonia, if only to discard it in a subsequent step, acknowledging only chadash of the three exceptional land-commandments as valid abroad.76
Rabbinic narratives set in Babylonia and about Babylonian sages illustrate the validity of the second precept, kilʾayim, at the close of this sugya:
Rav Chanan and Rav Anan were walking along a path, when they saw a man sowing [diverse] seeds together. Said [one] to [the other], Come, Master, let us ban him. He said, [These laws] are not clear [to you]. Again they saw another man sowing wheat and barley among vines. Said [one] to [the other], Come, Master, let us ban him. He replied, [These laws] are not understood [by you]. Do we not hold in accordance with Rabbi Josiah that [he is not guilty] unless he sows wheat, barley, and seeds in the [same] hand-throw? | Rav Joseph mixed seeds and sowed [them]. Thereupon Abaye protested: But we learnt, ‘Kilʾayim is forbidden [outside of the Land] by the words of the scribes’ (mOrlah 3:9). He replied, There is no difficulty. That [the quoted mishna] refers to kilʾayim of the vineyard; this [my action] is with kilʾayim of seeds. Kilʾayim of the vineyard, of which in the Land all benefit is forbidden, is also prohibited by the Rabbis outside of the Land; kilʾayim of seeds, however, of which [even] in Palestine benefit is not forbidden, is not prohibited by the Rabbis outside of the Land. (bQid 39a)
Both narratives argue that only one type of mixture—kilʾayim of the vineyard—is prohibited, and that this prohibition is valid both in the Land and abroad. The mixture of seeds is permitted everywhere. Like personal obligations, the precepts mQid 1:9 introduces as having a special status are precepts that Jews observe wherever they live,77 according to the rabbinic voices of this sugya. They are not precepts that distinguish Jewish geographies, but precepts that stress the similarities between life in the Land and outside of the Land, and so unite Jews in both regions.78
Instead of reflecting on the location of real geographical borders, which would demarcate where certain precepts are in force and where this is not the case, this text enables Babylonian minds to imagine a dialogue with Palestinian and Babylonian authorities, and to conclude that, even with respect to commandments perceived as related to the original conquered and sanctified Land, Babylonia is not as far ‘outside of the Land’ as one might think, or as some Palestinian sages might argue. Thus we can see the discussion of these commandments and their appropriation as part of the Babylonians’ broader strategy for shaping their own land on the model of the land of Israel.79
3.2.3 Three Lands of Israel?
The texts discussed thus far make a point of classifying commandments into two categories and commenting on the three exceptions within the group of commandments dependent on the land. The exact territory where the land-commandments were to be observed is not a matter of concern. In the context of discussions on the weightier land-commandment of the Seventh Year (sheviʿit), however, matters are different. The question of the actual territory where one is under the obligation to adhere to the commandments is more significant in this context. Thus we read in a mishnah:
Three lands (aratsot) are to be distinguished in what concerns the Seventh Year: throughout that part of the land of Israel which they occupied that went up from Babylon, as far as Kezib, [Seventh Year produce] may not be eaten nor [may the soil be] cultivated; throughout that part which they occupied that went up from Egypt, from Kezib to the River and Amanah, [Seventh Year produce] may be eaten but [the soil] may not be cultivated; while [in the land] from the River and Amanah and inwards, [Seventh Year produce] may be eaten and [the soil] cultivated. (mShevi 6:1)
The text describes three possible ways to observe the Seventh Year,80 which range from the most to the least stringent. These three degrees of observance correspond to three areas which are scarcely described.81 The first is said to be the part of the land of Israel resettled by those who returned from the Babylonian exile. This area is described as extending to one point in the north, Kezib, while the other points on the implied textual map are left unsaid. Here the full observance of the Seventh Year is required.82 The second area—a second version of the Land—is the territory conquered by Joshua, where the commandment is only partly valid. This land is described as reaching from Kezib to two specific points, the Amanah and the River.83 The description of this area suggests that it encompasses the first one, so that the territory repossessed by those who returned from the exile in Babylonia was smaller than the territory Joshua conquered.84 No conquest or settlement of the third area—the largest version of the land of Israel—is mentioned. The text does not reveal the geographical perspective from which the anonymous voice in the mishnah speaks. The mishnah does not tell us whether this voice is located within one of the three versions of the land of Israel. Yet our background knowledge of the later Roman period lets us surmise that the speaker behind this mishnah should be imagined as located somewhere in Galilee.
The demarcation of the first two areas where sheviʿit must be observed is thus linked to two biblical entry-narratives (in reverse order with respect to the scriptural account) and may be seen as ‘historically based’:85 The first area is related to the narrative in which the Babylonian returnees reoccupy only part of the land that was conquered in Joshua’s time, a narrative transmitted in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah. The second area is linked to the narrative of Joshua’s conquest and the division of the land among the tribes after the exodus from Egypt. The third land, described as entirely free from the obligation to observe the commandment, is not explicitly connected to any scriptural narrative, though we can assume that the area alluded to is part of the utopian territory of the land promised to Abraham in Gen 15:18–21, a territory which was never under Israel’s control.86
What could have been the reasons for such elastic geographical ideas of the Land as those that emerge from these peculiar descriptions of the territory of the land of Israel?87 Reconsidering and shrinking the territory in which the land-commandments, especially the weightier among them, such as sheviʿit, were expected to be fully observed could have been a strategy by which the Mishnah ruled in favour of a more liveable Land-halakha in response to the political and economic situation facing the Jews living in the Roman province of Palestine in the later Roman period.88
Apart from the priority given to the first area described, in terms of both its position in the text and the fact that it is the sole area where the commandment must be fully observed, none of the three lands or regions is explicitly valued as a space that is particularly relevant to Jewish identity. In this anonymous (and disembodied) statement, the Mishnah appears to relate to all three versions of the Land on equal terms. Neither does mShevi 6:1 claim that any of the three degrees of observance makes manifest the Land’s particular character in any specific way.89 The connection between a changing territory and the observance of commandments that underlies this mishnah would be elaborated upon subsequently. Later texts would spell out the idea that the Land’s holiness is, to a certain extent, dependent on what the people of Israel do. As Chaim Milikowsky explains, these texts introduce the notion that ‘the destruction of the Temple and the exile of the people may affect the holiness of the Land and the abrogation of its land-sanctity may render the land-commandments non-obligatory.’90
3.2.4 Establishing (Some of) the Land’s Borders
Let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling (Ps 43:3): these are the borders of the land of Israel which are as holy as the land of Israel. (PesR 15:11[Ulmer])
The reasons behind distinguishing these three lands with respect to the Seventh Year are merely hinted at in the mishna. The place names most likely denote some of the boundaries (Kezib, Amanah, the River) that would have been clear enough to the original intended audience of this mishnaic statement and also still clear at the time when the Mishnah was redacted.91 The rest of the borders were simply left unmentioned, probably because they were initially perceived as unproblematic and therefore did not merit a detailed definition, or because they did not really matter from the perspective of the sages behind this tradition.92
A number of later rabbinic texts seem to suggest that the borders of the smallest version of the land of Israel—as these are described in the mishnah—were at some point no longer sufficiently accurate, and therefore more precision became necessary. After all, the Mishnah speaks of the Land as if its territory had remained unchanged since the sixth century BCE.
Among the texts that have a more contemporary agenda, the most prominent is the so-called baraita on the borders of the land of Israel (techume erets yisrael), which is transmitted in three different rabbinic literary contexts, in texts that take the form of a direct commentary on the mishnah (tShevi 4:11; yShevi 6:1 [36b]), a midrashic elaboration that refers to mishnaic material (SifDev 51),93 and a unique mosaic inscription added to the narthex of the Synagogue of Rechov, south of Scythopolis, in the sixth or seventh century. On the phenomenon by which a text from the realm of the rabbinic academy was transferred to the stones of a synagogue, Hagith Sivan observes that the inscription ‘lifted rabbinic debates out of their school context, removing ascription of specific opinions to specific rabbis, and inscribing in stone and in public an updated version of the rules regarding the duties incumbent on observant Jews along the borders of the “Land of Israel.” ’94 Due to its focus on the area around Rechov, the inscription has been interpreted as an expression of ‘regional patriotism’.95
Some scholars have dated the baraita to pre-rabbinic times.96 However, as Günter Stemberger points out, even if this early date were correct, the baraita’s transmission in rabbinic corpora suggests that the sages approved of this textual map and thought it worthy of being transmitted as indicative of the territory where the halakha is to be observed in the land of Israel.97 A more probable date for the baraita is the second half of the second century.98
The text of the baraita has been described as a verbal map.99 It is a list of localities—the number ranges from 35 to 41 toponyms, depending on the version—that encompass the territory allegedly repossessed by those who returned from Babylonia.100 In these Palestinian sources, therefore, the land of Israel as it is envisioned in the rabbinic present(s) is identified with the first area described in the mishnah, the smallest version of the Land, where the Seventh Year (and, by implication, the rest of the land-commandments) are (or should be) observed in full. The baraita is characteristically interested in the north-west.101 This focalisation of the textual map suggests that in this area a precise ruling concerning whether and how to observe the land-commandments made a difference.102 Still, this text makes no explicit claim that the land where the land-commandments are observed is holy or holier than the other areas described in mShevi 6:1.
3.2.5 Two Possessions
An important passage in the same commentary on mShevi 6:1 in the Yerushalmi, which transmits the baraita on the borders of the Land, is dedicated to comparing the two different times when the people of Israel entered into their land: the first in Joshua’s time and the second in Ezra’s time. With these actions, the people of Israel established the beginning of their obligations, thereby drawing borders between the land of Israel and the territories beyond their land. The Yerushalmi passage reads:
Then once they were exiled they should be exempt [from the commandments dependent on the land]. It is written, And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in them; for from the days of Jeshua son of Nun [to that day the people of Israel] had not done so (Neh 8:17). Why Jeshua [and not Jehoshua]? Rabbi Hillel, the son of Samuel bar Nachman [said]: The honour of the just person in his grave Scripture reduces [by removing a letter] out of respect for the [living] just in his time. It compares their coming in the days of Ezra with their coming in the days of Joshua. Just as when they came in the days of Joshua they had been exempt [from the commandments dependent on the land] and became obligated, so also when they came in the days of Ezra they had been exempt and became obligated. | How did they become obligated? Rabbi Jose bar Chanina said: They became obligated by the words of Torah, for it is written, The Lord your God will bring you into the land that your ancestors possessed, and you will possess it (Deut 30:5). It compares your possession [under Ezra] with the possession by your fathers [under Joshua]: Just as the possession by your fathers [obligated them] by the words of Torah, so also your possession [obligates you] by the words of Torah. He will make you more prosperous and numerous than your ancestors (Deut 30:5): Your fathers had been free and became obligated, and you had been free and became obligated. Your fathers did not bear the yoke of a monarchy, and you although you bear the yoke of a monarchy [became obligated]. Your fathers became obligated only after fourteen years, seven [years] they conquered and seven [years] they divided; but you the moment you entered [the Land] you became obligated. Your fathers became obligated only after they had acquired all [the Land], but as for you each of you the moment he acquires [his portion] he becomes obligated. (yShevi 6:1 [36b] par. yQid 1:9 [61c–d])
The distinction made between land-commandments and commandments that do not depend on the land in the immediately preceding co-text in the Gemara103 leads the anonymous voice to state that during the Exile, the Israelites were free from the first type of obligation. In order to demonstrate the validity of this notion, Neh 8:17 is quoted and interpreted in the context of a tradition by the Palestinian amora Rabbi Hillel ben Samuel as evidence of a similarity between the immigration under Joshua and the exiles’ return under Ezra: During the Babylonian exile, the Israelites could not observe the commandments dependent on the land, in the same way they could not have observed them prior to their entry into the Land after the exodus from Egypt. Moreover, the second ‘coming’104 is assessed as superior with respect to the first. This is implied in the defective spelling of Joshua’s name in the Nehemiah verse.
The claim that both immigrations entailed the establishment of the obligation to observe land-commandments is then problematised in the anonymous voice of the Gemara, which asks about the nature of the obligation. While in the first part this voice argues with the aid of a verse from the book of Nehemiah, the third-century amora Jose bar Chanina resorts to a verse from the Torah. According to this sage’s reading of Deut 30:5, the verse alludes both to the Israelites coming from Egypt and to the Babylonian returnees; he argues that both became obligated through the force of the Torah. The second person in the verse is taken to mean the Judeans returning from exile, while the ancestors—in the scriptural context, these are the patriarchs—are identified here as the Israelites coming from Egypt. From here on, in a series of steps, the text argues more explicitly that the second immigration, referred to as ‘possession’, superseded that of the Egyptian immigrants. Corresponding to the wording of the stronger scriptural prooftext used for his argument, Rabbi Jose emphasises the moment the second group possessed the Land, rather than the moment they came into the Land, and insists that his audience—whom he addresses with second-person nominal and verbal forms105—identify with these immigrants as their ancestors. Thus the past return under Ezra is retold by Rabbi Jose as relevant for the Palestinian rabbinic present. The Yerushalmi’s redactors understood Rabbi Jose’s statement as still pertinent to their own existence in the Land.
The comparison between these two moments of immigration tacitly persists in statements made by Rabbi Eleazar and Rabbi Jose bar Chanina concerning the nature of the people’s obligation to observe the land-commandments after their return from the Babylonian exile:
Rabbi Eleazar said: They accepted the tithes voluntarily. What is the [scriptural] reason? Because of all this we make a firm agreement in writing, and on that sealed document are inscribed the names of our officials, our Levites, and our priests (Neh 10:1). How does Rabbi Eleazar explain, the firstborns of our herds and of our flocks (Neh 10:37)? Since they accepted precepts (lit. ‘words, things’) to which they were not obligated, even precepts to which they were obligated were credited to them as if they had accepted them voluntarily. How does Rabbi Jose bar Chanina explain Because of all this (Neh 10:1)? Since they accepted [precepts] with good grace, Scripture credits it to them as if they had accepted them voluntarily. (yShevi 6:1 [36b] par. yQid 1:9 [61d])
Rabbi Eleazar counters Rabbi Jose’s opinion that in both instances of immigration, the Israelites and the returning Judeans became obligated by means of pentateuchal authority. Rabbi Eleazar claims that the obligation to observe the commandments in the days of Ezra was self-imposed, evidence of which is found in Scripture: In Neh 10:1 a contract between God and the people is signed, whereby the latter accept the obligations related to the Land and the Temple. The anonymous voice in the Gemara understands Rabbi Eleazar’s argument as follows: As a reward for their voluntary acceptance of the land-commandments, all the other commandments—including those not dependent on the land, mentioned in Neh 10:37—are credited to them as similarly self-imposed. The implication of such a notion is that the transgression of self-imposed commandments is less grave than it would be if these commandments had the force of the Torah. An alternative interpretation of Neh 10:1 is then quoted and attributed to the amora Rabbi Jose bar Chanina. He takes the inclusive particle ‘all’106 to mean that all the commandments have the force of the Torah since the return from exile. Due to the positive attitude with which the returnees accepted the requirement to observe all the commandments, Scripture depicts them as having imposed these commandments on themselves.
A final segment on the similarities and differences between the two entries into the Land once again focuses on the scriptural comparison in Deut 30:5—between the Israelites, who were to conquer the Land, and their ancestors the patriarchs, to whom the Land was promised:
How does Rabbi Eleazar explain, [he will make you] more [prosperous and numerous] than your ancestors (Deut 30:5)? He interprets it [as a reference] to the future. For Rabbi Chelbo, Simeon bar Ba said in the name of Rabbi Jochanan: Your forefathers inherited the land of seven nations, but you will inherit the land of ten nations. The three others are the land of the Kenites, the Kenizzites, the Kadmonites (Gen 15:19). Rabbi Judah said: Arabia, Salmaia, and Nabatea. Rabbi Simeon says: Asia, Aspamaea, and Damascus. Rabbi Eliezer ben Jacob said: Essa, Carthage, and Thrace. Rabbi says: Edom, Moab, and the best of the children of Ammon. (yShevi 6:1 [36b] par. yQid 1:9 [61d])
In view of the fact that a previous passage in the Yerushalmi commentary suggests that the territory recovered by the Babylonian returnees was smaller than the territory the people possessed under Joshua, Deut 30:5 calls for an explanation. In what sense will the present generation that the texts addresses be more prosperous that their ancestors? How can Scripture claim that the people of Israel are more prosperous after the Exile than they were before the Exile? The prosperity alluded to in Deut 30:5 does not refer to the present, but rather to the Land’s enlarged territory at the end of time. Several rabbinic authorities agree on this, even if they have different opinions about the identity of the three lands which will also be inherited at that time.107
As far as this Yerushalmi text is concerned, Israel ‘came’ to the Land twice and, either of their own accord or by means of the Torah’s authority, they thus ‘became obligated’ to observe commandments, some of which are related to the land’s agricultural produce. There is no mention of Israel ‘sanctifying’ the Land with their entry, possession, or observance of the commandments, or of the Land’s character being affected in terms of its sacredness, either in Joshua’s time or in Ezra’s time. Yet this is not the case when we look at Palestinian traditions on the impact of Israel’s entries into the Land, which are found in the Babylonian Talmud.
3.2.6 The First Sanctification and Its Nullification
In Mishnah Tractate Eduyot, Rabbi Joshua is quoted as having heard ‘a tradition that they [may] offer sacrifices although there is no Temple, and eat the Most Holy [Things] although there are no curtains, and the Lesser Holy [Things] and the Second Tithe although there is no wall; since its first sanctification sanctified it both for its own time and for the time to come’ (mEd 8:6). The last clause of this statement, which alludes to Solomon’s dedication of the Temple, is found in three passages in the Tosefta108 as well as in several other contexts in the Babylonian Talmud.109 In the latter, the dictum is modified as follows: ‘the first sanctification was for its time but not for the future’. While several of the talmudic passages that contain this statement are, like the tannaitic texts on the ‘first sanctification’, concerned with the question of whether the sanctity of the Temple or of Jerusalem is in force even when there is no Temple,110 a few passages make innovations by relating this ‘first sanctification’ either to the entire Land111 or to areas of the Land other than Jerusalem,112 thereby suggesting that the Land’s sanctity is directly related to the Temple’s existence.113
To explain why the Mishnah mentions certain cities as examples of walled cities in Joshua’s time (mAr 9:6),114 the Gemara in the Bavli quotes the following baraita:
It is taught [in a baraita:] Rabbi Ishmael, the son of Rabbi Jose, [said]: Why did the sages enumerate these? Because when the exiles went up they found these and consecrated them. But the first [consecrated cities] lost [their sanctity] the moment the sanctity of the Land was nullified (mishebatelah qedushat ha-arets). He [Rabbi Ishmael] holds that the first sanctification sanctified it [the Land] for its time and did not sanctify it for the future. (bAr 32b)
According to Rabbi Ishmael’s view in the baraita, the cities mentioned in the mishnah are those which were reconsecrated by the Babylonian returnees.115 It follows that the rest of the walled cities which had once been sanctified did not recover the sanctity they lost when the sanctity of the entire Land was nullified. As the Gemara goes on to argue in a subsequent passage, another position is also attributed to the same Rabbi Ishmael, according to which the walled cities of Joshua’s time never lost their sanctity, so that the returnees did not need to reconsecrate any city that had had a wall in Joshua’s days.116 According to this second view, the returnees are understood to have simply identified and catalogued the cities they found, which is why the mishnah enumerates only some cities. In order to account for these two conflicting notions, the Gemara suggests they may be traced back either a) to two unnamed tannaim who had different ideas about what Rabbi Ishmael’s opinion had been, or b) to Rabbi Ishmael and his brother, Rabbi Eleazar bar Jose—for reasons that remain unexplained, the latter’s name would eventually cease to be mentioned in connection with his opinion.
The Gemara proceeds to discuss the notion of the Land’s temporary sanctity, and for this purpose it employs the comparison of the two immigration narratives from Joshua’s time and Ezra’s time, respectively, a topos addressed in yShevi 6:1 (36b), as seen above:
What is the reason for the one [sage] to say that the first sanctification sanctified for its time and did not sanctify for the future? It is written, And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in them; for from the days of Jeshua son of Nun [to that day] the people of Israel had not done so. And there was very great rejoicing (Neh 8:17). Is it possible that David came and they did not make booths until Ezra came? Rather, it [Scripture] compares their coming in the days of Ezra with their coming in the days of Joshua. Just as upon their coming in the days of Joshua they started the counting of the years of release [Seventh Year] and the Jubilees and they sanctified walled cities, so also upon their coming in the days of Ezra they started counting the years of release and the Jubilees and they sanctified walled cities. And it [Scripture] says, The Lord your God will bring you into the land that your ancestors possessed, and you will possess it (Deut 30:5). It compares your possession with the possession by your fathers. Just as the possession by your ancestors [brought about] a renewal of all these things, so also your possession [brings about] a renewal of all these things. (bAr 32b)
On the basis of Neh 8:17, both the Palestinian and the Babylonian texts claim that Israel twice became obligated upon entering the Land. However, we should note some differences in the midrashic use of this verse in the Yerushalmi and the Bavli. While the Yerushalmi was initially concerned with the peculiar spelling of Jeshua, the Bavli stresses the moment when the booths were built. Moreover, even though both the Yerushalmi and the Bavli reckon that the land-commandments in general came into force with Israel’s entries into the Land, the Yerushalmi values these entries differently. In its turn, the Bavli adds the notion of a first sanctification, which no longer connotes Solomon’s dedication of the Temple, as in the Mishnah, but rather the conquest of the land under Joshua, specifying that the second possession under Ezra reestablished two land-commandments (Seventh Year and Jubilees) and the consecration of walled cities.117
The second verse both sources employ in their arguments is also treated differently in the two talmudic commentaries. Whereas in the Yerushalmi Deut 30:5 is interpreted to mean that in both instances the obligation (to observe the land-commandments) had the authority of the Torah, and that this obligation came into force at a different tempo in the context of the first and second entries, in the Bavli the question of the obligation’s character is not even posed. The analogy in Deut 30:5 is understood in terms of a renewal of the Land with respect to its chronology and also to the status of walled cities, as previously mentioned.
Before it turns to the counting of the Jubilees and the observance of the Seventh Year, the Gemara briefly delves into the probable logic of the baraita according to which the sanctity of the Land was never interrupted. The tannaitic voice in this statement is thought to have interpreted the booths mentioned in Neh 8:17 as symbols of the protection Ezra could count on because he had prayed for mercy in the face of idolatry, and to have read Deut 30:5 as a reference to the continuation of the first, ancestral possession.
To return to the question of whether Ezra could have reestablished the counting of Jubilees, the Gemara employs the motif of the exile of the two and a half Transjordanian tribes. It claims that ever since the Reubenites, the Gadites, and the half-tribe of Manasseh settled in Transjordan, an event which it refers to with the phrase ‘went into exile’, the Jubilees have not been in force. The ruling in Lev 25:10, ‘you shall proclaim liberty throughout the land to all its inhabitants’, is read to mean that as long as only part of the people of Israel resides in the Land, some of the rulings concerning holy time are not in force, and therefore Jubilees should not be counted. Two rabbinic authorities are then quoted to bring the sugya to a close: The Babylonian Rav Nachman bar Isaac argues that in Ezra’s time, Jubilees were simply counted to enable the observance of the Seventh Year; the Palestinian Rabbi Jochanan then explains that, even as early as in Jeremiah’s time, the Jubilees and the Seventh Years had been reestablished when the prophet brought the tribes back into the Land. Rav Nachman confirms the words of the Palestinian sage, and so together—again in the diasporic dialogue of rabbinic texts—they decide that the concept of the Land’s temporary sanctity is the one supported by Israel’s history.
In contrast to cities, a lengthy mishnah in tractate Yadaim is concerned with entire regions which the sages imagine are obligated to observe the land-commandments, even though they are outside of the Land.118 Three tannaim from the second, Yavnean generation are adduced for their involvement in a discussion that revolves around the question of which of two specific land-commandments is observed in Ammon and Moab during the Seventh Year (itself another land-commandment, but one which is not observed there): poor man’s tithe or second tithe. While Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah represents the more stringent position, claiming that the second tithe is observed in Ammon and Moab during the Seventh Year, his colleagues Rabbi Tarfon and Rabbi Joshua argue that poor man’s tithe is observed in these regions during the Seventh Year. While the mishnah clearly allots more textual space to Rabbi Tarfon and to those who support his position, we must also note that neither the mishna’s anonymous governing voice nor any of the voices of the tannaim problematises the notion that some of the land-commandments are observed not only in Ammon and Moab, i.e., Transjordan,119 but also in other regions outside of the Land, such as Egypt (poor man’s tithe) and Babylonia (second tithe).120 Thus, according to this mishnah, it is not necessary to view all the land-commandments as Land-commandments. Some transcend the borders of the Land in the historical present of the third century, when the Mishnah was redacted; of the second century, when the sages involved are presumed to have lived; and of the later Second Temple period, upon which the sages reflect.121 Since the time when this ruling applies appears to be an important question, the second half of the mishnah seeks to answer it: Proceeding from the most recent to the most ancient events, it claims here that while Jews in Egypt have observed poor man’s tithe since the elders’ time, those in Babylonia have observed second tithe since the time of the prophets; Ammon and Moab is a region where the people of Israel have been obligated to observe poor man’s tithe ever since this law was given to Moses at Sinai. With this chronological argument, the sages depict Transjordan as not just geographically but theologically closer to the land of Israel than the other two major locations where, according to Scripture, the people of Israel resided.
The closing segment of the mishnah is an account of how Rabbi Jose ben Durmaskit visits his master, Rabbi Eliezer, at Lod and reports on what he regards as news from the house of study, only for Rabbi Eliezer to correct him in this assumption. This anecdote is transmitted as part of a sugya in the Babylonian Talmud commenting on the story of two sages who visit Rabbi Joshua ben Chananiah in Pekiʿin, and on this occasion behave rather peculiarly. Rabbi Jochanan ben Beroka and Rabbi Eleazar ben Chisma, disciples of Rabbi Joshua, visit their master and are at first reluctant to report on what has been taught in the house of study.122 They excuse themselves politely, claiming that as Rabbi Joshua’s students, they are to learn from him, not he from them.123 Upon Rabbi Joshua’s insistence, they give in and summarise Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah’s teachings at the house of study. Once he has heard this answer, Rabbi Joshua sees his assumption confirmed: It is impossible for a house of study to avoid generating new teachings. However, the Talmud explains, it is not merely out of politeness towards their master that the two rabbis initially refrained from reporting the news from the house of study:
But they could have told him directly. [They did not on account of the following:] Once Rabbi Jose ben Durmaskit went to pay his respects to Rabbi Eliezer124 at Lod. He [Rabbi Eliezer] said to him, What new thing was taught at the study house today? He replied, They voted and decided that in Ammon and Moab the tithe of the poor should be given in the Seventh Year. He [Rabbi Eliezer] said to him, Jose, stretch forth your hands and lose your sight. He stretched forth his hands and lost his sight. Rabbi Eliezer [then] wept and said, The friendship of the Lord is for those who fear him[, and he makes his covenant known to them] (Ps 25:14). He said to him, Go, say to them, Be not concerned about your voting, thus have I received a tradition from Rabban Jochanan ben Zakkai, who heard [it] from his teacher, and his teacher from his teacher: It is a halakha of Moses from Sinai that in Ammon and Moab the tithe of the poor is to be given in the Seventh Year. What is the reason?125 Many cities were conquered by those who came up from Egypt, which were not conquered by those who came up from Babylon. [This is so] because the first consecration sanctified for its time and did not sanctify for the future. And they left them [unconsecrated] in order that the poor might have sustenance therefrom in the Seventh Year. It is taught: When his mind was calmed, he said, May it be granted that Jose’s sight be restored. And it was restored. (bHag 3b)
The Gemara explains the cautious behaviour of the two disciples with reference to the experience of their contemporary, Rabbi Jose ben Durmaskit, as this is narrated in mYad 4:3.126 There is a clear parallel in the anecdotes about tannaim who visit their masters and are asked about what has happened at the house of study. Rabbi Eliezer is depicted as upset upon hearing that the sages at the house of study perceive the poor man’s tithe in the Seventh Year in Ammon and Moab as their own halakhic innovation.127 Before proceeding to explain the grounds on which Rabbi Jose and the sages whose words he reports are wrong, he punishes his disciple with temporary blindness, a motif that adds momentum to this version of the rabbinic story. Rabbi Eliezer then explains to Rabbi Jose that separating the tithe for the poor in the Transjordanian regions during the Seventh Year was a law given to Moses on Mount Sinai but not recorded in the Torah.
What is special about this use of the tannaitic anecdote in the Babylonian Talmud is that it is linked to the talmudic variation on the tradition of mEd 8:6 and the notion that the first sanctification of the Land was temporally limited. The dictum here is the second of three juxtaposed statements the Bavli appends to the tannaitic anecdote about Rabbi Jose ben Durmaskit, which are presented as the rationale for a ruling given to Moses at Sinai: The Gemara first suggests that, like many of the cities which were conquered by the people who came up from Egypt, certain cities (presumably located in Ammon and Moab) were conquered at that time, but not reconquered by the Judean returnees. Second, it seems to draw an analogy between conquest and a temporary sanctification of the Land, and to suggest that the people’s exile entailed the interruption of the Land’s sanctity. The third statement specifies why certain cities in the first statement were not reconquered. Even though these cities were not reconsecrated, Jews who lived there remained connected to the Land’s holy space and time even after the second entry into the Land, due to the fact that they continued to observe one land-commandment—the commandment of poor man’s tithe—during the Seventh Year, a land-commandment observed exclusively in the Land.
The same three juxtaposed statements in bHag 3b which explain why the regions of Ammon and Moab were left (unconsecrated) during the Judean returnees’ resettlement are found in another passage in the Babylonian Talmud, which is concerned with the status of certain cities located within the land of Israel (bHul 6b–7a). After the tanna Joshua ben Zeruz reports that Rabbi Meir once ate a leaf from an untithed vegetable while in Beth Shean, Rabbi Judah the Prince declares the city free from the obligation to tithe, and by implication from the rest of the land-commandments as well.128 When questioned by close relatives, who were shocked at such a ruling that would entail a change in status for the land of their ancestors, Rabbi justifies his decision by arguing that the exemption of Beth Shean is an act whereby he seeks to distinguish himself positively from his (rabbinic) ancestors, just as his biblical ancestors (Hezekiah) distinguished themselves from their own (Moses). While the Gemara proceeds to claim that sages are not to be questioned about their decisions, it nevertheless then quotes a sage who very clearly challenges Beth Shean’s exemption:
Judah, the son of Rabbi Simeon ben Pazzi, raised an objection: Is there anyone who holds that Beth Shean is not part of the land of Israel? Is it not written, Manasseh did not drive out the inhabitants of Beth Shean and its villages (lit. ‘daughters’), nor of Taanach and its villages (Judg 1:27)?—It must have escaped him [Judah] what Rabbi Simeon ben Eliakim said in the name of Rabbi Eleazar ben Pedat who said in the name of Rabbi Eleazar ben Shammuʿa: Many cities were conquered by those who went up from Egypt, which were not conquered by those who went up from Babylon. He [Eleazar ben Shammuʿa] holds that the first consecration sanctified for its time and did not sanctify for the future. And they left them [unconsecrated] in order that the poor might have sustenance therefrom in the Seventh Year. (bHul 7a)
The fourth-century Palestinian amora Rabbi Judah questions Rabbi’s innovation, adducing a scriptural verse which hints at the fact that after the conquest of Beth Shean, its population remained mixed.129 The Gemara acknowledges that this verse proves the conquest of Beth Shean, but also highlights Rabbi Judah’s ignorance of the conquest-sanctification tradition. This time it is presented as preserved by a rabbinic chain of transmission linking the second-century tanna Eleazar ben Shammuʿa to sages of the third or fourth amoraic generation (third–fourth century). Just as the sages’ innovation in mYad 4:3 and bHag 3b was relativised by Rabbi Eliezer, who claimed that the ruling goes back to Moses at Sinai, so also Rabbi’s exemption of Beth Shean is itself a confirmation of the status quo that had been in force since the Babylonian returnees’ resettlement, if not in fact since the conquest of Canaan.
With three different interpretive agendas guiding the talmudic discourse—Why are only certain walled cities mentioned in a particular mishnah (bAr 32b)? On what grounds do Ammon and Moab separate tithe for the poor in the Seventh Year (bHag 3b)? Since when and why is Beth Shean exempt from tithing obligations (bHul 6b–7a)?—the Babylonian texts discussed in this section nevertheless all elaborate upon Palestinian materials which do not address the sanctity of the Land explicitly, and they all employ a statement which, in its original context (mEd 8:6), referred to the Temple’s everlasting sanctity—a sanctity that is unaffected by historical vicissitudes. The redactors of the Babylonian Talmud modified this statement so that it came to express the idea that the Land’s sanctity was interrupted. Furthermore, in two cases they juxtaposed this statement with two further statements not transmitted in tannaitic corpora; these dicta concerned the conquests by two different groups, whereby the second is said to have deliberately declined to reconquer part of the territory conquered by the first.130 While these texts thus appear to refer to Joshua’s conquest in terms of a first sanctification of the Land, none of them describes the returnees’ resettlement in Ezra’s time in similar terms, i.e., as a second sanctification. We find an explicit reference to the Land losing its sanctity and to walled cities recovering theirs in just one of these passages, namely, bAr 32b. Even though its point of departure in the Mishnah is a list of place names, the talmudic elaboration is not concerned with singling out particular regions or cities in the Land. This is the case in bHag 3b, which deals with the neighbouring regions of Ammon and Moab, and even more so in bHul 7a, with its focus on an important urban settlement with a mixed Jewish–Christian population in the rabbinic present, Beth Shean.
3.2.7 No Third Inheritance
The texts discussed so far place side by side the events around entering the Land in the time of Joshua and in the time of Ezra, the conquest and possession following the Exodus and following the Exile, and the impact on the Land of both instances of entering, conquering, and possessing the Land with respect to the commandments that are to be observed there. While the Babylonian texts discussed above introduce the notion of a first sanctification of the Land, they do not refer to the second entry explicitly in terms of a second sanctification, nor do they ask whether the implications of the Babylonian returnees’ resettlement of the Land were permanent or temporary in nature.
It is precisely this question which the last chapter of the Palestinian chronography Seder ʿOlam Rabbah hints at:
So the priests, the Levites, the gatekeepers, the singers, some of the people, the Temple servants, and all Israel etc. all the people gathered together etc. (Neh 7:73–78:1). And it says, And all the assembly of those who had returned from the captivity made booths and lived in them; for from the days of Jeshua etc. (Neh 8:17). Is it possible to say so? Rather it [Scripture] compares their coming in the days of Ezra with their coming in the days of Joshua. Just as in the days of Joshua they became obligated for tithes, years of release and Jubilees, and they sanctified walled cities, so also at their coming in the days of Ezra they became obligated for tithes, years of release and Jubilees, and they sanctified walled cities and were happy before the Omnipresent, blessed be He, for it is said, And there was very great rejoicing (Neh 8:17). And so it [Scripture] says, the Lord your God will bring you into the land that your ancestors inherited, and you will inherit it etc. (Deut 30:5). It compares your possession with that of your fathers. Just as the possession of your fathers [implies] the renewal of all these things, so also your possession [implies] the renewal of all these things.131 You could think that you will have a third possession (yerushah shelishi), [however,] the verse says, you shall inherit it: a first and second you have, you do not have a third [possession]. (SOR 30)
Seder ʿOlam Rabbah is usually considered a tannaitic text,132 in which case the parallels in yShevi 6:1 and bAr 32b may be considered later versions of the tradition. These three texts interpret Neh 8:17 as suggesting a comparison of Israel’s entries into the Land under Joshua and Ezra, and all three texts interpret Deut 30:5 as referring to the possession or inheritance of the Land on these two occasions. The version in Seder ʿOlam Rabbah appears to be closer to that of the Babylonian Talmud regarding the commandments it lists as having been established and reestablished with each of the two possessions.133 Even if the argument in SOR appears to be the same as in its two parallels—the observance of the land-commandments depends on the presence of the people in the Land—this Palestinian text stands out in that it spells out the fact that the Deuteronomy verse speaks of two possessions, and it interprets this to mean that Scripture excludes the possibility of a third possession.134 SOR 30 thus constitutes a variation on the praise for the second settlement that we found in yShevi 6:1. The second coming and possession supersedes the first in that it is definitive, even if neither is explicitly referred to as a sanctification.135
Unlike yShevi 6:1 (36b)—a passage in which Rabbi Jose bar Chanina, an amora, argues that the obligation to observe the land-commandments after both possessions is based on the Pentateuch—neither SOR 30 nor bAr 32b is explicitly concerned with the question of the kind of authority according to which the land-commandments are observed in the present (the time when the texts were redacted). This question is taken up in a discussion in the Babylonian Talmud, in a passage that deals with the nature rather than the geography of the obligation to observe two land-commandments: heave-offering (terumah) and dough-offering (challah) (bNid 46b). We should note that the Land is not mentioned once in the sugya, and yet the scriptural material, the quotation of SOR 30, and the fact that it deals with two land-commandments suggest that the Land constitutes at least one of the geographical settings the sugya presupposes. In an elaboration on Rabbi Jose’s opinion in mTer 1:3, the Gemara posits:
Rabbi Jose held that heave-offering in the present is valid on rabbinic authority (de-rabanan). But did Rabbi Jose [actually] hold that heave-offering in the present is valid on rabbinic authority? Is it not taught in Seder ʿOlam, [the Lord your God will bring you into the land] that your ancestors inherited, and you will inherit it etc. (Deut 30:5): a first and second [possession/inheritance] you have, you do not have a third? (bNid 46b)
Rabbi Jose’s apparently contradictory positions appear to go back to two dicta attributed to him and transmitted in different corpora, one of which—Seder ʿOlam Rabbah—is traditionally attributed to him.136 Ever since the return from the Babylonian exile, and on the assumption that the land-sanctity of the land of Israel was not annulled after the second possession under Ezra, the precept in question, and for that matter the rest of the land-commandments, can be valid either on rabbinic authority or, as he suggests with his interpretation of Deut 30:5 in SOR 30, on Torah authority (de-oraita). Can one and the same sage have held these two positions? While the Gemara supports the attribution of a Seder ʿOlam to Rabbi Jose, it also makes a distinction between ideas that Rabbi Jose may have transmitted in his historiographical compilation and ideas he himself may have held and expressed, which were eventually quoted and transmitted in the rabbinic corpora. In other words, according to the Gemara, the notion that the second possession of the Land referred to in Deut 30:5 implies that the observance of the land-commandments is a pentateuchal obligation need not have been Rabbi Jose’s opinion. He may have held that the precept is only valid on rabbinic authority. When the Gemara turns to the character of the obligation to observe the dough-offering commandment, it depicts the fourth-century Babylonian Rav Huna, the son of Rav Yehoshua, deciding as follows: while heave-offering is based on rabbinic authority, dough-offering is pentateuchal not in the present, but only when all of Israel will dwell in the Land. The argument that the observance of the land-commandments depends on the presence of the entire people in the Land deprives both commandments of pentateuchal authority, both for the post-exilic past and for the rabbinic present.
The conclusions at which the Gemara arrives, making use of Palestinian and Babylonian voices—namely, that the observance of these precepts is based on rabbinic authority—implies not only that transgressing them is less grave than it would be if they were based on pentateuchal authority, but also that the land-sanctity of the land of Israel has been suspended a second time.
3.2.8 The Land’s Sanctity in the Rabbinic History of Israel
The historicisation of the land of Israel’s sanctity—the idea that its territory became holy once or twice—is characterised in the texts discussed in this chapter by the role human beings play in the history of the Land, especially in relation to a subset of commandments concerning the Land’s agricultural produce. The human component of this historicised land-sanctity is evident not only in the way the observance of the land-commandments is projected back onto narratives about biblical Israel,137 but particularly in the prominent role accorded to the sages in the rabbinic elaboration on these commandments and in their seemingly overt decision-making pertaining to questions such as where these commandments are observed, which regions or cities are exempted and on what grounds, and whether the areas under this obligation in the land of Israel are obligated by pentateuchal or by rabbinic law. The notion that some of the commandments were the prerogative of certain Jews depending on whether they lived in the ancestral homeland may have evoked responses from both the privileged and the unprivileged, if indeed this idea reached beyond rabbinic circles, for which we have no evidence.
The texts discussed in this chapter address various issues related to the question of how the rabbis thought the land of Israel was singled out and sanctified in time, as a result of the people of Israel’s deeds. The first section focused on the distinction between two types of commandments according to their land-dependency, a distinction made initially in mQid 1:9 and further elaborated upon in later texts that either reinforce the distinction and give new names to the two categories of commandments (SifDev 59, yQid 1:9[61c] par. yShevi 6:1 [36b]; bQid 37a) or problematise the notion that the land-commandments must (and can) be observed exclusively in the Land (bQid 38a–39a). The Mishna’s mention of three exceptional land-commandments appears to have encouraged the Babylonian sages to reclaim for the Jews living outside of the Land some of the commandments which, according to mQid 1:9, are the prerogatives of those living in the Land.
Israel’s agency as this emerges from the scriptural narratives of the Exodus and the exiles’ return under Ezra is also interpreted as having a direct impact on the size, shape, and status of the land of Israel’s territory in mShevi 6:1, and in the Palestinian texts that elaborate upon it (SifDev 51, tShevi 4:11, and yShevi 6:1 [36b]), as well as in a number of passages in the Babylonian Talmud (bAr 32b; bHag 3b; bHul 6b–7a). The agency of Israel’s oppressors is only tacitly presented as affecting the Land’s status.
The amoraic and post-amoraic texts that expand on this mishnah (yShevi 6:1 par. bAr 32b)138 bring scriptural material and exegesis into play to illustrate the similarities between the people of Israel’s two entries into the Land (e.g., pertaining to the establishment of the Seventh Year or other land-commandments), but also to emphasise the link between the contemporary rabbinic audience and the second entry into and possession of the Land by the Judean returnees. Three Babylonian texts (bAr 32b; bHag 3b; bHul 6b–7a) stand out in that they identify Israel’s entry into the Land under Joshua with a ‘first sanctification’, which would not endure forever (bAr 32b), or which would not be renewed strategically in certain places, for the sake of social justice (bHag 3b; bHul 6b–7a). These texts characteristically use a dictum implying that the entire Land was singled out or sanctified and not that the Temple or certain walled cities were consecrated—as is the case in the statement’s original context in the Mishnah, or in other contexts in the Babylonian Talmud. The discussion came to a close with an analysis of texts addressing the problem of a complete analogy between the two entries into the Land (SOR 30) and the related question of the nature of the obligation to observe land-commandments in the rabbinic present (bNid 46b). While the tanna to whom Seder ʿOlam Rabbah is attributed may have once held that the land-commandments are observed in the present on the basis of the authority of the Torah, the Talmud argues that only once all of Israel are in the Land is the observance of these commandments obligatory according to the Torah. For the time being, the Bavli argues, the land-sanctity is on hold.
Zevin and Bar-Ilan, ‘Erets Israel,’ 213.
Of this intrinsic holiness, the English version of the article states: ‘Just as this sanctity existed prior to the conquest, so it did not cease with the ending of the conquest through the destruction of the Temple and the exile of Israel. Any discussion of the Sages as to whether the first sanctification sanctifies for the future or does not sanctify [any longer], bears only on the obligation to perform those precepts dependent on the Land; but none of the sanctity of the whole Land within its Torah borders, its purity, its virtue for the living and the dead, and its status as the Divine heritage, was diminished either during the Babylonian exile or the present exile (E). Its sanctity is eternal as long as the world endures; it has not, nor will, it change (L)’ (‘Erez Israel,’ 29).
Nowhere in the sources do we actually find the expression ‘intrinsic holiness’ (qedushah atsmit).
As H.K. Harrington, ‘The Holy Land,’ in Holiness: Rabbinic Judaism and the Graeco-Roman World (London: Routledge, 2001), 128, points out, rabbinic land-holiness is not tout court a holiness that necessarily ‘acts within the human sphere’ and ‘requires human maintenance’.
See Oberhänsli-Widmer, ‘Bindung ans Land Israel,’ 149–150; A. Dubrau, ‘Heiligkeitskonzepte von Eretz Israel in rabbinischen Texten der Spätantike,’ in Heilige, Heiliges und Heiligkeit in spätantiken Religionskulturen, ed. P. Gemeinhardt (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012), 149. In the Hebrew Scriptures, qodesh qodashim (‘most holy’) is used in the context of the vision of the future Temple, in the description of the reestablishment of the Land and the people, to refer specifically to the portion allotted to the priests, ‘a special portion out of the portion of the Land’ (Ezek 48:12). On ademat ha-qodesh (‘holy land/soil’, Zech 2:16), Wilken, Land Called Holy, 265n41, comments: ‘When the Hebrew Bible was translated into other languages, Zechariah’s ‘holy ground’ came out ‘holy land’, and any differentiation, however subtle, between ‘land’ and ‘ground’ was lost.’
For the scriptural wording of these laws, see Lev 23:9–16; Deut 26:1–11.
This is in contrast to ‘holier’, the wording found in H. Danby, trans., The Mishnah: Translated from the Hebrew with Introduction and Brief Explanatory Notes (London: Soncino, 1933) and Cohen, Goldenberg, and Lapin, Oxford Annotated Mishnah, for mKel 1:6, which suggests that the rest of the lands are also holy to a certain extent.
The notion of a sort of navel underlies the list of concentric degrees of holiness that begins with the least holy (the entire Land) and culminates with the holy of holies in the Temple. The Temple Scroll preserves a similar topography of concentric degrees of holiness, though as noted above the degrees are mentioned in the inverse order in comparison with the Mishna. Even though the introductory formula anticipates ten degrees of holiness, considering the Land itself as a first degree increases the number of degrees on the list to eleven: 1) the land of Israel, 2) the walled cities within it, 3) the wall of Jerusalem, 4) the Temple Mount, 5) the rampart, 6) the court of the women, 7) the court of the Israelites, 8) the court of the priests, 9) the area between the porch and the altar, 10) the sanctuary, and 11) the holy of holies. Maimonides addressed the contradiction between the introductory formula and the subsequent list in the twelfth century, arguing in Hilkhot Beit ha-Bechirah 7:13–14 that the Land is not a degree of holiness in itself. According to Dubrau, ‘Heiligkeitskonzepte,’ 153, Maimonides could be opposing the land of Israel’s claim to holiness here.
Dubrau, 147, argues that pure and impure are used as quasi-synonyms for holy and unholy.
In several contexts, these other lands are mentioned along with burial places as spaces where uncleanness is contracted. See mOhal 2:3; 17:5; 18:6; mToh 4:5. On the impurity of the land of the gentiles, see Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 79–84.
Not only is there no commentary of these particular mishnayot in the Talmudim—with the exception of tractate Niddah, there is no Gemara on the rest of the tractates of the order Tohorot—but they are also scarcely quoted in other contexts: see mKel 1:6 in ySheq 4:1 (47d), which is more concerned with the nature of the ʿomer than with that of the Land whence it is to be brought; mMiq 8:1 is quoted in yAZ 5:4(3) (44d), a text that deals with interactions between Jews and Samaritans.
For a detailed commentary, see A. Dubrau, Der Midrasch Sifre Zuta: Textgeschichte und Exegese eines spätantiken Kommentars zum Buch Numeri, Tübinger Judaistische Studien 2 (Berlin: LIT Verlag, 2017), 254–292.
See also in tKel BQ 1:12. On this three-camp scheme in the Qumran literature, see Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 76–78.
Goodman, ‘Sacred Space in Diaspora Judaism,’ 219. Here Goodman is concerned with the question of how synagogues in the Palestinian diaspora came to be perceived as holy, not necessarily contesting the holiness of the Temple, but conceiving of synagogues as parallel sacred spaces. A passage in the Babylonian Talmud identifies the small sanctuary in Ezek 11:16 with a synagogue in Babylonia. See bMeg 29a.
Parallels are transmitted in SifDev 29; yBer 4:5 (8c–d); bBer 30a; Tan Va-yishlach 33; TanB Va-yishlach 21; PesR 33:1. This is part of a broader system of worship the rabbis developed in response to the void after the destruction of the Temple, as Ruth Langer observes in ‘Turning to Jerusalem from the Exile: Jewish Liturgy’s Engagement with the Diaspora,’ chap. 3 in The Oxford Handbook of the Jewish Diaspora, ed. H.R. Diner (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 56. On the orientation of ancient synagogues, see L.I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2000), 326–330.
In some of the parallels the list is expanded upon with prooftexts or with more directions or degrees (e.g., the Yerushalmi text specifies that the Babylonians teach that one should pray facing the west; the Bavli adds the mercy seat). The order of the cardinal directions is different in the Palestinian and Babylonian texts. Appended to the list in the Yerushalmi, the Bavli, and the Pesiqta Rabbati texts is a statement by Rabbi Abin in which he argues exegetically, with the aid of Song 4:4, for the centre towards which all prayers should be directed. Langer, ‘Turning to Jerusalem,’ 56, points out that the Exile, as symbolised in this non-verbal element of the liturgy developed by the rabbis, is ‘more ritual and psychological than physical, as it seems not to have precluded occasional opportunities to pray in Jerusalem, even in this [the early rabbinic] period.’ Both the texts containing the lists of holy spaces and those containing the directions of prayer begin with the outermost space and culminate in the centre, i.e., they are oriented towards the centre. The inverse was true prior to the rabbinic period, as attested among the Qumran writings in the Temple Scroll. I thank Günter Stemberger for calling this to my attention. See H. Stegemann, ‘Das “Land” in der Tempelrolle und in anderen Texten aus dem Qumranfunden,’ in Das Land Israel in biblischer Zeit: Jerusalem Symposium 1981 der Hebräischen Universität und der Georg-August-Universität Goettingen, ed. G. Strecker (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 154–171; L.H. Schiffman, ‘Israel,’ in Encyclopedia of the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. J. Vanderkam and L.H. Schiffman, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 390.
See SifDev 29; yBer 4:5 (8c–d); PesR 33:1.
See Gafni, Land, 69–70.
‘And so you find regarding the ways of the Omnipresent, that what is precious [to Him] precedes [any other] of its kind.’
See Jastrow, Dictionary, s. v.
The image of the Torah as the spice of the Land is also stressed in a parallel tradition preserved in the late midrash Seder Eliyahu. The Land and the words that come from it are compared to the spice which gives the world its taste: ‘Another interpretation: … [yet their voice goes out through all the earth (kol ha-arets), and] to the end of the world (tevel) their words (Ps 19:5): This is the land of Israel, for it is the spice (tevel) of the world, for it is said, the first bits of soil of the world (tevel) (Prov 8:26)’ (SER 11).
The earliest interpretation of the table of the nations (Gen 10), ‘the basic “world map” of the Jews in the biblical and post-biblical periods’ is found in Jubilees. See P. Alexander, ‘Geography and the Bible: Early Jewish Geography,’ in Anchor Bible Dictionary, ed. D.N. Freedman, vol. 2 (New York: Doubleday, 1992), C.4. In this context, the expression
See Vos, Heiliges Land, 65.
As A.M. Sivertsev, Judaism and Imperial Ideology in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 65–66, argues, in rabbinic literature the foundation stone initially had a technical purpose (mYom 5:2): It played a role in the liturgical ceremony of Yom Kippur. Only from the Tosefta (tYom 2:14) onwards, do interpretations of the stone shift from the liturgical to the cosmological realm in the Talmudim (yYom 5:2 [42b]; bYom 54b), and to the religio-political in Tanchuma (TanB Qedoshim 10).
This is the verse the midrash seeks to explain. On the notion that a significant portion of rabbinic literature has a lemmatic arrangement, see Samely, Forms, ch. 1. The planting theme is especially salient in texts in which the Land is reflected upon in relation to the end time. Some of these texts are discussed in chapter 7.4.
See also PRE 35.
The sages imagine the stone as placed in front of the ark. According to mYom 5:2 a stone called shetiyah is located where the ark used to rest, before it was removed. It marks the ark’s former place.
e.g., mYom 5:2; yYom 5:2 (42c); bYom 54b; bSan 26b; Sem 1:1; PRE 10; PRE 35; MidTeh 91:7; Tan Pequde 3; BemR 12:4.
On the link between cosmology, geography, and politics in this text, see F. Böhl, ‘Über das Verhältnis von Shetija-Stein und Nabel der Welt in der Kosmogonie der Rabbinen,’ Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 124 (1974): 253–270; Alexander, ‘Jerusalem and the Omphalos of the World: On the History of a Geographical Concept’; and Sivertsev, Judaism and Imperial Ideology, 67–74. Rather than a continuation of the Hellenistic omphalos motif, Sivertsev views its treatment in Tanchuma as internalisation of a Roman imperial discourse of the sixth and seventh centuries.
This translation follows MS Oxford 151.
In TanB Be-haʿalotekha 20, which is also a midrash on Num 11:16, Rabbi Zebida states that the elders of Num 11:16 are one of thirteen things ‘written as belonging to the Holy One, blessed be He’, the last but one of which is the land of Israel. WayR 2:2, a midrash on Jer 31:20, has a list of twelve items to which Jerusalem has been added, and from which the Israelites have been removed.
The exegetical context determines that the list culminates with the mention of the priestly share. As will be shown below in several other texts the priestly portion is used metaphorically for a number of selections God made.
On the rabbinic interpretation of Lev 25:23, see chapter 5. The implication of permanence in the preposition li is also addressed in TanB Tetsavveh 9, where the tradition is attributed to Rabbi Mani in the name of Rabbi Eliezer.
While not in the context of a list, the Land’s chosenness is addressed at length in SifDev 40, which also interprets Deut 11:12.
At this point, the manuscript Friedlander uses adds another verse, which is not found in the other manuscripts and print editions, probably because it contests the praise of the Land suggested by the first one: ‘Another verse says, I said, I shall not see the Lord in the land of the living (Isa 38:11).’
On rabbinic others in general, see C. Hayes, ‘The “Other” in Rabbinic Literature,’ in The Cambridge Companion to the Talmud and Rabbinic Literature, ed. C.E. Fonrobert and M.S. Jaffee (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 243–269; specifically on this type of rabbinic other, see C. Cordoni, Seder Eliyahu: A Narratological Reading (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), ch. 5.
For the rabbinic elaboration on the biblical command to give offerings to the priest (Lev 22:10–16; Num 18:8–30; Deut 18:3–5), see A. Oppenheimer, ‘Terumot,’ in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, ed. M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik, vol. 19 (Detroit, MI: MacMillan Reference, 2007), 651–652.
Israel and Jerusalem are designated as priestly share or terumah and the rest of the selections are described with forms of p-r-sh (‘to choose, to select’).
The Land appears in plenty of lists apart from those mentioned here. Even if God’s choice is not explicitly described, most list texts presuppose this. So for example, a passage transmitted in the midrash Shemot Rabbah, in which the Land is mentioned not as belonging to God, but as one of his gifts to Israel, argues with reference to Exod 12:2 that just as the month of Nisan belongs to Israel, so do judgement, righteousness, Seventh Years and Jubilees, the rest of the commandments, blessings, the Land and the surrounding lands, the Torah, and Passover. See ShemR 15:23.
M. Jaffee, Early Judaism (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1997), 117–118, observes with respect to the change brought about by the destruction: ‘the Land retained a holiness in its soil, which distinguished it from any other spot on earth …. It is as if, with the destruction of the physical Temple, the Land and the People of Israel had themselves absorbed the invisible essence that constituted its holiness. Laws that once protected the holiness and purity of the Temple and its personnel were now applied to the territory and the people that the Temple had sanctified. … The rabbinic world embodied the Temple’s sanctity in the surviving realities of the Land and the People of Israel.’
These positions appear to be determined by the exegetical or otherwise structured thematic agenda. See SifDev 37 on the meaning of what comes or is mentioned first.
One could claim that the shorter the list, the higher the standing of the objects praised.
See Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 143–145.
C. Milikowsky, ‘Notions of Exile, Subjugation and Return in Rabbinic Literature,’ in Exile: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Conceptions, ed. J.M. Scott (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 284.
D. Frankel, ‘Toward a Constructive Jewish Biblical Theology of the Land,’ in Theology of the Hebrew Bible, ed. M.A. Sweeney, vol. 1: Methodological Studies (Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2019), 174.
See, e.g., Exod 12:25; 13:5 (passover); 13:11 (first-born); Lev 14:34 (leprous disease in the house); 19:23 (fruit of young trees or ʿorlah); 23:10 (first sheaf of the harvest or ʿomer); 25:2 (sabbath); Num 15:2 (sacrifice); Deut 6:1 (all the laws); 6:10 (worship of the one God); 7:1 (destruction of the gentiles); 11:29 (blessing and curse at Mount Ebal).
Harrington, ‘The Holy Land,’ 128. It is important to note, however, as Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 86, points out, that nowhere does Scripture restrict the observance of certain commandments to the land of Israel.
These commandments pertain to the first fruits or bikkurim (Exod 23:19; 34:26; Num 18:13; Deut 26:1–11), the dough-offering or challah (Num 15:17–21), the heave-offering or terumah (Num 18:8, 11–12, 25–32; Deut 18:4), the first tithe or maʿaser rishon (Num 18:21–32), the second tithe or maʿaser sheni (Deut 14:22–27; Lev 27:30–31), the prohibition against mixing species or kilʾayim (Lev 19:19; Deut 22:9–11), eating ʿorlah (Lev 19:23–25), and partaking of new grain or chadash (Lev 23:9–14). Whereas the listed precepts are related to the Temple’s cultic system, the raison d’être for other land-commandments is more evidently related to social justice. This is especially the case with the corner of the field or peʾah, gleanings or leket, and forgotten sheaves or shikhehah (Lev 19:9–10; 23:22; Deut 24:19–22), the Seventh Year or sheviʿit (Exod 23:10–11; Lev 25:1–7; Deut 15:1–3), and poor man’s tithe or maʿaser ʿani (Deut 26:12–15). As charges on the soil of the land of Israel, they are generally assumed to have come into force after the Israelites entered the Land. However, as discussed in chapter 2, according to several rabbinic traditions the commandments dependent on the Land—like the rest of the commandments—were effective prior to the entry, conquest, and division of the Land, namely, with its possession by the patriarchs.
Dubrau, ‘Heiligkeitskonzepte’, designates the two conceptions of land-sanctity with which early rabbinic literature operates as realistic (or essentialist, represented among other texts by mKel 1:6–9) and nominalistic (represented by mishnaic passages such as mHal 2:1–2 and tPar 3:5). While the first is associated with an almost ahistorical timeframe, the second is related to the observance of commandments in time, and therefore the sages themselves are more evidently involved in giving shape to it. He describes the contrast between these holiness models as follows: ‘Während erstere Konzeption einen nahezu ahistorischen Zustand voraussetzt, welcher nach rabbinischer Vorstellung mit der Offenbarung der Tora übermittelt wurde und in der Sammlung des Volkes Israel im heiligen Land in messianischer Zeit kulminiert, obliegt beispielsweise die Bindung der Heiligkeit an die Ausübung der mit dem Land verbundenen religiösen Gebote menschlichem Wirken und ist damit—im Gegensatz zur ersteren Konzeption—in weit größeren Maße von Entscheidungsprozessen der Rabbinen abhängig, welche in der rabbinischen Literatur im für die Rabbinen charakteristischen diskursiven Modus tradiert werden’ (147–148). It is in the context of discussions on the nominalistic concept of land-sanctity that a sort of rabbinic response to the changed historical situation after the revolts of the first and second centuries is palpable. The Babylonian Amoraic sages resort to such a historicising of the Land’s sanctity when they seek to minimize the Land’s character as the indisputable holy centre. See Dubrau, 163.
Some rabbinic traditions explicitly link the notion of land-sanctity to the land-commandments as an expression of the existence of the Temple and to the presence of the people of Israel in their land. Others argue otherwise: Thus, mBik 2:3 states that the laws of heave-offering and tithes are valid whether the Temple stands or not. As Stemberger, ‘Bedeutung,’ 179, points out, the maintenance of priests and Levites with priestly shares and tithes was difficult to justify once they were no longer in office. According to A. Oppenheimer, ‘Terumot and Maʿaserot,’ in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, vol. 19 (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference, 2007), 653, SifBem 116 can be read as evidence that after the destruction, tithing became one of the substitutes for the Temple’s sanctity, so that tithes went on to be separated for priests and Levites, even though their functions could no longer be exercised. On how the sages—who held the Land, Jerusalem, and its Temple as holy—reacted to the sanctification of other spaces by other groups within the boundaries of the Land, see E. Ben-Eliyahu, ‘The Rabbinic Polemic against Sanctification of Sites,’ Journal for the Study of Judaism 40 (2009): 260–281; E. Ben-Eliyahu, ‘Rabbinic Literature’s Hidden Polemic: Sacred Space in the World of the Sages,’ in Jerusalem and Other Holy Places as Foci of Multireligious and Ideological Confrontation, ed. P.B. Hartog et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2021), 25–49.
See Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 76–128, who notes that the land-dependent commandments constitute a ‘subject that seems simple, but is composed of an endless series of disputes’ (79).
See Z. Safrai, 96–112, for a detailed overview of all the positions with respect to this question, especially regarding tithes and heave-offerings. I focus on only a few texts.
The two statements at the beginning of the mishnah appear in the inverse order in Albeck’s edition: ‘Any religious duty that depends on the Land …; and any religious duty that does not depend on the Land …’. The MS Kaufmann version is followed in SifDev 44; 59; yQid 1:9 (61c). The order of the Albeck version is followed in the Babylonian Talmud; see below.
This is one of several taxonomies that the sages proposed for the commandments.
The world is also divided into two regions in the context of the laws of purity, whereby the sages contrast the purity of the land of Israel with the impurity of the land of the gentiles. See Z. Safrai, 79–84, 108. A tripartite division conceives of the Jewish world as consisting of the Land, Syria, and areas outside of the Land. See, e.g., mOrl 3:9.
While some of the texts to be discussed in what follows deal with the land-commandments in general, others focus on a specific one, whereby some commandments feature more prominently than others.
Thus, according to yShevi 6:1 (36b), the scriptural ‘good land’ (erets tov) to which Jephtah fled, and which is identified as Hippos (aram. Susita), derives its goodness from the fact that it is exempt from tithes. See also BerR 37:10. With respect to Hippos, Scythopolis (Beit Shean), and Eleutheropolis (Beit Guvrin), Z. Safrai, 119, 121, points out that they ‘were enclaves not regarded as part of the Land’, even though they are within the territory ‘resettled by those who went up from Babylonia’.
See Stemberger, ‘Bedeutung,’ 179.
See R.S. Sarason, ‘The Significance of the Land of Israel in the Mishnah,’ in The Land of Israel: Jewish Perspectives, ed. L.A. Hoffman (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1986), 126.
After the talmudic period, these commandments continued to raise questions on their significance for diaspora Jews and Jews living in urban centres, who were not involved in agriculture, whether in the Land or abroad. See J.E. David, ‘Nachmanides on Law’.
Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 116, interprets this mishnah as a rule summarising several precedents and concedes that not all of the precedents suited this rule as presented by the editor of the mishna.
In SifDev 61 combating idolatry is imagined as a land-commandment.
Scholars refer to the exegetical technique of midrash that consists in ‘parsing the verse up into its component phrases and then interpreting each one separately but according to a single consecutive logic,’ as D. Stern, ‘Anthology and Polysemy in Classical Midrash,’ chap. 6 in The Anthology in Jewish Literature, ed. D. Stern (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 131, describes it, as ‘atomisation’. Such a reading, as Samely, Forms, 65, writes, coordinates fragments or segments of Scripture with interpretive statements: ‘Scripture separates the rabbinic statements, and rabbinic statements separate the contiguous biblical sentences. The two texts subject each other to a mutual fragmentation or segmentation.’
The same distinction is made in SifDev 44, which also quotes mQid 1:9. Here Deut 11:18 is interpreted, and Torah study and the commandment to wear phylacteries are explained as personal commandments. See also MidTan 12:1 and yQid 1:9 (61c) par. yShevi 6:1 (36b) below.
Similarly, another passage of Sifre Devarim interprets ‘a land which the Lord your God looks after (doresh)’ (Deut 11:12) to mean that it is the exclusive ‘requirement’ (derishah) of this land that dough-offerings, heave-offerings, and tithes be separated therein. See SifDev 40.
See also SifDev 44.
See n. 46.
Lev 23:14 refers to ‘your dwellings’.
On the ‘laws given to Moses at Sinai’, see L. Jacobs, ‘Halakhah le-Moseh mi-Sinai,’ in Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd edition, ed. M. Berenbaum and F. Skolnik, vol. 8 (Detroit, MI: Macmillan Reference, 2007), 258.
The first clause of the mishnah, as quoted in the Talmud, deals with the land-dependent commandments. The first clause of the mishnah in MS Kaufmann deals with the commandments that are not land-dependent.
Following the typographical and conceptual distinction made by J.E. David, ‘Nachmanides on Law,’ 186, this amounts to transforming a subset of Land-dependent commandments (‘[l]aws whose practice is restricted to a designated territory’) into land-commandments (‘[l]aws which apply to a land with no concrete territorial limits’).
Unlike the attitude that references to the land-commandments in the writings of Philo and Josephus reveal—both fail to emphasise the exclusive link between these commandments and the Land—the Babylonian strategy may be described as an active one. See Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 86–90. As Safrai also points out, it is telling that this rabbinic strategy concerns the symbolic observance of some of the land-commandments, but never involves the more expensive land-commandments, such as Seventh Year or tithes (109). These remain prerogatives of the Land, again as far as rabbinic discourse rather than actual practice is concerned.
Other texts in the Babylonian Talmud take the observance of these commandments for granted, focusing instead on their implementation. See, e.g., bBer 36a–b.
For this distinction, the Talmud resorts to mOrlah 3:9: chadash is here the only prohibition for which there is a scriptural law; ʿorlah is based on a rabbinic ordinance, and kilʾayim on a ruling of the nameless scribes (soferim), whom the rabbis believed issued rulings in Second Temple times. This mishnah is also quoted in Sifra Emor parashah 10, pereq 11, which interprets Lev 23:14.
According to bSan 17b, this is a reference to Rachava of Pumbedita’s sons, Eifa and Avimi.
For Palestinian and Babylonian rabbis arguing over the prerogative of the land-commandments, see Herman, ‘Babylonia,’ 209–210. He adduces a passage in the Yerushalmi, which polemicises against Babylonia with a midrash on a scriptural name for Babylonia, ‘Shinear (Gen 11:2), because they are stripped of commandments, without heave-offering and without tithes’ (yBer 4:1 [7b]), and a passage in Avot deRabbi Nathan, which claims that the observance of land-commandments in Babylonia goes back to the time of the prophets: ‘Another interpretation: they made me keeper of the vineyards, but my own vineyard I have not kept! (Song 1:6). These are to Israel who [at the time they] were exiled to Babylon the prophets in their midst arose and said to them, Set aside heave-offerings and tithes! They said to them, We were all exiled from our land only because we did not set aside heave-offerings and tithes. And now you tell us to set aside heave-offerings and tithes! Hence it is said, They made me keeper of the vineyards, but mine own vineyard have I not kept’ (ARN A 20).
This is more evident with respect to chadash and kilʾayim than to ʿorlah.
In a similar vein, an anonymous statement on the precept of liberating slaves, a precept apparently valid exclusively in the Land, reads: ‘When liberation is in force in the Land, it is in force without; when it is not in force in the Land, it is not in force without’ (bQid 38b).
See Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 117. Elsewhere, in a discussion that touches on the land-commandments, the Bavli does not insist on the similarities, but rather on the differences between the Land and Babylonia. Thus we read in bShab 119a that the rich in the Land are deserving because they tithe, whereas the rich in Babylonia are deserving because they observe the Sabbath. See Z. Safrai, 97–98. The problem of the land of Israel as the exclusive location where all the commandments can be observed is also addressed in the Babylonian Talmud, in a context unrelated to the land-commandments, e.g., in the following exposition by Rabbi Simlai: ‘Why did Moses our teacher desire to enter the land of Israel? Did he need to eat of its fruit or did he need to satisfy himself from its goodness? Rather, thus Moses said, Israel were commanded many precepts which can only be fulfilled in the land of Israel. So shall I enter the land so they can all be fulfilled by me. The Holy One, blessed be He, said to him, Do you desire only the reward? I will consider as if you had performed them, for it is said, Therefore I will allot him a portion with the great, and he shall divide the spoil with the strong; because he poured out himself to death, and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors (Isa 53:12)’ (bSotah 14a).
This commandment is explained in Lev 25:1–7.
The same areas are distinguished by Rabban Gamaliel in mHal 4:8 with respect to another land-commandment, challah. This seems to suggest that the borders of the Land, as it was resettled by the Judean returnees were understood as valid for the rest of the land-commandments. In mChal 4:8, the historical rationale for the distinction between the first two areas is not spelt out. A description of the Land as comprising three countries (Judea, Transjordan, and Galilee) in the rabbinic present is found elsewhere, in Mishnah tractate Sheviʿit, i.e., in connection with the Seventh Year (mShevi 9:2), but also with marriage laws (mKet 13:10) and usucaption laws (mBB 3:2). Parallels are found in SifDev 51; tChal 2:11; tTer 2:12; bGit 8a. See also SifDev 180. In certain bipartite divisions of the Jewish world, which contrast the Land with the space outside of the Land, Transjordan is at times regarded as outside of the Land. Thus, according to Rabbi Jose the Galilean, no first fruits are brought from Transjordanian produce because it is not a land flowing with milk and honey. See mBik 1:10 par. SifDev 301. See also SifDev 299; Sifra Metsoraʿ parashah 5:1–2. A further division of the world inhabited by Jews distinguishes the Land, Syria, and outside of the Land, whereby Syria has a sort of intermediate status. See Stemberger, ‘Bedeutung,’ 182–183; Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 113–115; and below, chapter 5.2.
Kezib corresponds to Akhzib of Judg 1:31 and is assumed to have been located a little to the south of the present northern border of the State of Israel. See Stemberger, ‘Bedeutung,’ 181. For other texts in which Kezib is mentioned as a border city, see Reeg, Ortsnamen, 174–176. Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 118–121, points out that the identification of the area occupied by those who went up from Babylon with the territory resettled after the Exile is problematic when the testimony of the books of Ezra and Nehemiah is adduced. Here the resettled territory is even smaller than that described in the Mishna. Safrai argues that the rabbis did not consider the area reconquered by those who went up from Babylonia in historical terms, but saw therein a reference to the area settled by Jews in their own time.
It is not clear from the mishnaic wording whether ‘the River’ is a border in the south, e.g., the river of Egypt, or in the north—such as the Amanah, which tends to be identified with the Taurus Amanus mountain range—, or whether it is a reference to the Euphrates in the north-east. See Dauphin, ‘Interdits Alimentaires et Territorialité en Palestine Byzantine,’ 153. On the possible identifications of Amanah, see Zevin and Bar-Ilan, ‘Erets Israel,’ 207; O. Keel, M. Küchler, and C. Uehlinger, Geographisch-geschichtliche Landeskunde, vol. 1 of Orte und Landschaften der Bibel: Ein Handbuch und Studienreiseführer zum Heiligen Land (Zürich: Benziger, 1984), 263; Reeg, Ortsnamen, 511–512, 580–581; Ben-Eliyahu, Identity and Territory, 94–95.
There are two comprehensive maps of the land of Canaan in Scripture: Num 34:1–12 (with a description of the land given to Moses) and Deut 11:24 (with broader boundaries). The other scriptural boundary texts follow one of these two models. The first is reflected in Jos 13:4 and Ezek 47, the second in Gen 15:18 and other texts. On the different descriptions of the territory of the land promised to Abraham and conquered by the Israelites after the Exodus, see M. Saebø, ‘Grenzbeschreibung und Landideal im Alten Testament: Mit besonderer Berücksichtigung der min-ʿad-Formel,’ Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins 90 (1974): 14–37; Weinfeld, Promise of the Land, ch. 3; Keel, Küchler, and Uehlinger, Orte und Landschaften der Bibel, 206–288; Z. Kallai, Historical Geography of the Bible: The Tribal Territories of Israel (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986); E.A. Knauf, Josua, Zürcher Bibelkommentar AT 6 (Zürich: Theologischer Verlag, 2008), 10–12. One might expect that exegetical midrashim on the book of Numbers would address the boundaries passage in Num 34, but this is the case neither in Sifre Bemidbar nor in Bemidbar Rabbah.
See T. Arieli and A. Israel-Vleeschhouwer, ‘Borders and Bordering in Jewish Geopolitical Space,’ Geopolitics 24, no. 4 (2019): 974, who observe: ‘both these borders are simplifications of multiple borders, which existed over time. Each legal border was chosen or devised from multiple relevant borders from each era.’
See also Deut 1:7; 11:24–25; Josh 1:4. See Stemberger, ‘Bedeutung,’ 181. This idea of the Land is also referred to as ‘Euphratic Israel’. See Vos, ‘Land’.
Sivan, Palestine in Late Antiquity, 247, speaks of an ‘elastic concept’; for a geopolitical perspective on the elasticity of borders in Jewish thought, see Arieli and Israel-Vleeschhouwer, ‘Borders and Bordering’. They point out that the adaptability which Jewish rabbinic perceptions of borders and bordering processes reveal ‘stands in contrast to common perceptions of religion as a rigid system of regulations, closed borders and socially homogeneous spaces ignoring contemporary realities.’ See also S. Safrai, ‘The Land of Israel in Tannaitic Halacha,’ in Das Land Israel in biblischer Zeit: Jerusalem Symposium 1981, ed. G. Strecker (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1983), 201–215; M. Bar-Ilan, ‘Why did the Tannaim discuss the Border of Eretz Israel?’ [In Hebrew], Teuda 7 (1991): 95–110. The rabbis also discuss the need to adjust the land-commandments in the context of the obligation to keep the land in Jewish hands; see chapter 5. On the introduction of the very name Erets Israel as a territorial strategy, a way of setting borders in the aftermath of the Bar Kokhba revolt, Yuval, ‘Myth of the Jewish Exile,’ 24, observes: ‘In the Bible, the ‘land of Israel’ refers to the Kingdom of Israel, as distinct from the ‘Land of Judaea’ which refers to the Kingdom of Judaea. Calling the two kingdoms by the same name, Eretz-Yisrael, brought with it a change in territorial extent, for the country now comprised not only Judaea but also the coastal plain, the central mountains, the Galilee, and perhaps even part of Transjordan. In this way, the refugees from Judaea made the Galilee their country—a part of Eretz-Yisrael—and thus sought to overcome the feeling that they were refugees in their own land. This move may also have been a Jewish answer to a parallel move in the opposite direction by the Romans, who used the name ‘Syria Palaestina’ after the Bar-Kokhba rebellion with the intention of obscuring the Jewish character of the country.’
See Stemberger, ‘Bedeutung,’ 179, who points out that while the Temple still stood, the Roman administration would concede Jews a remission on their tax in the Seventh Years, when the land lay fallow, but this was no longer the case after the Bar Kokhba revolt.
See Milikowsky, ‘Notions of Exile,’ 282. By the same token, neither does mQid 1:9 explicitly characterise the land-commandments as establishing the borders of a holy land.
Milikowsky, 282.
Not only in this mishnah, but also in other texts related to it, these place names are mentioned as indicative of boundaries. For example, in bGit 8a we read that the area of the sea within a line stretching from the Amanus (turei amnon) to the Brook of Egypt (nachal mitsrayim) belongs to the land of Israel.
However, the idea that Kezib itself marks the northern border of the land of Israel is relativised in mGit 1:2, tOhal 18:14; yShevi 6:1 (36c); bGit 7b.
The redactor of Sifre Devarim seems to have sought to simplify the geographical information in this mishnah: ‘every place of the land of Israel seized those who came up from Babylonia up to Keziv [produce] is not eaten and [the land] is not worked; [by] those who came up from Egypt [produce] is eaten, but [land] is not worked. Elsewhere (lit. ‘hither and thither’) [produce] is eaten [land] worked’ (SifDev 51).
Sivan, Palestine in Late Antiquity, 259.
Y. Sussman, ‘The Inscription in the Synagogue at Rehov,’ in Ancient Synagogues Revealed, ed. L.I. Levine (Jerusalem: Israel Exploration Society, 1982), 151. There is plenty of literature on the baraita, and especially on this version of the Rechov inscription, because it is the earliest textual witness of rabbinic literature that we have. See A. Neubauer, La Géographie du Talmud (Paris: Michel Lévy frères, 1868); S. Klein, ‘Das tannaitische Grenzverzeichnis Palästinas,’ Hebrew Union College Annual 5 (1928): 197–259; Y. Sussman, ‘A Halakhic Inscription from the Beth Shean Valley’ [in Hebrew], Tarbiz 43 (1973–1974): 88–158; S. Lieberman, ‘The Halakhic Inscription from the Beth Shean Valley’ [in Hebrew], Tarbiz 45 (1975–1976): 54–63; Y. Sussman, ‘The Boundaries of Eretz Israel’ [in Hebrew], Tarbiz 45 (1975–1976): 213–257, E. Stern and M. Avi-Yonah, eds., Encyclopaedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land, 4 vols. (London: Oxford University Press, 1975–1978), vol. 3:1273–1274; Z. Safrai, ‘Israel’s Borders as Regards Halakhic Issues’ [in Hebrew], in Jubilee Volume in Honor of Moreinu Hagaon Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, ed. S. Israel, N. Lamm, and Y. Raphael (Jerusalem: Mossad ha-Rav Kuk, 1984), 1097–119; C. Dauphin, Catalogue, vol. 3 of La Palestine Byzantine: Peuplement et Populations (Oxford: Archaeopress, 1998), 785–786; A. Demsky, ‘Holy City and Holy Land as Viewed by Jews and Christians in the Byzantine Period: A Conceptual Approach to Sacred Space,’ in Sanctity of Time and Space in Tradition and Modernity, ed. A. Houtman, M. Poorthuis, and J. Schwartz (Leiden: Brill, 1998), 285–296; C.B. David, ‘The Rehov Inscription: A Galilean Halakhic Text Formula?,’ in Halakhah in Light of Epigraphy, ed. A.I. Baumgarten (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2011), 231–240; Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 122–127. For an examination of the linguistic implications of the inscription, see S.D. Fraade, ‘Language Mix and Multilingualism in Ancient Palestine: Literary and Inscriptional Evidence,’ Jewish Studies 48 (2012): 34–35, who sees the inscription as an expression not only of a regional, but also of a ‘linguistic patriotism’; see also S.D. Fraade, ‘The Rehov Inscriptions and Rabbinic Literature: Matters of Language,’ in Talmuda De-Eretz Israel: Archaeology and the Rabbis in Late Antique Palestine, ed. S. Fine and A. Koller (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2014), 225–238; J. Price, ‘Jewish Multilingualism in the Galilee: The Evidence of Inscriptions,’ in On Jewish Multilingualism in Late Antiquity, ed. L.V. Rutgers and C. Cordoni (forthcoming).
Klein, ‘Grenzverzeichnis,’ 238–241, suggested a time around 20 BCE; R. Frankel and I. Finkelstein, ‘The Northeastern Corner or Eretz Israel in the Baraita “Boundaries of Eretz Israel” ’ [in Hebrew], Cathedra 27 (1983): 39–46, suggested the time of Alexander Jannaeus’ rule.
See Stemberger, ‘Bedeutung,’ 182, as well as Sussman, ‘Inscription’. Shorter ways of referring to the extension of the Land as a space where the halakh is observed are found in mGit 1:2 (Rabbi Judah bar Ilai defines what constitutes the East, the South, and the North); SifBem 116 (eating holy things ‘within the borders [bigevulim]’ is said to be equivalent to service in the sanctuary); tOhal 18:14–15 (addressing the question of which side is the land of Israel and which is the land of the gentiles when one walks from Akko to Keziv).
See Keel, Küchler, and Uehlinger, Orte und Landschaften der Bibel, 275; Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 125–126, in whose view the baraita’s ‘definition of the details of the boundaries is from the Usha generation, or at the earliest from the late Yavne generation, and there is no evidence of preoccupation with this topic in earlier periods.’ One strategy with which the Babylonian Talmud imagines Babylonia as an alternative land of Israel is the demarcation of the territory in Babylonia where Jews are of ‘pure descent’. See A. Oppenheimer and M. Lecker, ‘The Genealogical Boundaries of Jewish Babylonia,’ in Between Rome and Babylon: Studies in Jewish Leadership and Society, ed. N. Oppenheimer (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 330–355. For further such strategies, see Herman, ‘Babylonia,’ 209–210.
Sivan, Palestine in Late Antiquity, 255.
Although text follows the tradition in Num 34 and the Targum on Num 34, as Sivan, 248, observes, the map the baraita describes corresponds neither to the biblical map of Num 34, nor the promised land of the Exodus, nor the Persian province Yehud, ‘but rather reflected the extent of contiguous Jewish settlements in late antiquity’. See B.-Z. Rosenfeld, Torah Centers and Rabbinic Activity in Palestine, 70–400 CE: History and Geographic Distribution, Supplements to the Journal for the Study of Judaism 138 (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 39–40, who interprets the baraita’s borders as a delineation of ‘the geographic region in which Jews lived and in which the sages were active during the mishnaic and talmudic periods.’ Topographical lists are also one of the characteristic biblical genres which provide detailed information on the geography of the land of Israel. Alexander, ‘Geography and the Bible: Early Jewish Geography,’ D.5, notes an evolution in rabbinic literature from simple formulae that define wide borders following the biblical Euphratic Israel or Nile-to-Euphrates boundary text Gen 15:18–21, to more precise definitions that established a more realistic territory for the land of Israel. For the rabbinic elaboration on the biblical borders, see Zevin and Bar-Ilan, ‘Erets Israel,’ 205–209.
With Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 126–127, this focus may also be described as one of several roughly contemporary discursive strategies to expand of the Land’s borders beyond the administrative borders of the Roman province.
As Gafni, Land, 115, points out, commenting on bQid 71b, the imperative of knowing the borders of the Land, as represented by these Palestinian texts, has a counterpart in the Babylonian engagement in similar descriptions of Jewish Babylonia’s geographical borders.
The following difference between the two mishnayot commented upon in the text quoted above should be noted: Unlike mQid 1:9, mShevi 6:1 explicitly links the observance of the land-commandments to events in the biblical history of Israel.
Unlike the mishnah upon which this text expands, in which the immigrants are referred to with ‘those who went up from Babylonia’ and ‘those who went up from Egypt’—from outside of the Land, as it were—the deixis of the wording chosen by the Yerushalmi’s redactors, ‘their coming’, suggests the speaker’s identification with the place towards which the immigrants moved.
e.g., ‘your possession’, ‘on you is the yoke of a kingdom’.
On the rabbinic interpretation of the biblical ‘all’, see A. Samely, Rabbinic Interpretation of Scripture in the Mishnah (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 243–247.
On this idea of a more perfect territorial fulfilment at the end of time, see chapter 7.4.
See tEd 3:3; tSotah 13:1; tMen 11:10.
There is no Gemara on this anomalous Mishnah tractate in the Yerushalmi or the Bavli.
See bShevu 16a; bMeg 10a; bZev 60b; bZev 107b; bMak 19a; bTem 21a.
E.g., bAr 32b. As Milikowsky, ‘Notions of Exile,’ 285, observes, it appears that a semantic shift concerning ‘first sanctity’ occurred in the Babylonian Talmud, probably in the later stages of the Talmud’s composition and redaction. This may be inferred from the fact that most of the passages addressing the first holiness are found in the Talmud’s anonymous later layer.
E.g., bHag 3b. par. bYev 16a; bHul 6b–7a.
See Milikowsky, 283.
The cities mentioned are: ‘the old castle of Sepphoris; the fortress of Gush-Chalab, old Yodpat, Gamala, Gadwad, Chadid, Ono, Jerusalem, and the like.’
On this discussion as evidence for the sages’ theoretical interest in the ancient geography of the Land for halakhic purposes, but with no background in reality, see Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 153–157.
This second position attributed to Rabbi Ishmael ben Jose is transmitted in a tannaitic text, tAr 5:16, which does not use the expression ‘first sanctification’.
The walled cities are mentioned as the last item on the list in order to draw attention to them, given that the mishnah the Gemara expands upon is about walled cities. The choice of the other two commandments may be traced back to the Palestinian text with which this passage appears to be closely intertextually related, SOR 30 (see below). Here three land-commandments (tithes, Seventh Year, and Jubilees) are mentioned as having been reestablished with the resettlement in Ezra’s times. Milikowsky, ‘Notions of Exile,’ 289, proposes the following answer to the question of the specific selection of land-commandments: If only the three land-commandments mentioned here became obligatory when Israel returned under Ezra, then this must mean that the rest of the land-commandments ‘never became non-obligatory. In other words, the destruction of the First Temple and the exile of the people of Israel to Babylon only caused the abrogation of these three commandments, tithes, sabbatical years and jubilee years—and therefore they had to be renewed at the time of the second entry.’
See mYad 4:3. This mishnah is part of a chapter in the tractate that includes digressions that expand upon previous mishnayot with similar wording. The mishnayot in mYad 4:1–4 all contain the phrase ‘on that day’ from mYad 3:5 and preserve traditions passed on on the day when Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah was appointed head of the rabbinic academy in Yavneh. See Cohen, Goldenberg, and Lapin, Oxford Annotated Mishnah, 938.
H.W. Guggenheimer, ed. and trans., The Jerusalem Talmud: First Order; Zeraïm; Tractates Maʿaser Šeni, Ḥallah, ʿOrlah and Bikkurim (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2003), 656n92, points out that in rabbinic literature ‘ “Ammon and Moab” stands for all of Transjordan, including the earlier territories of the tribes Reuben and Gad but excluding the Golan heights which were settled in the times of the return from Babylon.’
For the concept of ‘governing voice’, see A. Samely, Profiling Jewish Literature in Antiquity: An Inventory, from Second Temple Texts to the Talmuds (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), ch. 2.
Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 90–92, discusses this mishnah and mChal 4:10–11 as evidence for the practice of land-commandments outside of the Land in the first century, though he concludes that ‘in the late Second Temple period the Land-commandments were already recognized as a distinct category, but there was no uniform opinion as to whether they applied outside of the Land.’
This narrative has a parallel in tSot 7:9–12, which makes reference to the location of the Yavnean house of study. See Lapin, Rabbis as Romans, 77–78.
It is due to the figurative wording of their answer, ‘from your waters we drink’, that the passage is transmitted here as part of an elaboration on Gen 37:24, ‘the pit was empty; there was no water in it’.
The reading follows many of the textual witnesses.
In the parallel in bYev 16a, instead of this rhetorical question, we have the introductory formula ‘for the master said’.
For a parallel, see tYad 2:16.
In yShevi 6:1 (36c), we read that the rulings pertaining to ‘Ammon and Moab are not from Rabbi Eleazar ben Azariah’.
As Milikowsky, ‘Notions of Exile,’ 282, points out that, while there is no explicit mention of tithing in this passage, tithing can be inferred both from the context in the Babylonian Talmud, and from a parallel in the Yerushalmi. In yDem 2:1 (22c), Rabbi Meir buys vegetables in Beth Shean during the Seventh Year, whereupon Rabbi declares Beth Shean exempt from the land-commandments. He also exempts Caesarea, Beit Guvrin, and Kefar Zemach, areas which thus become enclaves within the Land where the land-commandments are not observed. On the exemption from tithe as transforming a region into one ‘outside of the Land’, see Z. Safrai, Seeking out the Land, 112–114. On these cities as hybrid spaces that required nuanced treatment, see Arieli and Israel-Vleeschhouwer, ‘Borders and Bordering,’ 975–978.
This is a peculiar verse, given his apparent argument. The entire first chapter in the book of Judges addresses the fact that the conquest of Canaan remains unfinished.
The first and second statements are actually linked with the following wording: ‘because’ (bHag 3b), ‘and he holds that’ (bHul 7a), ‘and’ (bYev 16a).
MS Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, 2298 [1544] reads beqidush instead of bechidush: ‘Just as the possession of your fathers implies the sanctification of all these things, so also your possession implies the sanctification of all these things.’
See C. Milikowsky, ed., Seder Olam: Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary [in Hebrew], 2 vols. (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben-Zvi, 2013). Compared to the tannaitic corpora (Mishnah, Tosefta, and the halakhic midrashim), Seder ʿOlam Rabbah is anomalous, especially with respect to its arrangement.
In yShevi 6:1, which expands on a mishnah on the Seventh Year, no specific land-commandment is explicitly mentioned as established with the two possessions. In SOR 30 it is tithes, years of release, and Jubilees; in bAr 32b it is years of release and Jubilees. Milikowsky, ‘Notions of Exile,’ 289–290, argues that the specific land-commandments mentioned in SOR 30 do not function as a synecdoche for all the land-commandments, but instead that these are the only ones which needed to be reestablished or renewed because they depend on a communal counting of the years, which is not possible when the people are not in the Land. In Milikowsky’s view, SOR 30 implies that the rest of the land-commandments remained in force during the time of the Exile, and that they are not related to a contingent land-sanctity—a notion that is stressed in the Bavli passages discussed above.
One exegetical tradition related to these texts, which makes use of different terminology and also alludes to a third instance of possession, is the following midrash transmitted in TanB Shofetim 10: ‘and one-third shall be left alive (Zech 13:8): they shall only settle in their land in a third deliverance. The first deliverance was the deliverance from Egypt. The second was the deliverance of Ezra. The third has no interruption.’
With the exception of the reading in MS Parma. See above, n. 131.
See Milikowsky, Seder Olam.
At times the observance of the land-commandments is even predicated on the patriarchs. See chapter 2.1.5.
SOR could be added to these texts. While according to scholarly consensus this is a tannaitic text, the question when Seder ʿOlam was redacted may still be open to debate.