Rashi brings the following fascinating answer from the Midrash: “The women of Israel were in possession of mirrors, which they used when they beautified themselves, and even these they did not withhold from donating to the Tabernacle. And Moshe rejected them, for they are made to serve the evil inclination. God said to him: ‘Accept them, for these are dearer to me than all the rest, for it is with them that the women raised many congregations [this is the meaning of 'the women who congregate' in the verse] in Egypt. When their husbands were tired from their labors, the women would go and bring them food and drink and feed them, and bring the mirrors with them, and each one would look at herself and her husband in the mirror and tempt him, and say ‘I am prettier than you’, and thereby arouse their husbands’ desire for them, and they would be together, and the women conceived, and gave birth …’. And the sink was made of them, for its function is to make peace between husband and wife, by giving water from it to the woman suspected by her jealous husband of having been unfaithful [during a ritual known as the 'Sotah' ceremony].”

Moshe’s argument with God is interesting. Moshe objects to using the mirrors in the Tabernacle because he sees them as serving the evil inclination; women use them in order to put on their make up, to make themselves beautiful. God does not contradict Moshe; that is, basically, what the mirrors were for. However, he points out that the evil inclination is also the mechanism which creates, ultimately, human beings, and specifically, against all odds, a Jewish people. The husbands, enslaved in Egypt, were crushed, beaten, and therefore unable and unwilling to reach out to another human being, and certainly unable to imagine a future for people as yet unborn. The wives, using the engine of the evil inclination, manage to do both - reach out to and interact with their husbands, and, thereby, create a future for the seemingly defeated Jewish people.

To better understand the difference of opinion between Moshe and God, I think we should look at the specifics of what Moshe saw in these mirrors, and what God saw in them. Moshe objected to them as being unfit for inclusion in the Tabernacle. What he saw, according to Rashi, was mirrors in which women looked at themselves when applying their makeup, an essentially narcissistic behavior. God, on the other hand, was focusing on a different mirror, a mirror in which there were two people, a wife and a husband, playfully celebrating each other’s beauty. The “I am more beautiful than you” line which the wives used in this story, takes the inherent narcissism and self-absorption of a woman at her vanity table applying makeup, and cleverly turns it into a way to communicate, to reach out to another person. God is of the opinion that the mirrors, the token of that interaction, are precisely, more than anything else ["these are dearer to me than all the rest"], what belongs in the Temple.

Just as the food and drink which the women brought to their husbands represent a communication, an offering, and, therefore, a sanctification of sorts of the physical - something which is uniquely appropriate to the Temple - so, too, the way the mirrors are used in the story in Egypt represent a sanctification of the sexual. They represent an intimacy which brings strength, joy, and comfort to one’s partner. An intimacy in which one reaches out to another individual, and beyond, to unborn generations. The question, “what do you see when you look in the mirror?” is a question about how we understand our physical selves. Moshe’s answer is not wrong; when all I see when I look in the mirror is a physicality (and therefore a sexuality) that is essentially about oneself and one’s own pleasure - as symbolized by a person looking at herself and only herself in the mirror - that is ‘the evil inclination’, and should be rejected. God, on the other hand, sees the women who, when they looked in the mirror, saw not only themselves but, rather, saw themselves in relationship to another. God, therefore, wants the Temple to celebrate that; a physicality and a sexuality that is about two people, that is, in fact, about many people - ‘congregations’, the progeny of an intimate relationship between two individuals.

When the women congregate at the entrance of the Meeting Tent and offer these same mirrors, they are again attempting to use the physical in order to achieve spiritual goals. The fact that, in the Temple ritual, the sink acts as a mediator between a couple that has lapsed into a mode of jealousy and suspicion (when the waters of the sink are used as part of the ’sotah’ ritual which can reunite the two), makes the choice of the mirrors for its construction particularly appropriate. It is by seeing themselves together in these mirrors, as a couple, as their foremothers and forefathers did in Egypt, and not as separate individuals with separate, narcissistic desires and needs, that the troubled couple may find peace, and be reunited.

Be careful with the authorities because they only become close to a person for their own benefit They befriend when it helps them but do not stand up for you when things are difficult. (Avot 2:3)

We can easily understand a directive to exercise caution regarding politicians. Those with excessive ambition or a lust for power often rise to political prominence. They kiss babies and dispense warm handshakes when in need of support but do not truly care for their constituents. The seat of power may exert a corrupting influence even on those beginning their careers with nobler motivations.

How does this mishna relate the earlier mishna in which Shemaya instructed his students “not to make themselves known to the government” (Avot 1:10). In theory, we could understand Shemaya as adopting a more sweepingly negative position. Whereas one mishnah speaks only of caution, Shemaya advocated avoiding the authorities at all costs.

In truth, the two mishnayot need not conflict. According to one interpretation in Avot deRabbi Natan (11:3), Shemaya speaks of keeping a low profile. Those with wealth should not flaunt it because word will reach the halls of power and dukes and governors will soon attempt to avail themselves of the riches. Of course, Shemaya realizes that some situations call for interacting with the government. When called for, we engage with politicians but do so with a vigilant eye.

Tosafot Yom Tov explicitly states that the two mishnayot do not contradict each other. Shemaya never denied the great service that court Jews such as Mordechai and R. Yehuda Hanasi offered to Am Yisrael. The former’s work with Achashverosh helped save the Jewish people and the latter cultivated an important friendship with a Roman emperor. Shemaya would not think them mistaken; he would applaud their efforts.

An important theme emerges. Difficult and potentially dangerous endeavors can be necessary. Numerous sermons regarding the evils of politics do not change the fact that one can make a positive difference in the houses of power. We proceed with caution but proceed nonetheless.

Last time, I finally offered my one-paragraph version of the mission. From here, there are really only three pieces of the project left: I want to deal with two aspects of Judaism that are clearly not vital to the mission and yet complicate our understanding of what we mean by Orthodoxy (or any other expression of Judaism) and then show how our understanding of the mission highlights ways in which Jews, as individuals and as communities, structure their lives so as to lose sight of the mission, of the central and focal aspects of what it means to be Jewish.

Before I get there, though, I need to deal with a complaint registered by readers of an earlier draft of these pieces. They noted that I have failed to include the obligation to live in Israel as part of the mission of Orthodoxy, an odd omission for someone with strong positive feelings towards both the Land and the State of Israel. For what we might call a card-carrying Zionist, wouldn’t living in Israel seem to be part of the mission?

To explain why my answer to that question is ‘no,’ let me start by noting that the historical phenomenon of Zionism has obscured an important unequivocal truth of the religion (although, as we will see, not necessarily a mission-shaping one). When Zionism began, some time in the late 19th century, many of its leading figures were nonobservant Jews, who came to their attachment to a Jewish homeland in ways that were not obviously or directly related to Torah and its values.

Even as some leaders of observant Jewry came to embrace the phenomenon despite its downsides, forming what we call Religious Zionism, many and probably most others felt that observant Jews should not join in this movement in any way. We can feel what we want about that—and my 20/20 hindsight can say what it wants, but I have no certainty as to what I would have done had I lived then—but that set of events and discussions is irrelevant to our sense of the Jewish importance of living in Israel.

None of those rabbis denied the great value Judaism places on living in Israel (as we will see today); the debate at the time—and continuing today, in a different way—was on whether it was the time to make a major push to go back to Israel, on the propriety of cooperating with the nonreligious, and other related issues. It is for that reason, for example, that the State of Israel today sees more and more “right-wing” Jews living there; now that the framework has been established, it becomes clearer all the time that an important part of a fully-lived Jewish life is residence in the Land.

Importance Need Not Indicate Mission

Let us review some of how we know about the value the religion places on living in Israel, so that my explanation of why I do not see it as unequivocally part of the mission of a Jewish life is not confused with devaluing the experience of living in Israel. Most prominently, it seems to me, is that the Torah revolves to a large degree around getting to the Land of Israel. Avraham is promised that his descendants will inherit the Land, the ultimate goal of the Jews’ travels after the Exodus is reaching the Land, and Moshe Rabbenu prays vigorously for the revoking of his punishment of exclusion from the Land.

There is also firm halachic evidence for the significance of living in Israel. In an example that is probably meant to stay theoretical, Ketubbot 110b and Shulchan Aruch Even haEzer 75;3-4 are clear that one spouse’s insistence on moving to Israel is grounds for a divorce with financial prejudice. That means, barring any sense that the partner pushing for aliyah is acting fraudulently, a wife can coerce the husband to divorce her and pay her ketubba if he refuses to go to Israel and vice verse, he can divorce her without paying it if she refuses to go. I stress again, this is only if the immigrating spouse is honestly interested in moving to Israel and that the Gemara is not necessarily espousing divorce for those purposes. Technically, though, that is a sufficient cause for divorce with financial prejudice.

If that is a version of the importance of Israel we would hope not to see put into practice, Ramban states the matter more simply. Noting that Rambam omits a mitzva to live in Israel from his list of 613 commandments, Ramban adds it in his collection of “forgotten obligations.” No. 4 reads, in relevant excerpts and my rough translation, “…it is a mitzva in all generations incumbent upon the individual even in a time of Exile.” As is well-known, Ramban made his way to Israel towards the end of his life, a fulfillment of the mitzva as he saw it.

But Rambam Didn’t See It That Way

The challenging view here is not Ramban’s, since he has and cites many sources, Scriptural and Talmudic. Rather, the question is why it is that Rambam omitted the mitzva. This is especially problematic since Rambam includes many of those same sources at the end of his Mishneh Torah. In the fifth chapter of Laws of Kings, he reviews the laws of מלחמת מצוה, obligatory wars, and of the prohibition to live in Egypt (a continuing puzzle, since he himself lived there for most of his adult life).

He closes the chapter by writing (again, in my translation):

Par. 9: It is always forbidden to leave Israel, other than to study Torah, to marry a wife, or to salvage property and then to return… or …a business trip, but to live outside… is prohibited unless there was a dire famine…

Par. 10: The great Sages would kiss the borders of the Land of Israel and kiss its stones and roll in its dirt…

Par. 11: The Sages said whoever lives in the Land, his sins are wiped away…even if he walks four cubits in it [he] merits life in the World to Come, and so, too, one who is buried there…but there is no comparison to where the Land absorbs…while alive to…after he has passed away…

Par. 12: A person should always live in the Land of Israel, even in a city that is majority idol-worshippers, rather than outside of the Land, even in a city that is majority Jewish, since anyone who leaves to outside the Land is as if he worships idols, as Scripture says [recording David’s complaint, I Samuel 26;19, about Saul’s chasing him, which forced him to flee the Land], “for they have expelled me this day from staying in the inherited land of God, saying go worship other gods” [implying that having been forced out of Israel was identical to being told to worship other gods].

Rambam’s including these ideas shows that he did not dismiss the Talmudic discussions as a lone or rejected opinion, but challenges us (and many who have come before us) to understand why he did not, therefore, include it as a mitzva.

Some suggested—and Ramban seems to have understood Rambam this way, since he goes out of his way to explain why he disagrees—that Rambam thought the commandment to live in Israel was only for the generation that first conquered it, even as its importance remained throughout history. It seems odd, though, that Rambam would recognize such significance to living in Israel and yet not accept its mitzva status. Possibly, this is just a technical matter, that he did not think the verses that Ramban cited established a continuing commandment.

I am, myself, more attracted to another possibility that my rosh yeshiva, R. Amital (among many others), suggested in my time in Yeshivat Har Etzion. R. Amital pointed out that living in the Land of Israel is a prerequisite for many other mitzvot, known as מצוות התלויות בארץ, mitzvot dependent on the Land. As Rambam himself had pointed out in the introduction to his work, he does not count as mitzvot those practices that incorporate or are prerequisite to all or large portions of the Torah. In this explanation, of course, Rambam does not count a separate mitzva to live in Israel because it is too significant, too essential to being Jewish to qualify as its own mitzva.

Messianic Hopes and the Land

To some extent, all of this should be unnecessary, in that it should be obvious that Israel is vitally important to a fully-lived Jewish life. We speak of our existence now as Exile, of the Jews outside of Israel as in the Diaspora, and pray often for a return to Zion and to a Temple-filled existence. We observe days of mourning for the loss of the Temple, we note, on each Shabbat and holiday, that the full observance of these days involved sacrifices in the Temple, and the list goes on and on.

In all of these senses, then, it would seem clear that Jewish life focuses on Israel, on Jerusalem, and on the longing for a Temple. I note that even if this were true, it would be another example of a God-centered focus, since one of the central functions of the Temple was to serve as a house of prayer for all the nations, stressing our Jewish sense of ourselves as those who bring a relationship with God to the world at large.

So, Part of the Mission, Right?

There is certainly more to be said about the significance of living in the Land of Israel in Jewish thought—whole books have been written on the topic. Our brief review, though, shows enough of that significance to make it plausible to wonder how I could leave that out of the essential mission of Orthodoxy.

I admit that I have no problem with including it, for those who see it that way. There is more than ample support for a Jew to say to him or herself, “It is part of the mission that God established for Jews to live in Israel, and from there serve God in all the various ways set up by the Torah, including especially improving the world and making it a kinder, more God-filled place.”

What stops me from saying that as an unequivocal aspect of Jewish experience is the fact that thousands of years of Jews have lived outside of Israel, forced by the hand of God that punished our people for our sins. In reaction, many if not most of them built lives of faith and commitment to God, many of them giants of Torah and/or righteous in a way I could hardly aspire towards, let alone accomplish. I cannot imagine implying that these people have failed to fulfill the mission of Judaism in its most minimal expression.

On the other hand, it does seem clear—and I believe such people would themselves have agreed—that Jewish experience is always significantly lacking when living outside of Israel, and when suffering with the absence of a Temple, its worship, and the related laws that come into play in those circumstances. We can define a mission that does not insist on those factors, but must recognize how significantly lacking it necessarily is. This is the condition of Jewish Diaspora, a condition that has been partially alleviated by events of the last century and a half, but will only be fully resolved once we see the full Redemption, speedily in our days.[i]

As we close in on turning this discussion to practical communal issues, we have two more questions to take up, the first being halachic process, the method of deciding Jewish law on a particular issue. As we have already implicitly noted in our earlier discussions, Orthodoxy accepts multiple answers on many issues, with only the caveat that those formulating these views followed a legitimate process to get there.

Understanding that process is vital because we have seen that the giving of the Torah was a central component of our relationship with God. If so, the process by which the authoritative understanding of that Torah and of how best to apply it in the realities of each generation is fundamental to, and conceptually prior to, actual halachic discussions.

We need, in other words, to find the lines between unequivocal, debatable, and illegitimate halachic statements. It is to that underlying issue of Orthodoxy that we will next turn our attention.

[i] I note the possibility the Redemption itself might occur or be occurring in stages, as I imagined in my Murderer in the Mikdash.