A Call From Shiloh To Rabbis, Leaders and Educators

I address these thoughts to Rabbis, educators and leaders of Jewish organizations who have been caught up with a renewed wave of critical attacks on Israel from within the Jewish community.

You are familiar with them if only because on these times of social media platforms but also because of the aggressive invasive nature of these attacks and the wide support certain Jewish media and members of the Rabbinate and academia lend to them.

We have completed the Ten Days of Penitence between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur.

Most of you, at one time or another in the past few years, probably had occasion to comment on the Haftarah of the first day of Rosh Hashana.  The story of Hannah awakens thoughts of mercy, of pain, of being socially outcast, of feminism, of misogyny and other issues to which American Jewry especially is attuned.

The childless Hannah accompanies her husband with his second wife to the Tabernacle and in an act of courage, she prays at the Tabernacle for a son:

Hannah rose up...and she was in bitterness of soul--and prayed unto the LORD, and wept sore...remember me, and not forget Thy handmaid...Now Hannah, she spoke in her heart; only her lips moved, but her voice could not be heard; therefore, Eli thought she had been drunken. And Eli said unto her: 'How long wilt thou be drunken? put away thy wine from thee.' And Hannah answered and said: 'No, my lord, I am a woman of a sorrowful spirit; I have drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but I poured out my soul before the LORD. Count not thy handmaid for a wicked woman: for out of the abundance of my complaint and my vexation have I spoken hitherto.' Then Eli answered and said: 'Go in peace, and the God of Israel grant thy petition that thou hast asked of Him.' And she said: 'Let thy servant find favor in thy sight.' So the woman went her way, and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad.

The Talmud states that "on Rosh HaShana Sarah, Rachel, and Hannah were remembered by God and conceived sons" and in a braita explanation, Rabbi Elazar said:

"This is derived by means of a verbal analogy...it is written about Hannah: 'And the Lord remembered her' (I Samuel 1:19). And...the term remembering is derived from another instance of the term remembering, with regard to Rosh HaShana, as it is written: 'A solemn rest, memorial proclaimed with the blast of a shofar' (Leviticus 23:24). From here it is derived that Rachel and Hannah were remembered by God on Rosh HaShana."

Furthermore, "the meaning of one instance of the term revisiting is derived from another instance of the term revisiting. It is written about Hannah: 'And the Lord revisited Hannah' (I Samuel 2:21), and it is written about Sarah: 'And the Lord revisited Sarah” (Genesis 21:1). From here it is derived that just as Hannah was revisited on Rosh HaShana, so too, Sarah was revisited on Rosh HaShana.

You may wondering where I am going with this.  

My intention is simple: do you know about Shiloh?

The Tabernacle to where Elkanah, Penina and Hannah walked was located at Shiloh.

The Tabernacle was erected there by Joshua:

And the whole congregation of the children of Israel assembled themselves together at Shiloh, and set up the tent of meeting there

The tribal portions were divided amongst the tribes:

And Joshua cast lots for them in Shiloh before the LORD; and there Joshua divided the land unto the children of Israel according to their divisions.

Shiloh was where the tribe of Benjamin was permitted to unite with the rest of the tribes at the:

feast of the LORD from year to year in Shiloh...And they commanded the children of Benjamin, saying: 'Go and lie in wait in the vineyards; and see, and, behold, if the daughters of Shiloh come out to dance in the dances, then come ye out of the vineyards, and catch you every man his wife of the daughters of Shiloh, and go to the land of Benjamin...And the children of Benjamin did so, and took them wives

Shiloh was where the Prophet Achiah berated a King of Israel when he was visited by Jeroboan's wife:

when Ahijah heard the sound of her feet, as she came in at the door, that he said: 'Come in, thou wife of Jeroboam; why feignest thou thyself to be another? for I am sent to thee with heavy tidings. Go, tell Jeroboam: Thus saith the LORD, the God of Israel: Forasmuch as...thou hast not been as My servant David, who kept My commandments, and who followed Me with all his heart, to do that only which was right in Mine eyes; but hast done evil above all that were before thee, and hast gone and made thee other gods, and molten images, to provoke Me, and hast cast Me behind thy back; therefore, behold, I will bring evil upon the house of Jeroboam,

And it where the children of Israel were told that

the land was subdued before them. 

and from where three men appointed from the tribes were told that they would be sent, to

arise, and walk through the land, and describe it according to their inheritance

We've recited these past two weeks the "Mi Sh'Anan, Hu Yaneinu" prayer numerous times, and among the geographic places mentioned in the 20 verses are Mount Moriah in Jerusalem (or perhaps East Jerusalem as some of your call it), Bet El, Mitzpah, Gilgal and Jericho, all located in what several Jewish leaders call the "West Bank".

What all this indicates, in all simplicity, is that a Jew cannot ignore that Judaism's religious, moral, ethical and philosophical values cannot be separated from our people's geographic history.  Not only time but place are essential to the reality of Jewishness.

As you are in the positions you are in, you should point out to the students, the youth and others who have been caught up with recycled non-to-anti-Zionist positions as if predicated on something called "occupation".

The land "occupied" is part of the historic Jewish homeland, first and foremost.  Not some far-flung colonial enterprise.  Indeed, it was the area intended to enjoy the right of "close settlement on the land as per the decision of the League of Nations and continuously confirmed.

Those who employ a veneer of "Judaism" in order to negate that reality, historical and contemporary, should and need be corrected.  Do not allow them to proclaim falsehood.

And that is your job.

____________

P.S.

"There is no Jewish existence without the Bible; it doesn't exist," the prime minister said. "In my opinion, there is also no Jewish future without the Bible."

And without the Bible and subsequent Jewish continuum of residency in the Land of Israel, the Jewish People loses its ability to grasp its geo-political Jewish identity.

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Jews in Jenin?

Well, in 1888, the Reverend James Kean was in Jenin * and in his 1893 book, "Among the Holy Places", p. 214-215 we can read this:

There were Jews there in various historical periods:

First called Gina, a site of a battle between Egypt and Het, it is mentioned twice in the Amarna Letters.  It became a Levite city, Ein-Ganim, as recorded in Joshua 19:21.  Ishtori Ha-Parhi, who lived in the Eretz-Yisrael in the first quarter of the 14th century, mentions Jenin (Chapt. 11).  Josephus (Wars 3:4) notes that "Now as to the country of Samaria, it lies between Judea and Galilee; it begins at a village that is in the great plain called Ginea (or Ginia)" and Ginai is mentioned in the Jerusalem Talmud (Shekalim 7:2).  Jews resided in Jenin during the 16^th & 17^th centuries.  In 1583, the Polish-Lithuanian Prince Nicholas Christopher Radziwill of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania toured the country and noted Jews as living there as possibly did a French doctor, Gabriel le Bremond, who was at Tanin which was a misspelling of Jenin in 1643.  Rabbi Yosef Matrani of Jerusalem had visited the Jewish community there on visits in 1593 and 1602. In 1885, a Jewish blacksmith was in the town and in 1889, a Jewish tailor and two brothers who conducted business in grains loved there.  In 1888, a Jewish shoemaker was in Jenin.

In 1891, the "For Zion" society's representative, Mordechai Edelman, purchased property and land there and eight Jewish familes arrived to take up residence, together with a ritual slaughterer and a melamed.  However, an outbreak of an infectious disease the following year caused them to flee to a healthier location.

During the Mandate period, Jews worked in the area on the main road development as well as an army camp during 1921-1922 and lived at a site near the town and when its Tegart police station was built, 1939-1941, some 70 Jewish construction workers lived by the town (in previous years, Jewish policemen were based there at the previous station house such as Yosef Hirsch and Yosef Mabati). On January 27, 1922, Masha and Eliezer Perlson were married the workers' camp outside Jenin.  In 1929, two Jewish families joined, Goldstein and Lieber, joined the husbands who were policemen and they were extracted from the town when the riots broke out in August.

In the 1931 British census, four (or 2) Jewish residents were counted (in 1922, there were 7) and in 1936, Ladislas Farago, in his book, notes on p. 22 that 7 Jews were living there among 2500 Arabs. By the way, that census counted 3 Jews (2 males and a female) in Khan Yunis, 1 in Gaza, 1 in Majdal, 2 in Yibne, 5 in Beer Sheba, 28 in Lydda, 5 in Ramle, 135 in Hebron, 1 in Bet Jala, 39 in Bethlehem, etc.

Oh, between 1948 - 1967, there were no Jews in or near Jenin.  

Why?

Arabs ruled the area.

____________

*

Here's a mention of Shiloh, which was desolate at the time:

Based on
עין גנים, ההיסטוריה היהודית בג'נין
מאת אהרן אורבך ועמיחי מרחביה
ירושלים, התשס"ה

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