Shabbat Vayechi

Written by Rabbi Professor Marc Saperstein Thursday, 08 January 2009

ועשית עמדי חסד ואמת:  אל נא תקברנו במצרים. ושכבתי עם אבותי ונשאתני ממצרים וקברתני בקבורתם
 (בראשית מ"ז כ"ט–ל).

“Do me this act of true kindness: please do not bury me in Egypt. When I lie down with my fathers, take me up from Egypt and bury me in their burial-place” (Gen. 47:29–30). 

What makes a particular piece of territory—a land, a city, a building—holy? One aspect of this intriguing question is highlighted by a passage in our parashah. We read that when Jacob was on his death bed, he makes Joseph swear to do hesed shel emet, an act of true loving kindness—the phrase was understood by the rabbis to refer to respectful treatment of the dead be-cause there can be no expectation of repayment from the deceased. Jacob’s  dying request was that Joseph not bury him in Egypt, but rather bring him to the ancestral burial place in Hebron (Gen. 47:29–30).

This insistence by Jacob is taken up in the Midrash of Genesis Rabbah, chapter 96, which introduces a significant concept of rabbinic Judaism. “Why were all the Patriarchs so anxious and so desirous for burial in Eretz Yisra’el? Said R. Eleazar, cryptically, Devarim be-go, ‘there is a deep reason for it’.” Whatever the “deep reason” was, the rabbis thought it was impel-ling enough for Jacob to ignore the custom of quick burial in order to trans-port the body to a more desirable burial place.

Now Jacob, of course, lived a good part of his life in Eretz Yisra’el; that was his home. It made sense for him to want his body to be brought back there for burial with his parents and grandparents. But what about those who never lived in Eretz Yisra’el, who spent their entire lives in the Diaspora? Did the precedent of Jacob apply to them? That issue is drama-tized in a fascinating vignette that continues the discussion in Midrash Gene-sis Rabbah 96. “Rabbi [Judah ha-Nasi, who flourished around the year 200 CE] and R. Eliezer were once walking by the gates outside of Tiberias, when they saw the coffin of a corpse which had been brought from outside the Land to be buried in Eretz Yisra’el.”

Rabbi Judah responds forcefully to the sight: “What has this man availed by coming to be buried in Eretz Yisra’el when he lived and died out-side the Land? I apply to him the verse (Jer. 2:7): Ve-nahalati samtem le-to’evah, ‘You made my possession abhorrent’—means, in your lifetime; va-tavo’u va-tetam’u et artsi, ‘And you came and defiled My land’—means, in your deaths.” One can hardly imagine a stronger condemnation of this prac-tice going back to the late 2nd or 3rd century.

Yet his companion, possibly R. Eliezer ben Pedat, finds a justification for this practice. He replies, “Yet, since he will be buried in Eretz Yisra’el, God will forgive him, for it is written (Deut. 32:43), ve-khipper admato amo, which he reads in a new way, out of context, to mean “His land shall make atonement for His people.” This doctrine asserts that the land of Is-rael is so potent, so holy, that it can atone for the sins of a lifetime spent voluntarily in exile. Yet at the same time it concedes that the Holy Land is not strong enough to attract Jews during they are living, that there are Jews who will choose to remain in the Diaspora and seek out the land only for its gravesites.           

This did not resolve the issue, however. Ambivalence continued for centuries, and we find many medieval Jewish philosophers and mystics—aincluding a strong passage in the Zohar (Terumah 141b)—citing just Rabbi Judah’s original condemnation of bringing a body for burial in the land, without citing the response that defends it. These thinkers insisted that bur-ial in the land of Israel provides absolutely no benefit except for one who has gone there while alive. Yet the practice continued.

One further step. In a parallel version of this text in Pesikta Rabbati (1.6), R. Eliezer ben Pedat says, “as soon as they are buried in the Land of Israel, or even a handful of soil of the Land of Israel is placed upon them, it will make atonement for them, as it is said, ve-khipper admato amo” (Deut. 32:43). In context the meaning seems clear: R. Eliezer is saying that if a Jew is being buried in Eretz Yisra’el, as soon as the first shovel-full of soil is thrown upon the body, the atonement is complete. But in subsequent centu-ries, this statement was used to justify a new practice that R. Eliezer probably never dreamed of—placing a handful of soil from the Holy Land in a grave of the Diaspora, in the expectation that this would provide atone-ment.

It is unclear when the earliest evidence for this practice can be dated, (though we find the practice attested in St. Augustine’s City of God 22:8, from the early 5th century). But the same dialectical dynamic we have seen is extended. On one hand, the power of soil from the Holy Land is now so great that it can bring atonement not only in its proper place, but any-where in the world. On the other, the practice reflects the reality of Jewish communities so far removed that both living and being buried in Eretz Yisra’el is unfeasible for all but a tiny minority.

In the reports by Jewish travelers who visit the Land of Israel begin-ning in the 12th century, we begin to find something another innovation—itineraries and accounts that reveal very little interest in the communities of Jews actually living in Jerusalem or other cities. The desire of this travel-ers is to visit the tombs of great figures from the past—first of the Patri-archs, then of lesser figures from the Bible, then the rabbis of the Talmudic period, then later figures—in order to prostrate themselves on the graves and pray there.  Where does this idea come from? Unlike in Christianity, where churches were built over graves and saints were buried in churches, for Jews the grave is traditionally a site of tum’ah, impurity. Jewish ceme-teries were never adjacent to synagogues, they were situated outside the area where Jews lived. How does it become for these travelers a site for pilgrimage, a place of holiness? Is this an internal Jewish development, or does it reflect the influence of Christianity, or perhaps of Islam?

One thing is clear, however. This concept underlying this practice fa-cilitates the development of a new sacred geography of the Holy Land. The classical model, set out in the first chapter  of Mishnah Kelim, is of concen-tric circles, starting with the borders of Eretz Yisra’el, then moving to Jeru-salem, the Temple Mount, the court of Israel, the court of the kohanim, the Holy of Holies. With this new conception that the tomb of a holy person is a site of holiness, we have the possibility of rival sacred places outside of Je-rusalem. We see the emergence of the Four “Holy Cities”, with Hebron, Ti-berias and Safed standing alongside Jerusalem, because of their gravesites. And in the past few decades, we have the absolutely paradoxical phenome-non—inconceivable throughout most of Jewish history—of Jews living in Je-rusalem going on a pilgrimage at the time of the festivals to Uman in Ukraine, in order to pray at the burial place of the Rebbe Nahman of Brat-slav.

Jacob’s desire to be buried in Hebron, the idea of the atoning power of burial in Eretz Yisra’el, soil from the Holy Land in a diaspora cemetery, pilgrimage from Jerusalem to a grave in Ukraine, the general belief that some parts of the earth are more sacred than others: all are aspects of a fascinating tension in traditional Jewish consciousness. We have a deeply rooted feeling that there is indeed something unique and special about Eretz Yisra’el, about Jerusalem, about the burial places of the Patriarchs. Yet at the same time, we have a deeply rooted feeling that—at least poten-tially—wherever we are can be admat kodesh, holy ground (Exod. 3:5).  Elizabeth Barrett Browning expressed this sense powerfully in her poem Aurora Leigh: “Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God, but only he who sees takes off his shoes.” But that takes us into next week’s parashah.