If We Understand That, We Need Wait No Longer

“You will command the Israelites to bring you clear olive oil crushed for the luminary, to kindle the lamp continuously.” [Exodus 27:20]

Our weekly portion of Tetzaveh, or “You will command,” finds Moses handling more orders than an old waiter in a Wall Street deli. G-d instructs him to make a candelabra in the tabernacle that will be lit every evening. That is followed by an order to organize Aaron and his sons as priests to serve in G-d’s little house.

With his two hands already full, Moses is told to provide the priestly vestments for Aaron and his four sons. He is not asked to drop everything for a thread and needle, rather allow ordinary Jews, “wise of heart in whom I have invested a spirit of wisdom,” to do the work.

But there is something different about the Torah’s language — the use of the word “You” when G-d instructs Moses. G-d had already been speaking to Moses throughout the previous weekly portion of Terumah, so the second person pronoun seems to add nothing.

And yet the word “you” highlights that G-d wants Moses and nobody else to carry out the divine commandments. Indeed, the commentators assert that G-d was not happy with the Israelite leader. Moses had repeatedly refused G-d’s request to assume the position of high priest. The incredibly modest Moses urged G-d to appoint Aaron instead. The Almighty followed by ensuring that Moses would prepare Aaron and his sons for the priesthood — and to behave with enthusiasm.

The role that G-d set for Moses was not limited to the 40-year sojourn in the desert. The Zohar, quoted by the 18th Century sage Or Hahayim, says Moses was meant to decide the divine end game, the redemption of the Jewish people. The Zohar says Jewish redemption from the Babylonian exile stemmed from the merit of the patriarch Abraham. The redemption of the Persian exile came through Issac. The much longer exile of Greece ended through the merit of Jacob.

But the last and current exile has lasted nearly 2,000 years. And it can only end through the merit of Moses. But, the Zohar says, he’s not budging. The greatest prophet in history is demanding that the Jews learn Torah and perform its commandments. Learning Torah for scholarship is not enough. The divine lessons would have to be applied by the people — from the top to the bottom. As the Zohar explains, “Moses did not want to redeem a nation of those idle from the Torah.” He wanted the Jews to engage with the Torah for its own sake, rather than for money or prestige.

Moses’ legacy has never been forgotten. For over 2,000 years, the Jewish people have maintained yeshivot, or rabbinical seminaries, where the Torah watch never stopped. Under the harshest of circumstances, Torah learning continued whether openly or underground. But if that was Moses’ only condition, he would have intervened for the redemption of the Jewish people a long time ago.

History provides a clue to what Moses meant. Some 150 years ago, the Russian empire was crumbling. The Romanov dynasty was plagued by illness, illegitimacy, ignorance and assassination. At age 36, Alexander Alexandrovich became czar after his father was killed by socialist revolutionaries. Alexander was groomed and advised by Konstantin Petrovich Pobedonostsev, who urged the new czar to empower the church and destroy the Jews. The focus would be on ending Jewish learning and observance.

Yeshivat Etz Chaim, located in the Lithuanian town of Volozhin became a leading target. Founded in 1803, by Rabbi Chaim, a student of the sage known as the Vilna Gaon, the yeshiva attracted the best and brightest throughout the empire and even the rest of Europe. At one point, Etz Chaim had more than 500 students, who kept the sound of Torah ringing around the clock.

The czar, aided by members of a movement of renegade Jews known as maskilim, worked to stop the Volozhin yeshiva. The maskilim, some of whose members became prominent in the early Zionist movement, acted as spies for the Russian secret police and caused dissent within the student body. Moreover, the yeshiva burned down twice — in 1865 and 1886 — which did not end Torah learning.

Some of the students saw the writing on the wall: There was no future for the Jews in Volozhin or anywhere in the Russian empire. They advocated resettlement in the Land of Israel. They sought to follow the footsteps of the students of the Vilna Gaon who in 1808 left Russia for the promised land. The head of Etz Chaim, Rabbi Naftali Zvi Yehuda Berlin, quietly supported the students, but feared that the Russian authorities would see such activity as treason and close down the seminary.

It didn’t matter. In 1892, less than three years after Rabbi Berlin, known as the Netziv, ordered the students to stop their campaign for Zion, authorities shut down the famous yeshiva. The Netziv and other heads of the school were expelled from the Volozhin region. By this time, the rabbi wanted to live in the Land of Israel but made it as far as Warsaw, where he died in 1893.

The competitor of Etz Chaim was the Mir Yeshiva, located in what is now Belarus. Twelve years younger than Volozhin, Mir became one of the top rabbinical seminaries in the world, attracting students from Europe, Asia, Africa and the United States. Unlike Volozhin, Mir survived the czar, including Nicholas II. Instead, Hitler ended the reign of Mir, and its students fled east until they reached Japan and China.

Like Mir, the yeshiva in Slobodka also outlasted the oppression of the czars. Founded in 1863 by Rabbi Zvi Levitan, Slobodka became one of the largest and most influential seminaries in Lithuania. Unlike Etz Chaim, Slobodka joined the mussar movement, which sought to utilize Torah study to bolster ethics. After World War I, which devastated numerous Jewish communities, the heads of the yeshiva took a long and hard look and decided that there was no future in Europe. In 1924, Rabbis Nosson Tzvi Finkel and Moshe Mordechai Epstein took most of their students and founded a yeshiva in Hebron. Five years later, the yeshiva was destroyed in the Arab massacre but was quickly rebuilt in Jerusalem and later Bnei Brak.

Hindsight is usually 20/20, but the tale of the three yeshivot begs the question: Why did Etz Chaim and Mir stay under czarist oppression? Why didn’t the great rabbis lead their flock from the Pale of Settlement to the Land of Israel in the late 19th Century? Why didn’t the head of Etz Chaim regard the two fires that destroyed the yeshiva as a sign from heaven that perhaps they should follow the Vilna Gaon? Clearly, the arrival of the yeshivot and their communities would have revitalized the Land of Israel way before Theodore Herzl.

Prophecy does not rest on the prophets of Israel unless the people merit this. [Kli Yakar on Exodus 28:1]

And perhaps, here lies the seed of Moses’ stubbornness. Unlike the patriarchs, Moses was not allowed in the Land of Israel, buried in the mountain that overlooks the Jordan River. His vision was of a Jewish people learning Torah and performing the commandments in Israel. G-d understood this and told Moses to command the people to light the eternal flame of Torah and bring it to the holy land. Then, Moses could use his vast merit to liberate the Jewish people once and for all.

If we understand that, we need wait no longer.