Time is dynamic, but space is perceived as static. However, the interdependence between identity and space means that when identity is flexible, dynamic, and evolving, the perception of territory will also be flexible and subject to change. These changes are an outgrowth of a developing identity—whether of an individual or a group.
The identity of a religious group is typically assessed through historical, theological, anthropological, or sociological features. This book examined the formative influence and character of the territorial element in Jewish identity1 within Jewish groups in the days of the Second Temple and in the Mishnaic and Talmudic era.
The book’s introduction outlined its basic understanding of the relationship between identity, space, place, and territory. The central argument was that identity influences territorial perceptions, while territory itself is, simultaneously, one of the components involved in the shaping of that identity. Theological and religious dimensions differ for various groups; thus, each group develops its own approach to territory. Other factors determining the perception of space in the land or political entity were listed as collective memory, based mainly on the Jewish scriptures; the demographic dimension, and, in particular, contiguity of settlement; and geopolitical reality. An additional factor was economics, relating to agricultural and natural resources.
An expression of the direct effect of territorial space on identity—and the influence of significant changes in territorial space on collective identity—was introduced in the book’s first chapter. This identity was “Israelite” when the ethnic group resided within the territory of the Kingdom of Israel or within the territories of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel. Conversely, “Jewish” identity was the result of residing only in the territory of Judah; it was also the term applied to the ethnic group by its non-Jewish surroundings. But we must ask: does the fact that diaspora Jewry employs the term “Jewish” (rather than the term “Israel,” as used by the sages) constitute the adoption of the manner in which the gentile surroundings referred to it? Does the State of Israel, and the use of the term “Israeli” to refer to both Jews and non-Jews who are citizens of the state, constitute a continuation of the framework of “Israelite-ness” as this applied during the late Second Temple period and the period of the Mishnah and Talmud—a framework that was shaped by territory?
The diverse approaches found in the Jewish literature written in the land of Israel during the Second Temple era, with its complex views about borders, were based on Jewish scripture as the formative composition—a composition that itself contains different border schemes. This contention stood at the center of our second chapter. In bringing the discussion into the modern age, we may still wish to examine what parallels can be found between this complexity and the disputes regarding the realization of a Jewish national entity in a specific territory, one of the chief concerns of the Zionist movement and of Israeli society over the past hundred years.
Since most of the Jewish people lived in exile for centuries, many of the sages relied on the approach of the Babylonian sages and the Babylonian Talmud as they shaped Jewish identity outside the borders of the land of Israel. Following the Babylonian sages, and contrary to Christian perceptions that accentuated Hellenistic Jewish approaches—as discussed in the third chapter—most Jewish groups in the diaspora did not eliminate or diminish the role of the land of Israel. However, they deferred the need to dwell in the land to a distant future, developed a sense of mission for those Jews who lived in the land, and transformed the physical land into the “Holy Land.”
An examination of rabbinic literature highlights a number of noteworthy phenomena. Our fourth chapter illustrated the sages’ elastic approach to the halakhic borders of the land; demographic trends, particularly the creation of Jewish settlement in territorial contiguity; the consciousness of multiple borders; and the spatial consciousness of the land of Israel as embedded in collective memory. It also presented rabbinic literature’s reflection of the perceived borders of the land during the Roman and Byzantine periods, views held by the sages of the land of Israel. These questions related to the territorial scope of the land and to life within different and concurrent border schemes.2 In promoting settlement and territorial contiguity, this approach also contributed to the Zionist ethos.
The link between identity and the apprehension of space shaped the sages’ approach to “sacred space.” The book’s final chapter posited that the rabbis confronted Jewish approaches that were external to their own world, ones that referred to a number of sites as holy. They also encountered the approach of the Christian world—whose roots we saw in the third chapter—in which holy sites were scattered throughout the land. The sages, however, saw in the land of Israel, with its elastic nature, a holy land; inside the land, only Jerusalem and the Temple were considered holier than the rest of the land. Today, however, national and religious space in the state of Israel is also dotted with sites that are perceived as “holy places.” The map of Israel, in general, and the Galilee, in particular, shows holy places situated along the main roads.3
Over the course of the second millennium C.E.—beginning in the twelfth century, when journeys and locations began to be committed to writing—a map of sacred spaces formed, and sacred tombs were identified.4 A further wave led by the mystical Kabbalistic ideologies, which were active, and continue to be active, in and around the city of Safed, added many “sacred tombs” throughout the Galilee.5 The reasons for the growth of holy places in the landscape of the land of Israel are diverse, relating to faith, folklore,6 and even politics.7
This contrast between the picture painted in the rabbinic literature and Israel’s present-day landscape is not necessarily due solely to the influence of the Jewish travelers’ and pilgrims’ literature from the twelfth century on, or to the mystical groups that were active in and around Safed from the sixteenth century. As argued in the fifth chapter, the sages chose not to relate to various sites around the land of Israel; these were perceived as holy places among Jewish groups that did not agree with their worldview. They also did not discuss pilgrimage sites in the Galilee that were perceived by Christians as places where Jesus performed miracles. Accordingly, the portrayal of the country’s landscape reflected in the rabbinic literature is closely related to the perceptions of identity and religious concepts that shaped their spatial descriptions. The gap between the image of the land in rabbinic literature and the map of holy places was thus also the result of the character of this literature, and of the way in which the sages perceived and depicted the territorial space of the land of Israel, reflecting their own worldview and identity.
The examination of territory’s role in shaping identity and the way in which territory and its precincts is perceived among different groups within Jewish society has been reintroduced—full force—in recent generations. The overt and covert tensions and deliberations during the time period we examined surrounded the question of the status, scope, and nature of territory. These questions are very much a part of the internal and external dialogue that still takes place about Israel; they remain as relevant today as ever.