Overcoming the tyranny of distance

In his seminal work The Tyranny of Distance, historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey’s thesis is that distance has proven to be the great force in Australian history. The persistent challenge has been to conquer it.
If such has been the underlying theme of Australian history, how much more so has the need to conquer the tyranny of distance been a theme underlying the history of Jewish life throughout the millennia of the Diaspora.

Parashat haChodesh, read this week as a forerunner to the month of Nissan that incorporates Pesach, contains the first command given to Israel as a nation – the requirement to have our own calendar. As its implementation developed, the calendar, and hence the annual cycle of Jewish life, was predicated on the monthly decisions of Jewry’s highest religious authority – the Beth Din based in Yerushalayim – that made a monthly determination as to the date of the new moon.

This determination was communicated to far-flung communities, including those of Bavel, by means of mountaintop fire signals or messengers on horseback. As was to become clear during the days of both Rabban Gamliel (when his colleague Rabbi Joshua believed that Yom Kippur fell on a different date from that proclaimed by Rabban Gamliel) and Saadiah Gaon (who established the pre-eminence of Babylonian Gaonic calculations over those of the Gaonim of Jerusalem), unity in regard to the calendar was a prerequisite for continuity of world Jewry as one nation.

Difference in observance of national dates was a recipe for national disintegration. And already then the rabbis feared that the impact of the tyranny of distance could lead to disintegration of Jewry as a unit.
National unity aside, a primary purpose of communication of the date of the new moon (prior to the advent of the fixed calendar) was to advise the dates of the festivals occurring in any given month.

However, it was not possible to reach every community in a far-flung Diaspora. Hence the introduction of the second day of many festivals to ensure that we would celebrate on the correct day even if one day was wrong.

Yet once Hillel had established a fixed calendar, the institution of “yom tov sheni” – second day of festivals – was not abolished. “Shalchu mitam” – the rabbis sent out a message to all communities: “hizaharu beminhag avoteichem – maintain your practice of the custom of your forefathers”.
In retrospect, there was more to this than just a halachic principle tending to preservation of minhag rather than its abrogation. In typical paradoxical fashion, that very basic principle of Jewish life – which arose out of the impact of halachah on the tyranny of distance from the Holy Land – subsequently assisted Jews worldwide to at least partially overcome the reality of that tyranny.

Even if a fixed calendar meant that the correct date was known, its validity was still dependent on a requirement that it also be followed by some Jews living in Israel. Thus Jews across the Diaspora would always be concerned that Jewish life in Israel continue to at least some extent.

As a result of the requirement to keep yom tov sheni, wherever Jews settled across the world, they were automatically regularly reminded of the intrinsic connection between Jewish life wherever they found themselves, and that little patch of the globe they knew as their holy land (where yom tov was kept in its original form, without the second day).

It is not uncommon for us to retreat into our own world on Shabbat and yom tov. We can’t work, we can’t go to institutes of learning and we can’t travel. But the negative perspectives aside, even the shtetl Jew living in abject poverty was able to forget his cares for a short while. He ate white bread instead of the standard rough black product; hopefully he also had a rare taste of fish or meat, even it was only fish mixed with lots of bread (the origin of gefilte fish) or offal (the origin of many delicacies and smallgoods, which originally were cheaper than the rich man’s real meat).
So for a short while each week – and on the special holidays – Jews might have thought that they had indeed moved to paradise, represented on earth by our holy homeland.

Nevertheless, however wonderful the enjoyment of Shabbat and yom tov may have been, yom tov sheni brought the Jews back to reality. Israel could not be forgotten, despite the fact that it was thousands of kilometres away – in practice almost unreachable prior to the advent of modern modes of transport.

In retrospect, this may even help to provide an additional insight as to why the calendar based on seeing the new moon became the first law given to the people as a nation.

Rashi in Bereshit (1:1) tells us that the Torah began with the stories of Bereshit rather than this first of the national laws, to emphasise to the nations that God created the world and had the right and power to give the land of Israel to whichever nation he wished.

Perhaps the common theme of that beginning and this second beginning of the Torah – the first national mitzvah of the calendar – is that the calendar law emphasises to us Jews our connection with Israel.
It is only when we realise that our aim and destiny is to go to the land of our forefathers with which all aspects of our lives are connected, that Israel as a people are ready to leave Egypt.

Shabbat shalom,
Yossi