Healing Well of Miriam

Without the Temple and without the Land, the rabbis and sages had to find ways to preserve the Jewish People.   During the time of the Greek domination, when learning Torah was prohibited, the readings of the Haphtorah were established in the place of the Torah parsha.  (Later that custom came alongside the weekly Torah reading.)     During the Roman period there was a fear that the Oral Law might be forgotten, so Yehudah the Prince made the decision to write it down.  With the crises of national survival, Judaism shifted from the Temple to the synagogue and became the religion of the Exile.  Halacha has changed over the centuries, adapting to various situations, local customs, new innovations, etc.  However, the people of the host nations had to be considered warily, for there was the ever-present danger of anti-Semitic attack.  Centuries of living under these conditions forced Jewish communities to concentrate their focus inward.      

During Biblical times the status of “ger in the gate” was indisputably a part of the People of Israel.  This was the stranger who was not a convert, but lived among Israel, believed in HaShem, and adhered to the Torah.  These people may have been travelers or sojourners; they may have been people who heard about the God of Israel and wanted to live in a community dedicated to Torah.  This was a normal situation during the days of the Temple and when the Jewish People were sovereign in the Land.  The word “ger” is mentioned many, many times throughout the scriptures.  While it does have a variety of meanings, that person who qualified to be given—not sold—the meat of a botched kosher slaughter was most definitely not a convert (who would have been forbidden to eat it like any native-born Jew), but rather this “ger in the gate” (Deuteronomy 14:21).     

Ger did NOT—COULD NOT—function in the Exile.  Judaism had no accommodation for this.  It was a period in which the Jewish People had to concentrate all their focus inward, just to stay alive.  The people around them were objects of justifiable suspicion.  We can reasonably say that compared to the periods within the Land, and with a Temple, Exile was a period of pulling inward, of contraction.  This reality shaped the thinking of the rabbis and leaders.  It is called Exile mentality. Although there was great Torah learning from many tremendous sages during this time, even so, they also admitted to being influenced by contracted, limiting Exile mentality.  And as I said, this was not a time when a true Ger could exist.  In fact, it has been said that although Rambam wrote about Bnai Noah, he never knew one.  So, all his writing on the subject was for a hypothetical person in a possible future scenario. 

By contrast, when the Jewish People were able to return to the Land of Israel, a new type of thinking was suddenly possible.  Rather than constrictive Exile thinking, suddenly the expansive thinking of the unfolding Redemption was awakening.  It is very interesting to note that the idea of Ger in our time began in Israel… Safed, to be precise.  And initial opposition to it—vehement opposition to the point of writing it off as “heresy”—came from the Exile.  We can see this phenomenon as the difference between Exile thinking and Redemption thinking.  Exile thinking has built high walls against the “other”…protective walls of the ghetto.  Redemption thinking was fostered at the broad, spacious base of Sinai.  

Yet the idea of Ger did not just go away.  The expansive thinking of Redemption mentality would not let it go.  Who are these people?  Must they live in the Land of Israel to qualify for this status?  If so, does that mean Jews have to live in the Land of Israel to qualify as Jews?  At one time that might have been a valid argument.  However, in this age of computers and the internet, the world is a much smaller place, in which information is instantly available.  Books that at one time were strictly in Hebrew, are now available in many different languages, even accessible through online stores.  Teachers can teach a class of students located in places all over the world at the same time.  It has never been easier to be a “Light unto the Nations!” (Isaiah 42:6). 

The very fact that Ger is now a growing conscious reality is a dramatic sign that Exile IS coming to an end, for Ger was impossible in the Exile! That was the real message from the first official recognition of Bnai Noah in 1990. There is no Redemption without the Ger! The Torah was given to Israel on behalf of all Humanity.  This is the realization of Zechariah’s vision of ten men of different nations taking hold of the corner of a Jew, saying, “You know God; let us go with you!” (Zechariah 8:23)