A Birthday Bible Contest
Rabbi Deborah Wechsler
“So if you can’t work the land, how do you eat?” That was the question my sixth graders posed to me when we spoke this week about the sabbatical and jubilee years. The revolutionary idea that land should be left fallow every seventh year and returned to its original owner at the end of a 50 year cycle is almost unfathomable. This week’s parashah commands it, but it is revolutionary even in a Biblical agrarian society, let alone in a modern non-agrarian society. It was somewhat reassuring to my students to find out that it was not a mitzvah incumbent on them at this time since it is in the category of miztvot that are only applicable in the land of Israel.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, the first chief rabbi of the State of Israel, commented on this week’s parashah that the purpose of the jubilee year was primarily spiritual rather than economic. These two practices of shemittah and yovel prevent individuals from being valued based on their economic assets alone. The mitzvoth are still applicable and are practiced in the land of Israel or at least the shemitah year is. The next shemittah year will begin Rosh Hashanah 2014.
This means that one of the ways that Israel will celebrate the birthday of the Jewish year in three years is by honoring the fundamental belief that all the land belongs to God.
How did you celebrate your last birthday? Did you have a party with your friends? Did you have a quiet dinner at home with family? Did you send donations to your favorite tzedakah? Did you volunteer or do a service project? Did you spend it alone pampering yourself?
This past Tuesday was the 6th of Iyar, the 63rd birthday of the State of Israel. And among the myriad of ways that Israel celebrated her birthday – with cook outs and those little plastic hammers, and music and folk dancing, and tiyyulim (hikes) through the countryside – was one unusual celebration that honored the belief that stems from this week’s parashah that a person or society should not be judged by economic terms alone.
Since 1958, Yom Ha Atzmaut has been celebrated with Hidon ha Tanach the International Bible contest. It was in honor of the 10th anniversary of the establishment of the state of Israel that Israel’s Society for Biblical Research initiated the Bible contest. It was overseen by Yehezkel Kauffman, perhaps the most well know Biblical scholar of the period. The winner who was a 30-year-old employee of the Jerusalem Center for Blind Education was so poor that he had to borrow a shirt from a friend to wear to the quiz.”
It was started as a contest for adults on the pshat of the Tanakh, the simple, literal meaning of the text.
David Ben Gurion, a life long student and lover of Tanakh initiated the very first Hidon ha Tanakh which was broadcast live on national radio. Benjamin Netanyahu recalled that first Bible Quiz with nostalgia: “I was a boy at the time, and the streets of Jerusalem were empty so that everyone could listen to it on the radio. The afternoon newspapers came out with a second edition with excited reports. The entire country embraced the winner, Amos Chacham, and the newspapers competed over the right to interview him.” Can you imagine that happening in another country – people staying at hoem to listen to a quiz on scripture? Newspapers rushing to print the exciting news?
In 1963 the first International contest for Jewish youth was held and again Ben-Gurion, surveyed the festivities alongside the annual military procession. He remarked that he was witnessing "the spiritual parade alongside the military parade"--a fulfillment of the Zionist triad of people, land, and book. Since that time it became a contest for high school students. But this year was the first time in 30 years that there was an adult contest as well.
Fittingly, the theme for this year’s Hidon was “for the Love of the Land”. It was shown on national television in Israel and streamed live on the internet. Shlomo Edelman from Nof Ayalon was the winner on Tuesday. He won the quiz by a single point in what was a Bible penalty shootout -each contestant was asked 12 questions to decide the contest.
The last question of the contest is usually composed and asked by the Prime minister, though not last year when Benjamin Netanyahu’s 15 year old son Avner was one of the four finalists.
This was the last question; see if you know the answer, I didn’t: To whom was it said,
????? ????? ??????????? ??????????? ????? ????????? ?????????? ??? ??????????:
Call to Me, and I will answer you, and I will tell you wondrous things, secrets you have not known. (Jeremiah 33:3)
Shlomo knew the answer and won a four year scholarship to Bar Ilan University. Even this is a beautiful statement about the values of the State of Israel – the winner of the Bible contest doesn’t get money or a new car. He gets the title hatan ha tanakh, the groom of the Bible and is rewarded with an education. It is a society that acknowledges learning with a gift of more learning.
After 63 years of struggle, and faith, and wrestling with neighbor and with self, this is a magnificent reality of the modern land and state of Israel – it is a society that has as one of its core beliefs that a person’s value is not defined in economic terms alone. We cast our lot with an Israel that celebrates its very existence by focusing on Torah. Our destiny is tied up with a land that defines itself through learning and discovery and intellectual pursuit.
The host of the adult contest (Avshalom Kor, a popular Hebrew linguist) was asked why he was so intimately connected to the Tanakh. He replied, “The answer is love. Maimonides’ Laws of Bible Study appears in what he named the Book of Love. Bible means love for me, and I never studied one day in a religious institution - though we sent our children, though, to religious schools, so that they would know more. I’m here out of love.”
So you want to know how to celebrate Israel’s birthday now that the falafel has been eaten and the blue and white flags have been put away? Learn. Define your value as a person and as a Jew by what you know. We send our children to Jewish schools so that they too can come to know more than we do. But out of love for them, love for Judaism and love for our land and our people we too must learn and become part of the ancient triad of land, people and Book.
