Welcome everyone. Thank you for coming. My name is Maura Resnick. I'm the

executive director of the Y&SNazarian Center for Israel Studies here

at UCLA at the International Institute. Our director, Professor Yoram Cohen, is

giving his own talk today so he is sorry that he couldn't be here. A little

bit about the center. If you don't know us, we're an academic center part of the

UCLA International Institute that promotes the study of the history,

society and culture of the modern state of Israel. And in order to do this we

bring ... faculty, postdoctoral fellows and research

fellows who teach and and pursue their own research. We support graduate

students and undergraduate students with grants for research about modern Israel,

scholarships for them to study abroad in Israel, and we also host a whole range of

public programs lectures, conferences and cultural events. So we're happy that

you're here. And if you're not on our mailing list and you would like to be

please leave us your email address. Now it's my pleasure to introduce our

speaker today. To welcome Dr. Nili Alon Amit for her talk on, "Land and Wisdom:

The love of Zion from the Hebrew Bible to Contemporary Israeli Poetry." And Dr.

Alon Amit is the Israel Institute Visiting Assistant Professor at the

Nazarian Center for this academic year. She's a

researcher and lecturer of philosophy of soul and philosophy of education at

Hakibbutzim Academic College in Tel Avi. And she has a PhD in ancient philosophy

from the University of Haifa. Dr. Alon Amit research explores a history of

ideas from ancient Greece to modern times and has focused most recently on

philosophy of education, both ancient and modern and defining the field of Israeli

philosophy of education. She's the author of a forthcoming book, On Happy Souls: The History of Soul in Western Culture,

and co-author of the chapter "Improving

Israeli Education - Multicultural Perspectives of Israeli Educational Thought," in the edited volume in Hebrew.

Advancing the Israeli Educational System: Experts' Opinions.

Also forthcoming in 2020. So please join me in welcoming Dr. Nili Alon Amit. (applause)

Thank you very much. I'm very excited ..this is a class about philosophy. About the love of Zion. We'll go for a journey in time from the the Zion we'll go through our journey in

Bible, from the 19thCentury BC until nowadays. So I hope you

enjoy the journey ....Let me know if I'm too quick.

I get excited when I talk so. Let me know if it's too much for you, and I'll

slow down. Okay great so um. The love of Zion. What talk about the

concept of the Zion. This will not be apolitical talk even though a lot of

happening today in Jerusalem. It will be a philosophical and literary talk

about the meaning of Zion to Jews throughout history. So let us begin.

The Patriach Abraham... can you hear me well... Mitch?... okay 19th

century BC was promised by the gods of Israel ...still didn't know... but

if he goes to a certain faraway land he will be promised a great blessing. This

is a very nice etching and engraving by..... one of my

favorite Hebrew artists. We will comeback to his paintings later. We will look

at the concept of Zion through two axes....one of them is more spiritual and

one of them is more material. If you look at that it's enough etymology of the

word Zion you have two sources for the words. One of them is the Hebrew root

Z-i-a-, which means Tziyon...

desert, wilderness or you have the Aramaic ....

....which means dying of thirst. So basically the concept of Zion the

material concept of silence or rather the more unreachable concept of Zion is

a utopia. The source of the word utopiain Greek is ou-topos -- ou means no;

topos means place... a non-existent place. Isthe whole concept of Zion based on a

non-existent place.. on an ideal? Some of the writings that we will explore in

this talk would say so. Genesis 12 would say that Zion or the promise land is

an ideal which will also say otherwise....and we'll get familiar with all

of them . If

you look at the other side, you see another source for the word which comes

from Hittites...which means

fortress. Zion is the fortress for the Jews. It's the City of David. It's an

existent place; it's where the first temple was built; it's the material place

for the worship of God - and Jews came to Zion and believed in Zion as a

material place whereas....the Spirit of God dwells

physically. So there was a physical aspect to Jewish religious devotion... and

the writings would say that our again, Genesis, the book of Samuel....

....from the 11th century AD garden and .....from

20th century and the contemporary Naomi Shemer and Ehud Manor. If you have

any questions stop me. Okay. So let's delve into the writings. If we

look at the book of Genesis, let's see where the promise land is first

described. Now it's only begins on Genesis 12. What happened on Genesis 1

until 12...there was a description. It's called a mythical description. The

mythology of the world, the Creation... Noah's Ark, the Tower of Babel,

Peter considered the mythology. The myths of Israel. But according to

research or Jewish opinions, when we get to Genesis 12 this is the historical

description. The Bible, the history begins with the journey of Abraham. Now Abraham

lived in Harran - eastern Turkey of today. He was not..he was worshipping many gods

like many people of his time. But God chose him

and an unfamiliar God talked to him and said, if you believe in me and you go far

away and you leave everything, I will bestow many blessings on you. So the

beginning of the concept of the Holy Land in a place where you have to go. You

have to leave everything behind. You have to suffer hardships.....

Now the Lord had said unto Abram, get thee out of thy

country ....and from thy kindred and from thy father's house and unto a land that

I will show thee. And I will make of thee a great nation. And I will bless thee. And

it will make my name great. And thou shalt be a blessing and in thee shall...

all families of the earth be blessed. We've seen how many blessings - actually

seven - are bestowed on Abraham, only through this journey. So Abraham departs

.... departments ...as the Lord has spoken unto him. And they went

forth to go into the land of Canaan and into the land of Canaan they came. And

the Lord appeared unto Abraham. The Lord appeared - this is physical, material

appearance that we have here. And said, unto thy seed will I give this land - the

land is promised to Abraham because Abrahram was ambitious enough or brave enough...

brave enough to do the great step. To believe in one God. To depart from

everything and go there. And the land was promised to him. So he went there but

then what happened? And there was famine in the land and everyone went down into

Egypt to sojourn there for the famine with ....

in the land. So from the very beginning ...from the very beginning

we have Canaan as a promised land. A place of blessing. And then in the same breath it's

a place of famine. It's a place ...it's a place of hunger.

In the very beginning of the Bible they had to go back down to Egypt and come

back from the very beginning. So the concept of Zion - it's not called Zion yet -

it's ... we're still in Genesis... It's the promised land. It's a blessing but

already has famine. Why God chose

Abraham? He chose him as opposed to another person.

Yeah there are many writings about that, especially philosophers like

Kierkegaard and .... what you will see....They say that Abraham was

ready because in the land of Canaan, that's the place where the Jews - the

future Jews - will reach their highest fulfillment. On that place they will

achieve prophecy and Abraham was a first prophet. He chose him because of

the perfectness of his virtues.

The blessing, the ideals, and the desert. It's all

combined already in the introduction to the Holy Land.

So for the very beginning we see the two contents combined.

Yeah and they will show up again in the different ....So that's exactly what

I'm trying to show. More questions... okay let's continue. The first mention of the words

Zion in the Bible appears in Samuel ...King David conquers the mountain, the

Temple Mount...

.... said to David you will not get in here even the

blind and the lame can ward you off. They thought David cannot get in here. But of

course David was brave enough and he did conquer the mountain. Nevertheless, David

captured the fortress....The fortress of

Zion, which is the City of David. So the capturing - the physical capturing - of the

fortress of Zion is done through braveness. Against all odds - and this is another

very important thing you find in the Jewish Bible...of course against all

odds. It began...connected with the first appearance of Zion.

Now the writing of the book of Samuel was in the fifth and fourth centuries

BC - and when we talk about the 5th and4th centuries BC, this is the time when

the great classical Greek philosophy began. This is the time of Socrates and

Plato and Aristotle. So we will have some Greek context and we'll return to the

Jewish writings to see how they correspond with each other.

Okay, after David captures the mountains -a holy mountain - the first temple was

built. The first temple was built by King Solomon and it stood there for 400 years.

And in this temple on Mount Zion was the greatest ...worship .....thank you..... Worship

of God, which was done materially, physically. According to the Jews, God

dwelt ....was actually living within the temple. And Judaism began - the

practice of Judaism began with physical worship in a physical place. Zion was

a material place in order to fulfill yourself as a Jew you had to come to

Zion, you had to go to the temple, you had to...There are many mitzvahs that are

connected with Jerusalem and with Zion that we do not do here in America.

You only do it there. So in order to be a full Jew, you had to be in Zion in these

years. What happened in the year 586? The destruction of the first temple. It was

burned down by the Babylonians. And all the Jews...Thousands of Jews were deported,

expelled into Babylon. This is considered a very, very sad time in Judaism. But why

was it so sad? They did have to leave their beloved country, the temple, and go

to Babylon. But there on the rivers of Babylon where we sat down, their life wasn't

that bad. Actually they had a very good life there. The Jewish community in

Babylon flourished. The greatest Jewish culture ...writing culture...began there.

And when King Cyrus gave them a penalty in the year

538 BC, many of them didn't want to return. It was so great for them

there. And actually the return of the Babylonians was said to be in the 1950s

with the immigration from Iraq. So they stayed there for so many years and they

loved it. So why do we see these sad songs in the Book of Psalms - By the

Rivers of Babylon - we sat down and wept when we

remembered Zion. How can we sing the songs of the Lord while in a foreign

land. Why all that... because they were still used to the worship of Jerusalem,

the material of worship in the temple. How can we be Jews away from the

material place of worship which was burned down. It took them a long time to

accommodate. But that was so great thereon the rivers. They had a Talmud going;

they had their little synagogue that started appearing; and the local places

of worship of God. So the great crying of Zion is usually associated with the loss

of the material temple .... of the material Zion and now Zion is becoming

ingrained as an ideal. We miss Zion because we are connected to the ideal of Zion.

It's like forget Jerusalem. Every person who ever got married in a Jewish

marriage. ....

I

actually brought you some songs but we don't have a lot of time.

This is a little off-topic but just quickly in your

research in Babylon then since they didn't have an animal sacrifice, they

didn't have the temple. Is that where we begin to see prayer as a reflective sort

of exercise? Yes, that's where the Talmud would flourish and the Talmud is all about connection then attend would have all of that

between man and God. More questions. Okay continue.

We will come back I assure you. The reason I'm bringing you

these two wonderful people who aren't Jewish at all is just to give you a like

a cultural geographical correspondence of ideas. What's happened to the idea of

the material Zion and the ideal Zion? How do they correspond with Greek

philosophy. So who are these...Plato Aristotle.

First of all Plato is the older because he is a teacher and what else tells us this is Plato and this is

Aristotle? George ....no....yes, that's right.

That's right. Plato is going like this because for

Plato reality is in the ideas in the sky. We can't see them but they are real

We'll talk about that in a second. And Aristotle stood in this as though

everything is down here. Okay so we have. So we have idealism and

empiricism philosophy that comes through trials, through matter, depicted and this

wonderful painting by Raphael.

They are like the pillars of ancient philosophy. The idealism and empiricism,

teacher and student. Fourth century BC...at the time of the writing of the book of

Samuel. So if we talked about Zion as ideal and material, let's look at

idealism and materialism and Greek philosophy. I assure you it will be brief

and we'll come back to Judaism in three minutes.

I hope. Okay so when we talk about Greek philosophy and their conceptions of

materiality and ideology, we're talking about Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics. The

reason I am bringing you them is because both Plato and Aristotle influenced the whole

world of thought and especially later Jewish philosophers like.....

Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon ......and the Stoics had a direct influence on

the first Jewish philosopher called Philo of Alexandria of the 1st century

AD. So what did Plato, Aristotle and the Stoics say

about ideal and matter? Let's talk about Plato for a second. Are you familiar

with the allegory of the cave. Some yes, some no...Ok for

Plato, reality is immaterial and why because

ideas are eternal. Matter is temporary.

How can something temporary be real. Only something that is

eternal has reality. And therefore for Plato ideas have higher reality than corporate reel

material. For Plato reality is an idea and this is discussed in his allegory of

the cave. Plato's allegory of the cave says this...imagine a group of prisoners

sitting in a cave with their back to the entrance of the cave and all they can

see is shadows...passing shadows on the wall. They cannot turn their heads. This

is reality for them. So they associate reality with shadows.

And they develop a language that has to do with the passing shadows. This is their

reality. This is a situation of humans, according to Plato. We believe in what

our eyes see... but we do not turn

our heads to look at higher realities. Now imagine that one of his prisoners is

released from this change and having been turned around to see first a

fire burning in the cave. At the beginning you will be very confused and you

will be understand that the fire created the shadows; that the fire is

more real than the shadows; and then the slowly the prisoners

pulled up from the cave into the real daylight and of course here in the first

beginning he is dazzled and cannot even look anywhere because he's so used

to the cave. And then you see there's a higher reality than passing shadows. So

there are stages of reality. He walked outside and his

eyes get used to the light and he starts seeing things that exist in nature. He sees

flowers and I don't know what was in Athens...olive trees and grapes... and you

know ... Things that were in Athens at that time. And then he associates reality to

do things...There is a higher reality than what he saw in the cave. Then,

once it turns his eyes up to the Sun and you understand that the Sun is giving light

to everything ...only thanks to the Sun he can see anything. And Sun

actually gives life so we understand there's a higher reality up in the sky

than the thing that he sees on the ground. So the higher you look the more

real things become. And Plato said that since we are on earth since we are with

bodies we are not perfect, but our souls are immaterial. And if souls are aspiring

to go up there. Therefore, our souls want to learn the wisdom of whatever appears

there that we cannot see, which is immaterial. This is Plato and from my

description you can understand why Plato was so loved during history and by

monotheistic religions saying that our body is temporary but our soul is

eternal .... take the body and go up. It's just goes very well with

all monotheistic religions. This is the platonic context of idealism - why ideas

are more important than materialism. Questions?

That was Plato in a nutshell. Okay. So according to

Plato and this is from the symposium, beholding beauty with the eye of the

mind he will be enabled to bring forth not images of beauty but realities. And

bringing forth and nourishing true virtue to become the friend of God and

be immortal if mortal man can be. When men sees the beauty, man is inspired. But

the inspiration of beauty brings it to higher realms of thought. The material

beauty doesn't matter. What matters is your thoughts about beauty. And now we

get back to Judaism. Psalm 50 which was written during the Hellenistic times. Out

of Zion the perfection of beauty Godhath shined. This is that idealism in

... it's not the material design....

We'll talk about the ...change in a minute. But look at the life

coming out of Zion. It's not a material light it's an idealistic light.

Questions? You're all experts. Okay so

Philo of Alexandria .... was a

... Jewish stoic philosopher. First Century AD. So if we

look at Jewish philosophy we have the Talmud ....

and one of the first Jewish philosophers who actually combines Greek

and Jewish philosophy. This Philo who lived in Alexandria and after Philo

we don't have any philosophers that we could speak up until Yehudah Halevi

in the 11th century. And what Philo does is talks about Abraham,

talks about the promised land. But in idealistic

terms. Wishing to purify the soul of man....

impulse towards complete salvation namely a change of abode when God asked

Abraham to go away from one country into another. That was for the purification of

soul; it wasn't for a material cause. And this is in the framework of Greek

philosophy. Now we jump in time - why do we jump in time. Maybe there were Jewish

philosophers. We just don't know enough about them. Jewish philosophy is

usually in a time of Filo and Yehudah Halevi, some kind of

justification of the Jewish religion, according to the philosophical context

of the time. So Philo of Alexandria talked about stoic and....

Yehudah Halevi justified Judaism according to Greek philosophers

and also religion. He already knows about Christianity and Islam which Philo of

Alexander didn't know about yet. In Yehudah Halevi book....

what he does there is he just decides why Judaism is superior to philosophy,

Christianity and Islam. And he says first of all that religion is superior to

philosophy and why because this fulfilled Jew in Zion ..this fulfilled Jew has to be in

Zion. For him on and love are lodged in his heart for his entire life.

Not like the philosopher who gets into some kind of logical understanding said AHA.

The religious person, the fulfilled person actually gets some kind of calling

and he believes it much more ardently than the philosopher. Religion, according

to Halev, is superior to philosophy. And Judaism is superior to all religions and

why? Note how Abraham was uprooted from his native land after he became suitable

to cleave with the divine order. This is for your question why Abraham. He was

chosen to be suitable. Abraham was then brought to the place

where his potential could be realized. Rabbi Yehudah Halevi combined materialism

and idealism. And he said only in Zion can the Jew fulfill himself and the highest

order fulfillment would be prophecy. Yehudah Halevi was known for his song....

How can I enjoy what I eat. How can I enjoy material things? How can I fulfill my vows and

promises when Zion lies under the ropes of Edom. Edom was then considered

to be the Roman Empire...In chains and bound he lived in Spain. I

would gladly leave the best of Spain to see the dusty ruins of Jerusalem. Okay.

Jerusalem is an ideal and the real Jerusalem which is

dusty, ruined, famine, according to Genesis. But still a place where Jewish

people aspire. Questions?

Rabbi Moshe Ben Maimon was actually the contemporary of Rabbi Yehudah Halevi.

And he said the Shekinah - theSpirit of God - is a light created for the

purpose of worship. The primary object of every intelligent person must be to deny

the corporality of God.. pure idealism. And to believe that all those perceptions were

of a spiritual, not of a material character. Note this and considerate it willed.

...said you have to read the Bible like a spiritual thing. You don't have to

believe the corporeality of places of worship; look at it in a spiritual manner.

By the way both ......are buried in Israel.

Jumping again in time, yea....

......

.....

....

The great philosophers of the three religions....

Justify their religion

through Aristotle. So Aristotle's the student of Plato would say that

spirituality is higher than materiality.....

from Spain. Jewish family that escaped from Spain

and came to Amsterdam. And in his youth he was a great Jewish student, he learned

...it was Judaism. ....

....

Spinoza basically said

that God exists but God is nature. God is not a Jewish concept or a Christian

concept or a Muslim prophet. God is above scripture. And this saying was very hard

to digest to his to community. Here you see Dutch Rabbi...

Dutch Portuguese Rabbi Natan Lopez called ...arguing for the lifting of

the benefit we know that in 2015 okay...arguing for the lifting....

..said...It is one thing to understand Scripture and another to

understand the mind of God. Scripture is corporal. The mind of God is

pure idealism and this is what every thinker should strive for. Spinoza is the

end of early modern philosophy and this brings us to the gates of modern Zionism.

In the picture...again by.. and you see that the Jew is always facing this

direction. They all look like father Abraham

They're always in Chains and here you see the ideal of Zion and this picture

was used in the 5th Zionist Congress in Bazel. Because you see here... you see the

beauty of Zen as they aspired it to be. We see field of people working.

Understand it's a very spiritual. This is what we want....

......

...Coming back to Zion with mercy. We all aspire.

The material and idealistic. The first and second aliyah or immigration to

Israel in the 19th and 20th century we have two great speakers who were ...

....it was before religious Zionism. As I said, non-political - this is

secular Zionism. Zion is the place for Israel. And A.D. Gordon came to Israel at the

very old age of 47 and he came to work the land. He was a Jewish scholar and a

Kabbalist. He grew up in Ukraine. He came to Israel and he said I'm here to

work and people looked at him ......

No he wanted to work and he built roads and he carried stones and he said the

soul of the Jew is the offspring of the natural environment of the land of

Israel. Here the father of what is called a religion of work. We have to work in

order to fulfill ourselves in Israel. So you have fulfillment but this is secular

fulfillment. Fulfillment of the citizens of the new world of Israel. ...

says my land is wrapped in light as in a prayer shawl and a month...

oh he worked as that road builder... and he said and among the creator's is your son

is....a road builder... He connects

himself ....

also on a mission but this is not areligious mission

this is a mission of work. I build roads. I am the simple worker and this is how I

fulfill myself. So again - ideal corporality, modern,

ancient you see how they combine. Now to get to our time. Naomi Shemer. Naomi Shemer

wrote this very famous song that is sometimes confused for the

Israeli anthem. We all know

this song. The song was written..

let us read a few parts.

Alas, the dry wells and fountains,

calls for pray here you see some kind of grim concept of realization of Jerusalem.

The rocky caves at night are haunted by sounds of long ago when we were again

going to the Jordan by way of Jericho. She loves Jerusalem like gold but she has

some kind of pessimistic or sad or you know she's

longing for the old Jerusalem. The Sun was written for in song contest in

Jerusalem in May 1967 - a month before the Six Day War. It became very famous

back then and then after the Six Day War....

Naomi Shemer added a few lines...stanzas. She says

Back to the wells and to the fountains

So now she's optimistic

but still you see the logging and the the will to have Jerusalem at a peaceful

place and the worry about Jerusalem.

...within my heart I shall treasure your song and sight ....

The most contemporary poet we have here is Ehud Manor who passed away recently. He was well loved in Israel

When he talks about Zion it's always it's ...this is my place ...I'm very

sad because he lost his brother in the war. But he's always

loving Zion - morning Zion. Very realistic -this is the

reality of Jews living in Israel. We're happy about Zion where mourning our

losses but we are still here. He says I have no other country ...

Even if my land is burning just a word in Hebrew pierces my

vein .....

A broken heart. This is my home even though the promise of Zion always, you

know, is never fulfilled I'm still working, I'm still hopeful. This is the

mission of the Jew - to miss Zion, to long for Zion. Zion...

Doing everything they can. Being sad. Tying again. This is the whole

story of Judaism here and again you see......

Zion is over there. Always longing for it even when we live. ....

....still longing for Zion. And just to end

this up with optimistic note (music)

This is telling that Zion is an ideal. It can be a happy ideal. It's something that connects

people. The spirit of Zion - you see it also in reggae. you see it in many in many

ways of popular culture. But this is our Zion - ideal, corporal. It's ours. We love it. Thank you.