The Letter to the Exiles

First in a new series, "Seek the Peace of the City," on what Judaism teaches Jews about the countries they live in.

There is an accusation that has followed Jews for as long as there have been Jews living among other peoples. It goes by several names, but the oldest is simply the charge of divided loyalty: that a Jew, whatever passport he carries, really belongs somewhere else, and that his neighbors can never quite count on him.

Most people who have heard the accusation assume it is either a slander with no basis or a reflection of some genuine Jewish attachment to a distant homeland. Very few have heard what Jewish tradition itself actually teaches Jews about the countries they live in. The teaching is old, explicit, and binding, and it begins with a letter written roughly twenty-six centuries ago.

A people carried away

In the early sixth century BCE, the Babylonian empire conquered the kingdom of Judah. Before it destroyed Jerusalem entirely, it deported a large part of the population, including the king, the nobility, and the skilled craftsmen, and resettled them hundreds of miles away in Babylonia.

Imagine the position of those exiles. They had lost their homes, their land, and their independence. They were living as a conquered minority in the capital of the empire that had defeated them. And among them, as there always are in such moments, were voices promising that it would all be over soon. The Bible records prophets, both in Jerusalem and among the exiles, who assured the people that Babylon's power would be broken within two years and that everyone would be home.

What should a people in that position do? Keep their bags packed? Resist the empire from within? Hold themselves apart from the society around them, waiting for the day they could leave?

The prophet Jeremiah, writing from Jerusalem, sent them a letter with an answer. It is preserved in the twenty-ninth chapter of the book that bears his name, and it is worth reading in full:

Build ye houses, and dwell in them; and plant gardens, and eat the fruit of them; take ye wives, and beget sons and daughters; and take wives for your sons, and give your daughters to husbands, that they may bear sons and daughters; that ye may be increased there, and not diminished. And seek the peace of the city whither I have caused you to be carried away captive, and pray unto the Lord for it: for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace.

What the letter says

Notice first who is speaking. The letter is written in God's name, and it describes the exile as something God Himself has done: "the city whither I have caused you to be carried away." The exiles are not told that they are in Babylon by accident or by the cruelty of an enemy alone. They are told they are there by decree, and that their task is to live well where they have been placed.

Notice next what they are told to do. Build houses, which means settle down rather than camp. Plant gardens and eat from them, which means invest in a future measured in years. Marry and raise families. And then the instruction that has shaped Jewish life ever since: seek the peace of the city, its welfare, its wellbeing, and pray to God on its behalf.

That last command is startling when it is read in context. The city in question is Babylon, the capital of the empire that had just conquered Judah and would soon burn the Temple. The exiles are not told merely to tolerate it or to avoid trouble. They are told to want good things for it, actively, and to bring its welfare before God in prayer. And the reason given is plain and practical: "for in the peace thereof shall ye have peace." The wellbeing of the Jews and the wellbeing of the place where they live are bound up together.

Jeremiah also told the exiles not to listen to the prophets promising a quick return. The exile, he said, would last seventy years. A people that expected to leave in two years might reasonably refuse to put down roots. A people told to expect generations had to build a life where they were.

How long the letter lasted

The Babylonian exile ended, in time, and many returned. But the letter did not become a historical curiosity. When the Second Temple was destroyed by Rome six centuries later, and the far longer exile described in this publication's earlier series began, Jeremiah's instruction became the working policy of Jewish communities everywhere they went.

The later sages built on it. The Mishnah, compiled around the year 200, records the teaching of a sage who served as deputy to the High Priest in the last days of the Temple: "Pray for the welfare of the government, for were it not for the fear of it, people would swallow one another alive." The point is the same as Jeremiah's, and stated just as practically. Order and stable government protect everyone, Jews included, and a Jew who prays for the government is praying for the conditions that let ordinary life go on.

Out of these teachings grew a custom that still exists. In synagogues around the world, on the Sabbath, many congregation still recite a prayer for the welfare of the government of the country in which they live. It has been said for kings and emperors, for republics and parliaments, in many languages and many centuries. Many observant congregations in America say it for the President and the government of the United States, and in Britain for the King. It is a small prayer, easy to overlook, and it is the direct descendant of a letter sent to Babylon.

What this means for the old accusation

The charge of divided loyalty assumes that a Jew's attachment to his country must be thin or temporary, because his true allegiance lies elsewhere. The tradition teaches the opposite. A Jew's obligation is to seek the welfare of the place where he lives, to build there, raise his family there, contribute to its peace, and pray for its government. That obligation does not depend on whether the country is friendly. It was first given concerning Babylon.

There is a real attachment to the Land of Israel in Jewish faith, as this publication has described at length. But the tradition placed that attachment in the hands of God, who would end the exile in His time, and it placed in human hands the task of living faithfully and peaceably wherever the exile had brought them. The two were never in conflict, because one was a matter of prayer and the other a matter of conduct.

The accusation of divided loyalty found new life in the twentieth century, when a political movement began teaching that every Jew's true home was a particular state and that Jews everywhere belonged to it. Later articles in this series will look at what that teaching did to the old charge. For now, the starting point is the instruction Jews actually received, long before any of that. Build houses. Plant gardens. Raise families. Seek the peace of the city, and pray for it.

And that is exactly what Jews have done throughout their many centuries of exile.