By Rabbi Josh Wander
The older I get, and the more I learn, the more I realize that leaving Galut is much easier than getting Galut out of the Jew. This problem did not begin with our current exile. The first great Jewish redemption was Yetziat Mitzrayim — the Exodus from Egypt. Hashem did not merely command our ancestors to physically leave Egypt; they also had to separate themselves from the idolatrous culture that had surrounded and influenced them. Yechezkel records Hashem’s warning: “Cast away, every man, the detestable things of his eyes, and do not defile yourselves with the idols of Egypt” (Yechezkel 20:7).
Yet Egypt did not remain behind so easily. The Jewish people left Egypt, crossed the sea, witnessed miracles and stood at Har Sinai, and shortly afterward they constructed the Golden Calf. They had physically left Egypt, but apparently some of Egypt had left with them. That should serve as a warning for our generation: when transitioning from Galut to Geula, we cannot bring our golden calves with us.
For nearly two thousand years, Jews wandered among foreign nations, surrounded by their religions, cultures, languages, clothing, superstitions and customs. We lived among Christians and Muslims, Persians and Europeans, Arabs and Slavs. Inevitably, elements of those cultures entered Jewish life. Some were harmless, some became beautiful expressions of Jewish identity, and some became so deeply embedded that we eventually stopped asking where Judaism ended and Galut began.
Now something historic has changed. We are coming home. Kibbutz Galuyot — the Ingathering of the Exiles — is no longer merely something we pray for three times a day. Jews have returned to Eretz Yisrael from virtually every corner of the earth. Hebrew has returned as our spoken language. Jewish agriculture and Jewish sovereignty have returned. Areas of Torah that remained theoretical for centuries are becoming practical again. If Hashem is bringing the Jewish people out of Galut, perhaps it is time to begin bringing the Galut out of Judaism.
We understandably treasure the traditions handed down by our parents and grandparents. They preserved Judaism under extraordinarily difficult circumstances, and we owe them an immeasurable debt. But honoring our ancestors does not require believing that everything Jews accumulated during two thousand years among foreign nations originated at Har Sinai. The Torah describes us as an עם סגולה — “a treasured nation.” Yet somewhere along the road of exile, portions of Jewish culture seem to have transformed us from an Am Segulah into an עם סגולות — “a nation of segulot.”
Wear this string, visit this grave, bake this challah, recite this passage a particular number of times or perform this ritual on this particular day, and perhaps you will find your spouse, have children, earn more money or receive a yeshuah — salvation. Consider practices now comfortably found within parts of the Orthodox world: enormous bonfires on Lag BaOmer, baking “Shlissel Challah” as a segulah for livelihood, swinging a chicken over one’s head for kapparot, wearing red strings for protection, or flocking to graves of tzaddikim seeking supernatural assistance.
These practices are not all equivalent. Some have Jewish sources and important rabbinic defenders; others have disputed origins or were strongly criticized by major Torah authorities. The point is not to recklessly declare every unfamiliar minhag forbidden. The point is that we should be willing to ask questions. Where did this practice originate? Did Chazal know it? Was it practiced by surrounding non-Jewish populations? Did major Torah authorities object to it? Most importantly, does it reflect the Torah’s conception of our relationship with Hashem?
These questions make people remarkably uncomfortable. Suggest that something regarded today as “very frum” might have originated outside Judaism and the response is often, “But my grandparents did this!” Yet age does not make something Torah, and popularity does not make something Jewish. Rav Ovadia Yosef zt”l made this point memorably when he noted that the letters of מנהג — minhag, “custom” can be rearranged to spell גהנם — Gehinnom. There is a world of difference between a genuine minhag and a מנהג טעות — mistaken custom. A minhag rooted in Torah can preserve and elevate a community, while blindly perpetuating a mistake merely because “we have always done it” can lead us in precisely the wrong direction.
This concern is hardly a modern rationalist invention. The Torah repeatedly warns against adopting the religious practices of surrounding nations: “Do not learn to follow the abominations of those nations” (Devarim 18:9). Only verses later comes the antidote: תמים תהיה עם ה׳ אלקיך — “You shall be wholehearted with Hashem your God.” Serve Hashem directly, trust Him, pray to Him and perform His mitzvot rather than becoming obsessed with manipulating unseen forces or discovering supernatural techniques for controlling destiny.
Halacha even recognizes the prohibition of דרכי האמורי — “the ways of the Amorites,” encompassing certain superstitious practices associated with surrounding peoples. The Torah’s concern was therefore never limited to outright idol worship. Foreign religious thinking can penetrate Jewish life in much subtler ways. The Neviim repeatedly fought this phenomenon, and Yirmiyahu warned Jews who continued to regard themselves as servants of Hashem while absorbing foreign religious practices. Throughout subsequent exiles we lived amid Persian, Christian, Islamic and countless local folk cultures. It would be historically astonishing if food, language, clothing and music crossed cultural boundaries, but superstition somehow never did.
Nor is skepticism toward such practices simply “Rambam-style rationalism.” The Rambam certainly waged an uncompromising battle against magic, divination and superstition, but great kabbalists also warned against practices that later became associated with popular spirituality. The Ari z”l was far more restrained regarding cemetery visitation than contemporary practice might suggest, and the Gra fiercely opposed customs and beliefs he considered distortions of authentic Torah. The real divide is therefore not simply between rationalists and mystics; it is between Torah and folk religion.
That distinction becomes especially important during Geula because returning home means much more than changing our address. Jews returned from Poland, Morocco, Yemen, Iraq, Persia, Russia, America and dozens of other countries carrying magnificent traditions developed by generations of holy Jews, but we also returned carrying baggage. Kibbutz Galuyot cannot mean gathering all that baggage together in Eretz Yisrael and automatically declaring everything sacred. There must be a בירור — a process of clarification: What is Torah? What is authentic Jewish mesorah? What developed legitimately within Torah? And what did we simply pick up along the road?
For two thousand years Judaism necessarily functioned as the religion of an exiled people. Entire areas of Torah became theoretical because we had no Jewish state, no Jewish army, no national Jewish agriculture, no Sanhedrin and no Beit HaMikdash. Meanwhile, customs developed in Warsaw, Baghdad, Marrakesh and Frankfurt became important markers of Jewish identity. But Galut Judaism was never intended to be the final form of Jewish civilization. The prophets describe the opposite direction: כי מציון תצא תורה ודבר ה׳ מירושלים — “For Torah shall go forth from Zion, and the word of Hashem from Jerusalem.” For centuries, cultural influences flowed into Jewish communities from the nations surrounding us; Geula reverses that flow, with Torah once again flowing from Yerushalayim outward.
There is an even deeper irony. During the centuries of Galut, we became intensely attached to practices we instinctively identify as “traditional Judaism,” while entire explicit Torah concepts faded almost completely from Jewish consciousness. We sometimes search desperately for a segulah promising protection, livelihood or salvation while overlooking things that Hashem Himself explicitly commanded and to which the Torah attaches those very blessings.
Take the חצוצרות — chatzotzrot, the silver trumpets. The Torah explicitly commands that when we go to battle against an enemy attacking us, we sound the chatzotzrot: “והרעותם בחצוצרות ונזכרתם לפני ה׳ אלקיכם ונושעתם מאויביכם — You shall sound the trumpets, and you shall be remembered before Hashem your God, and you shall be saved from your enemies” (Bamidbar 10:9). That is not a segulah invented by a later generation. It is not a magical recipe or Jewish folklore. It is written explicitly in the Torah, together with an explicit promise of divine assistance against our enemies. Yet how many Torah-observant Jews have ever even considered this mitzvah when the Jewish people go to war?
The same is true of Eretz Yisrael itself. We have sometimes turned marginal customs into major expressions of religiosity while allowing the centrality of living in the Land promised to Avraham, Yitzchak and Yaakov to become almost peripheral. The Torah repeatedly connects our national life in Eretz Yisrael with extraordinary blessings: rain, agricultural abundance, security, national strength and the ability to dwell securely in our Land. These are not mystical innovations or folk traditions. They are among the Torah’s most explicit promises.
Perhaps that is one of the strangest consequences of Galut: we remembered things that were never central and forgot things that were. Practices developed in exile became emotionally indispensable, while commandments and national Torah concepts that could not easily be practiced in exile gradually disappeared from everyday Jewish consciousness. Eventually we reached the bizarre situation in which questioning a segulah can sound radical, while restoring an explicit Torah institution can sound revolutionary.
Geula demands that we reverse that process. It is not enough to reject foreign influences; we must rediscover what they displaced. We should not replace one collection of rituals with another search for spiritual tricks. We must return to the Torah itself and ask what Hashem actually commanded of the Jewish people as we return to our Land, rebuild our national life and confront our enemies. It is time to reject the fake magic and rediscover the extraordinary power of what was in front of us all along: the word of Hashem.
That does not mean erasing Ashkenazic, Sephardic, Yemenite, Moroccan, Lithuanian or Chassidic traditions. They contain extraordinary treasures that generations of Jews preserved and developed with tremendous sacrifice. But perhaps one of the great spiritual projects of Kibbutz Galuyot is bringing those traditions home and examining them once again through the lens of Torah in Eretz Yisrael. We must preserve the treasures while having the courage to discard the baggage.
Perhaps nowhere is this בירור more necessary than with our obsession with segulot. If I need parnassah, perhaps before searching for a mystical recipe I should examine whether I conduct business honestly, give tzedakah, pray sincerely and trust Hashem. If I need a shidduch, perhaps the answer is not another red string or another airplane ticket to another grave. If I need a yeshuah, perhaps my first address should simply be the Ribbono Shel Olam. We do not need to invent formulas for blessing when Hashem has already told us how a Jewish people are supposed to live. This is the tremendous simplicity of תמים תהיה עם ה׳ אלקיך — “Be wholehearted with Hashem your God.”
The first Geula teaches us that redemption has two dimensions: we must leave Egypt, and then we must remove Egypt from ourselves. Our ancestors carried the Torah through two thousand years of exile with extraordinary sacrifice, but our obligation is not to recreate Poland, Persia, Morocco or America in Eretz Yisrael. It is to take the eternal Torah they preserved and carry it forward into Geula. We have gathered Jews from the four corners of the earth; now comes the harder process of separating the eternal treasures they carried from some of the cultural baggage they collected along the way.
We are leaving Galut, and our Judaism must eventually leave Galut too. You can walk out of Egypt and still carry Egypt inside you, and we cannot carry the Golden Calves of Galut into the Geula. Hashem did not choose us to become an עם סגולות — a nation endlessly searching for segulot. He chose us to be an עם סגולה — His treasured nation.