The Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones

“Only the misfortune of exile can provide the in-depth understanding and the overview into the realities of the world.”

This quote is attributed to the Austrian-Jewish author Stefan Zweig (1881-1942.)

Zweig, one of the most popular authors of his time, was forced to flee Europe after his books were first burned and later banned by the Nazi regime. 

Are there any advantages to being in exile, as Zweig suggested? 

Jewish exile versus Jewish sovereignty was and still is a popular debate among our people.  

Would the Jewish people be better off as a nation spread among nations, or should Jewish people strive for sovereignty in their own land? 

Let’s look into the topic of exile as it reflects in our tradition through the Haftarah of this week’s portion - Vayigash.

The Haftarah for this week is taken from the book of Ezekiel, and is a part of what is known as the “Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones," or in Hebrew “Hazon Ha’atzamot Ha’yeveshot.”

In this vision, Ezekiel sees a valley full of skeletons, dry human bones. In that valley he is commanded to recite a prophecy, after which the bones slowly turn into living people. There is a detailed description of the bones becoming covered with tendon tissues, flesh and skin. God then instructs Ezekiel to resurrect them and reveals that these bones were in fact Jews in exile, and their resurrection is their return to the land of Israel. 

The second part of the chapter which makes up our portion’s Haftarah, puts forth another fable, that of two trees joined together. This symbolizes the unification of the Jewish people. The divided kingdoms of Judah and Israel must be united in order for the Jewish people to dwell together in the land.

This fable was chosen by our Sages to be this portion’s Haftarah because of the dramatic encounter the portion brings between Joseph and his brother Judah, an encounter of confrontation and then reconciliation. The book of Ezekiel was written at a time of a split among the Jewish nation, a split between Israel, the descendants of Joseph, and Judah, the descendents of Judah.

In Rabbinic literature, the Vision of the Dry Bones is interpreted in two main ways — the first, an actual “End of Days” resurrection of the dead, the second, an allegory for the Jews in exile and their return to Israel. There were of course later Hasidic interpretations which referred to the bones as inner desires of man and woman, resurrecting hopes and dreams which can never really die…  

Needless to say, the Zionist movement has embraced this vision as a chilling description of the need for return. 

The line from Hatikvah - the Zionist movement and later Israel’s national anthem, “Od lo avdah Tikvatenu” - “Our hope is not yet lost” is an answer to verse 11 in the vision which reads “Yavshu atzmotaynu ve’avda tikvatenu” - “Our bones dried up and our hope got lost.”

And then of course there is the unavoidable association of the Jewish people in the 20th century literally being “resurrected” out of the ashes and the mountains of skeletons of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belzen into the historic return of self-determination in the land of Israel only a few years after the war’s end. 

Words from the Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones are quoted every year in countless Holocaust memorial services in Israel, culminating with verse 14 of the vision: “I will put My breath into you and you shall live again, and I will set you upon your own soil.”

The Zionist movement however, was born decades before the Holocaust, and its vision and solution to the Jewish question was not supported by all Jewish people. Quite the contrary. The early Zionists in Eastern and Central Europe were often dismissed as delusional dreamers. Resistance to the Zionist idea came from Jewish people of all political affiliation and levels of observance.  

There were the Orthodox Jews who believed that the return to Israel would only come along with the Messiah and that any attempt to return beforehand would be nothing short of heresy.

There were the Bundists and socialists who opposed the idea of nation-states on principle; to them the settling project was imperialist and capitalist and they truly believed that Jews had a crucial diasporic role in promoting the utopian socialist message among the nations.

And there were those who were more practical and opposed the idea, simply because they believed it was too hard to achieve; hostile environment, lack of experience, lack of enthusiasm or will by world Jewry to migrate to the Middle East, etc.

Today, following the events of October 7th and the war to follow, the debate regarding Jewish sovereignty has resurfaced. 

Scholars such as historian Daniel Boyarin, who for example earlier in 2023 published a manifesto named “The No-State Solution,” claimed that life in the Diaspora is the right choice for the current Jewish people, that Israel is no longer safe and that ethically, the Jews are better off without it.

As an Israeli with countless family members and friends living in Israel, I can only say that debates regarding Zionism were crucial and relevant at the end of the 19th century, that hard decisions have been made and that the responsibility over the consequences of those decisions were well worth a passionate debate. 

Today however, with Israel being the place where the majority of Jews in the world live, where generations of Jewish people were born and raised, Israel is a fact to grapple with, rather than an idea.

Therefore, I am much more interested in the second half of The Vision of the Valley of Dry Bones, the part about how to dwell in that land and what we should solve amongst ourselves in order to do so peacefully.

Moreover, I view the two trees in Ezekiel’s vision as the two halves of our nation, those who live in Israel and those who live outside of it, as two trees which should be joined together, if not physically, then at least spiritually.  

As for Stefan Zweig, in 1942, in the midst of the Holocaust of the European Jews, he and his wife who were in exile in Brazil and committed suicide together by taking poison. Zweig ended his suicide note with a wish to all his loved ones who stayed behind: “May they live to see the dawn after this long night.”