SELECTED REFORM RESPONSA
first volume is typical and representative. It is by the famous scholar Jacob of Lissa , addressed to the pioneer protagonist of religious Zionism, Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Kalisch. Virtually all the Or thodox arguments on the anti-Zionist side of the question are marshaled here(as they are in the subsequent letters). It is important in our attempt to solve this question of religious obligation to go through the law systematically. The basis of the law is the very last Mishnah in the tractate Ketubah which we are told that a husband may compel his wife to emigrate with him to the Holy Land. If she refuses he can divorce her without even giving her the money stipulated in her ketubah. Rashi (in the Talmud , Ketubah 110b) says this means a man may compel not only his wife, but his entire family to settle in the Holy Land.
The Tosfos to this passage, however, says that this law does not apply today because it is dangerous to travel there(this was the
eleventh century). The Tosfos further quotes Rabbi Haim, who gives a second reason why it is no longer a religious duty to settle there: namely, that there are many important commandments that apply to the Holy Land and that a man may be unable to fulfill nowadays.
This negative point of view is contravened by many other authorities. Nahmanides counts settlement in the Holy Land as one of the mitzvot. Isserlein (fourteenth century) in his Pesakim 88, acknowledges the great dangers of settlement but says that a man should judge whether he can endure and fulfill the commandments; if he can, he should settle there. The Mordecai(Mordecai ben Hillel, fourteenth century) quotes the Tosfos on the danger of travel and settlement and says that the law therefore is that a husband may not compel a wife to go with him there. Caro(Shulhan Arukh, Even
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