What Is the Torah’s Interpretation of the Three Oaths in Kesubos 111a?

The Foundational Sugya Underlying the Entire Charedi Theological Position on the State of Israel — Explained in Detail

If there is one sugya that stands at the heart of the Torah perspective on Zionism and the Jewish return to Eretz Yisrael, it is the passage in Kesubos 111a known as the Shalosh Shevuos — the Three Oaths. In just a few poetic and powerful lines, Chazal record a teaching that has framed the Charedi world's relationship to the geulah, to the State of Israel, and to the entire project of Jewish national restoration before the time of Mashiach.

Most Jews today, even most religious Jews, have never learned this sugya carefully. It is rarely covered in non-Charedi yeshivos. It is dismissed in much of the Religious Zionist world as either nullified or aggadic. Yet for the Satmar Rebbe, the Brisker Rav, Rav Elchonon Wasserman, Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld, the Chazon Ish, and the entire chain of Charedi poskim since the rise of political Zionism, the Shalosh Shevuos is the foundational halachic-hashkafic text that the State of Israel cannot get around, no matter how it tries.

This article walks through the sugya in detail — the text, the context, the Rishonim's interpretations, the major Charedi treatments, and the way the framework operates today.

I. The Text of Kesubos 111a

The Gemara on Kesubos 111a, citing Rabbi Yose b'Rabbi Chanina, derives three oaths from the three repetitions of the verse "I have adjured you, O daughters of Yerushalayim" (Shir HaShirim 2:7, 3:5, and 8:4). The Hebrew text of the Gemara reads:

"ג' שבועות הללו למה? אחת שלא יעלו ישראל בחומה, ואחת שהשביע הקדוש ברוך הוא את ישראל שלא ימרדו באומות העולם, ואחת שהשביע הקדוש ברוך הוא את אומות העולם שלא ישתעבדו בהן בישראל יותר מדאי"

In English:

"What are these three oaths? One — that the Jewish people should not ascend [to Eretz Yisrael] 'as a wall.' One — that the Holy One, blessed is He, adjured Israel not to rebel against the nations of the world. And one — that the Holy One, blessed is He, adjured the nations of the world not to subjugate Israel excessively."

Two oaths bind Klal Yisrael during the period of galus: (1) not to ascend to Eretz Yisrael as a wall — that is, by mass collective force; and (2) not to rebel against the nations among whom we live in galus. The third oath binds the nations: (3) not to subjugate the Jewish people excessively.

This is the core structure of the sugya. The implications, when read through the major meforshim and applied to the political reality of the modern State, are devastating.

II. The Context: The Zeira–Rav Yosef Dispute

The Three Oaths do not appear in isolation. They arise out of an extended halachic-aggadic discussion that begins on Kesubos 110b about the obligations and prohibitions of moving between Bavel and Eretz Yisrael.

The sugya records the conflict between Rabbi Zeira, who wished to ascend to Eretz Yisrael, and his teacher Rav Yehuda, who held that ascending from Bavel to Eretz Yisrael during the period the Babylonian Jewish community was thriving was a biblical prohibition. The discussion explores the conditions under which Jews may, may not, and must remain in galus rather than initiate a return.

It is in this context that Rabbi Yose b'Rabbi Chanina's teaching of the Three Oaths is brought down. The Gemara is not making a homiletical aside. It is laying out the halachic-spiritual conditions of the galus period — the rules by which Klal Yisrael's relationship to Eretz Yisrael is governed between the chorban and the geulah.

This context is critical. The Three Oaths are not an isolated aggadic comment. They appear in the middle of a halachic discussion about the very question they address: under what conditions may the Jewish people return to Eretz Yisrael?

III. The First Oath: Shelo Ya'alu B'Chomah

The first oath — "that the Jewish people should not ascend as a wall" — is the most directly relevant to the modern State of Israel.

Rashi (Kesubos 111a, s.v. she'lo ya'alu b'chomah) interprets b'chomah — "as a wall" — as ascending "yachad b'chazkah" — together, with force. The image is of the entire people of Israel, or a unified national body, ascending to Eretz Yisrael en masse, by collective force, without waiting for Hashem to bring the geulah.

The oath is therefore not against the individual Jew making aliyah. Throughout the centuries of galus, individual Jews and small groups have made their way to Eretz Yisrael, and the major Charedi poskim — including the Satmar Rebbe — accepted the legitimacy of this. What the oath forbids is the organized national movement of mass ascent through political and military force.

The reading is direct: Zionism, as a political-military movement organizing the mass return of Jews to Eretz Yisrael and the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state through human action before the time of Mashiach, is precisely what the first oath forbids.

IV. The Second Oath: Shelo Yimredu B'Umos

The second oath — "not to rebel against the nations of the world" — addresses the political relationship of the Jewish people to the surrounding nations during galus.

The Charedi reading, anchored in Vayoel Moshe and earlier poskim, is that the establishment of a sovereign Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael necessarily involves rebellion against the structure of nations among whom the Jewish people were living. The League of Nations Mandate, the United Nations partition vote, and the unilateral declaration of independence by Ben-Gurion in 1948 — these moves, taken together, constituted exactly the kind of organized political rebellion against the international order that the second oath forbids.

The fact that the United Nations voted for partition in November 1947 does not, in the Charedi reading, satisfy the requirement. The vote was a political action, taken against the will of much of the surrounding Arab world and over the objections of significant international parties. The establishment of the State that followed was an act of unilateral declaration. By the second oath's framework, this was a rebellion — even if a successful one.

V. The Third Oath: Shelo Yishta'abedu B'Hen B'Yisrael Yoser Midai

The third oath binds the nations — not to subjugate the Jewish people excessively during galus. This third oath has been the focus of significant debate.

The Ramban, in his Sefer HaGeulah and his commentary on Shir HaShirim 2:7, raises a question that has been pressed throughout the centuries: if the nations violate their oath by subjugating the Jewish people excessively, are the oaths binding the Jewish people also dissolved?

This is the strongest counter-argument used by Religious Zionist and pro-State writers. After the Holocaust — the systematic extermination of one third of the Jewish people — has the third oath been so manifestly violated that the first two oaths no longer bind?

The Charedi answer to this — articulated most systematically in Vayoel Moshe — is that the three oaths are not contractually linked in the way the counter-argument supposes. The first two oaths bind Klal Yisrael independently. They are oaths to Hashem, not contracts with the nations. The nations' violation of their oath does not nullify Klal Yisrael's oath to Hashem.

The Satmar Rebbe's framework is unyielding on this point: the suffering of the Holocaust does not entitle Klal Yisrael to take the geulah into its own hands. The proper response to galus suffering — even genocidal galus suffering — is teshuvah, tefillah, and trust in Hashem to bring the geulah at the appointed time. The oath stands.

VI. The Rishonim's Range of Approaches

Among the Rishonim, several distinct approaches to the oaths emerge:

Rashi (as above) treats the oath as a real prohibition against organized mass ascent.

Tosafos (Kesubos 110b, s.v. hu omer la'alos) raises the question of how individual Jews may move to Eretz Yisrael and concludes that the oath is specifically against forced mass ascent, not against individual or small-group aliyah with permission of the surrounding nations.

The Ramban, in his Sefer HaGeulah and in his commentary on Shir HaShirim, treats the oaths seriously and incorporates the possibility of their conditional nature — though he himself made aliyah, indicating he did not see his personal move as a violation of the first oath.

The Ritva and the Ran, in their respective commentaries on Kesubos, treat the oaths within their aggadic framing without coding them as halachic prohibitions in the strict sense.

The Rambam does not codify the Three Oaths in Mishneh Torah as halacha. This omission has been used by some to argue that the Rambam did not consider them halachic. But the Rambam does invoke the oaths explicitly in his Iggeres Teiman — his famous letter to the Jews of Yemen — where he warns them against following false messiahs who would lead them to ascend by force. The Rambam's framework treats the oaths as genuine spiritual obligations that bind Klal Yisrael during the galus, even if he does not include them in his halachic code as actionable prohibitions.

The picture that emerges from the Rishonim is not unanimous codification but unanimous treatment of the oaths as real, serious, and operative. No Rishon dismissed them as mere homily. Every Rishon who addressed them treated them with the gravity Chazal had given them.

VII. The Satmar Rebbe's Vayoel Moshe

The most systematic Charedi halachic treatment of the Three Oaths is the Satmar Rebbe Rav Yoel Teitelbaum zt"l's Vayoel Moshe, published in 1959. The first maamar of the sefer, Maamar Shalosh Shevuos, is a sustained, thousands-of-citations halachic analysis of the oaths and their application to the modern State.

The Satmar Rebbe's position is uncompromising:

The oaths are real, binding, and halachic. The Rebbe argues, with extensive marshaling of sources from Shas, Rishonim, and Acharonim, that the oaths constitute formal halachic prohibitions, not merely aggadic warnings.

The establishment of the State violates the first two oaths. The Rebbe's analysis treats the founding of the State as a categorical violation: the mass organized return through political and military force violates the first oath; the establishment of sovereignty against the international structure violates the second oath.

The chillul Hashem is structural. The Rebbe argues — anchored in the very framework Chazal established — that the apparent demonstration that Jews can redeem themselves through their own power, without Mashiach, is itself one of the gravest chillulei Hashem possible, because it teaches Klal Yisrael and the world that the geulah is a human project rather than a divine one.

The proper response is steadfast Torah observance and refusal of theological legitimation. The Rebbe did not call for violence or political opposition through means that would themselves violate halacha. His prescription was not to participate in the structures of the State on its theological terms — not to attend ceremonies of Yom Ha'atzmaut, not to recite Hallel on it, not to grant religious legitimacy to a framework that, in his halachic analysis, exists in violation of the oaths.

Vayoel Moshe is the most systematic and rigorous Charedi treatment, but it is not the only one. Major Charedi poskim across Lithuanian, Hungarian, and Sephardic streams have, with various degrees of formality, accepted its central halachic logic even where they have not adopted its full hashkafic framework.

VIII. Other Charedi Gedolim on the Oaths

Rav Elchonon Wasserman Hy"d invoked the Three Oaths in Ikvesa D'Meshicha as part of his broader analysis of the spiritual character of secular Zionism. Rav Elchonon, writing in the late 1930s, before the establishment of the State, treated the oaths as binding spiritual obligations and identified the political Zionist movement as the contemporary form of the violation the oaths warn against.

Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld zt"l, the longtime gaon av beis din of the Eida Charedis of Yerushalayim until his petirah in 1932, was perhaps the most public and uncompromising Charedi opponent of political Zionism in the pre-state period. He invoked the Three Oaths repeatedly in his published correspondence (collected in Ha'Ish Al HaChomah and Igros Maharyac) and warned that any organized political movement to establish a sovereign Jewish state through force would constitute a violation. He maintained correspondence and even certain political coordination with figures across religious lines, but on the foundational question of the oaths and the geulah he held firm.

The Brisker Rav (Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik zt"l) is recorded across Uvdos v'Hanhagos l'Beis Brisk and Peninei Rabbeinu HaGriz as holding the oaths to be real and operative. His refusal to receive money from the State, to attend State functions, or to grant the State religious legitimacy was grounded in part on the Three Oaths framework.

The Chazon Ish in Kovetz Igros Vol. 1, p. 97, and in other letters, treated the oaths with seriousness and applied their framework to his analysis of the State and its institutions. The Chazon Ish's documented meeting with David Ben-Gurion in October 1952 — where he refused to accept Ben-Gurion's framing of the State as a religiously legitimate Jewish national framework — was anchored in part on this analysis.

Rav Avigdor Miller zt"l in Sing You Righteous and across his recorded shiurim applied the oaths framework to his teaching of Jewish history and the geulah.

Rav Elazar Menachem Man Shach zt"l in Michtavim u'Maamarim Vol. 1 invoked the framework regularly.

The picture is unmistakable: across every major Charedi mesorah of the twentieth century — Hungarian (Satmar), Lithuanian (Brisk, Chazon Ish, Rav Shach), Yerushalayimer (Sonnenfeld, Eida Charedis), and beyond — the Three Oaths were treated as real and operative, even where they were applied with different degrees of halachic formality.

IX. The Counter-Arguments — And Why the Charedi Position Holds

Religious Zionist and pro-State writers have advanced several counter-arguments against the Three Oaths framework. We address each briefly:

"The Rambam does not codify the oaths as halacha." True, but the Rambam himself invokes them in Iggeres Teiman, and the omission from Mishneh Torah does not mean the Rambam rejected them — only that he did not include them in his halachic code as actionable prohibitions. The major poskim who treat the oaths as halachic, including the Satmar Rebbe, address this explicitly and resolve it through detailed analysis of Rambam's framework.

"The nations violated the third oath, dissolving the first two." Addressed above. The major Charedi treatment, particularly in Vayoel Moshe, argues that the three oaths are not contractually linked in the way the counter-argument supposes. The oaths binding Klal Yisrael are oaths to Hashem, not to the nations.

"The United Nations vote granted permission, so the first oath does not apply." This argument, sometimes attributed to Tosafos, fails on the actual halachic analysis. The "permission" of a non-Jewish international body, achieved over the objections of the surrounding nations who were prepared to fight to prevent partition, is not the kind of national-level permission Tosafos contemplates. The State was established by force of arms against the surrounding Arab nations — exactly the situation the first oath addresses.

"The Holocaust changes everything." Addressed in Vayoel Moshe directly. The Satmar Rebbe — himself a survivor of Bergen-Belsen — addressed this argument with the full weight of personal experience. His answer: the spiritual response to even the most extreme galus suffering remains teshuvah and trust in Hashem, not the attempt to force the geulah by human action.

"The oaths' time has expired." Some have argued that the oaths bind only for a specific period of galus. The major Charedi authorities reject this, anchored in the structure of the Gemara itself, which treats the oaths as operative until the geulah arrives — and the geulah, by definition, will be marked by Mashiach's actual coming, not by a political event preceding it.

None of these counter-arguments, on careful analysis, removes the force of the framework Chazal established. The Charedi position, anchored in the foundational sugya and the major Acharonim's treatment of it, holds.

X. What This Means Today

If the Three Oaths framework holds — and the Charedi poskim across every stream maintain that it does — then the implications for the State of Israel are deep and structural:

The State exists, but its legitimacy in Charedi theological terms is contested. The Charedi world does not deny that the State exists as a political fact. It denies that the State's existence carries the religious-theological weight Zionist ideology assigns to it. The State is not, in this framework, the beginning of the geulah. It is not atchalta d'geulah. It is a political reality that came into being through actions the oaths address, and its religious meaning is therefore unsettled at best.

The wars of the State are not, in halachic terms, the wars of a Torah-authorized framework. This connects to the analysis we have made elsewhere in this series regarding milchemes mitzvah and milchemes reshus, the absence of a Sanhedrin and a king, and the structural halachic gaps in the State's military framework.

The proper Charedi response is not violent opposition. The Charedi world has never advocated, with the exception of fringe elements, violent opposition to the State. The proper response is theological refusal of false legitimation — not joining in Hallel on Yom Ha'atzmaut, not accepting that the chief of staff is a Jewish military commander in the halachic sense, not treating the Knesset as a Sanhedrin — while continuing the work of Torah, tefillah, chesed, and pikuach nefesh.

The geulah remains the geulah we daven for, not the one we have. Three times a day, every Jew davens "v'sechezenah eineinu b'shuvcha l'Tziyon b'rachamim" — "may our eyes see Your return to Tziyon in mercy." The very text of Shemoneh Esrei makes clear that the return we daven for has not yet occurred. The State is not what we are davening for. We are still davening.

XI. The Eternal Framework

The Three Oaths sugya is one of the most consequential teachings in all of Shas for the contemporary Jewish situation. To dismiss it is to dismiss a passage Chazal placed in the middle of a halachic discussion, treated by every major Rishon, codified into hashkafic seriousness by the Acharonim, and invoked by every major Charedi posek of the past two hundred years.

The Charedi view of the Shalosh Shevuos reflects a deeper emunah: that Hashem runs the world, that the geulah is His to bring, that the timing belongs to Him, and that any attempt by human beings to force the timeline — however well-intentioned, however motivated by suffering — places Klal Yisrael in spiritual jeopardy.

As the Gemara teaches in Sanhedrin 97b: "Three things come when we are not paying attention: Mashiach, a lost article, and a scorpion." We are not the engineers of the geulah. We are not its political organizers. We are its servants — preparing through Torah, through tefillah, through bitachon, through achdus on a Torah foundation. The geulah will come when Hashem brings it, in the form Hashem chooses, through the Mashiach Hashem sends.

Israel may yet be transformed into a vessel for the actual geulah — when the Sanhedrin is restored, when Mashiach reigns, when the Torah is the constitution rather than one element among others. Bimheirah b'yameinu. Until then, the Three Oaths stand. The geulah we have is not the geulah we daven for. And the work of the Charedi world — Torah, tefillah, teshuvah, building, learning, raising the next generation, maintaining the structural separation that the oaths require — continues, as it has continued for two centuries, while we wait.

"Hu yivneh ha'mikdash, Eil rachamim, hu yashlim havayoseinu" — "He will rebuild the Beis HaMikdash, the God of mercy; He will complete our being."

That is the geulah. The Three Oaths point us toward it by ruling out the substitutes. The Charedi position holds the line until Hashem brings the true geulah He has promised.

Sources

Primary halachic and Talmudic sources

• Talmud Bavli, Kesuvos 110b–111a — the full sugya on movement between Bavel and Eretz Yisrael and the Three Oaths
• Talmud Bavli, Sanhedrin 97b — "three things come when we are not paying attention"
• Shir HaShirim 2:7, 3:5, 8:4 — the three repetitions of "hishbati eschem"

Rishonim

• Rashi on Kesubos 111a, s.v. shelo ya'alu b'chomah
• Tosafos on Kesubos 110b, s.v. hu omer la'alos
• Ramban, Sefer HaGeulah, and commentary on Shir HaShirim 2:7
• Rambam, Iggeres Teiman — application of the oaths to false messianic movements
• Ritva and Ran on Kesubos 111a

The Satmar Rebbe's Vayoel Moshe (1959)

• Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, Vayoel Moshe, Maamar Shalosh Shevuos, simanim 1–164 — the most systematic Charedi halachic treatment of the oaths
• Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum, Al HaGeulah V'Al HaTemurah (1967) — response to the Six-Day War

Other Charedi gedolim

• Ikvesa D'Meshicha and Kovetz Maamarim, Rabbi Elchonon Wasserman Hy"d
• Ha'Ish Al HaChomah and Igros Maharyac — published correspondence and biographical material on Rav Yosef Chaim Sonnenfeld zt"l
• Uvdos v'Hanhagos l'Beis Brisk, Vol. 2 — the Brisker Rav (Rav Yitzchok Zev Soloveitchik zt"l)
• Peninei Rabbeinu HaGriz, p. 148
• Kovetz Igros, Chazon Ish, Vol. 1, p. 97
• Sing You Righteous, Rabbi Avigdor Miller zt"l
• Michtavim u'Maamarim, Rabbi Elazar Menachem Man Shach zt"l, Vol. 1

Historical Agudah position

• 1944 letter of Yaakov Rosenheim (founder and political leader of Agudath Israel) on the conditional Agudah position regarding statehood and the Three Oaths

The Chazon Ish – Ben-Gurion meeting (October 20, 1952)

• Yitzchak Navon's recorded account, published in his memoirs
• World Mizrachi, "The Chazon Ish, Ben-Gurion and Rav Tzvi Yehudah" (March 2023)
• Yeshiva World News, "70 Yrs Ago Today" (October 2022)
• Jewish Action (Rabbi Aharon Feldman) — citing MK Shlomo Lorincz, Digleinu Vol. 2 (110)

Tefillah sources

• Shemoneh Esrei, berachah of Boneh Yerushalayim and Retzei — the structural request for the actual geulah
• Yibaneh Hamikdash — the closing piyyut

Background context

• Wikipedia, "Three Oaths" — historical overview and standard text
• Yalkut Hishbati Eschem — extensive Charedi treatment of the sugya
• Dinonline.org, Yeshivat Har Etzion analyses — for the range of Religious Zionist counter-arguments