Episode #13 The Holy Land

In this episode, Rabbi Reinman explains the concept of the holiness of Eretz Yisrael and how it impacts the current state of affairs in Israel.

Chapter Thirteen

The Holy Land

When God told Abraham to leave Harran and continue on his journey from his homeland, He said, “Go forth from your land, your birthplace, to the land I will show you, and I will make you into a great nation.”[1] He did not immediately identify the ultimate destination. He just indicated that he should continue to put distance between himself and his homeland.

Abraham continued on his journey, and when he finally reached Shechem in the land of Canaan, God appeared to him and said, “I will give this land to your descendants.”[2] Why didn’t He tell him immediately that he was headed for Canaan and that Canaan would become the homeland for his descendants? Rashi explains that He wanted to keep Abraham in suspense because anticipation would increase his appreciation for the special gift of the land. The gift of the land is a recurring theme throughout the Torah. Again and again, the promise of the land is reaffirmed. It is remarkable. How do we understand it?

Now, when God promised Abraham that he would be the patriarch of a great nation, it was understood that there would be a homeland. Great nations arise in national territories. What was so special about the gift of the land of Canaan? Was it its great beauty? Its majestic mountains? The white beaches on its long seacoast? Its lush valleys? Its orchards, pastures and farmland? Was it because it was a land flowing with milk and honey? Were these material qualities meant to excite Abraham?

If the material advantages of the land of Canaan made it so special, it also had serious material drawbacks. Canaan, which became Israel, lies at the very center of Asia, Africa and Europe, the three great continents that form one huge contiguous landmass, the great majority of the inhabited surface of the world. Israel has been a strategic battleground for thousands of years. Great empires have always fought over Israel. Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Egyptians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs, Crusaders, Turks and British all conquered Israel and established bases there at one time or another. Israel is not the safest place in which to build a great nation.

Clearly, Abraham was not excited by the material benefits of Israel but rather by its spiritual benefits, its holiness. Israel was the place where the Divine Presence would rest among the Jewish people when they would build the Holy Temple of Jerusalem.

How do we understand the holiness of Israel? Why did God choose this particular place? If He had chosen a different place, a safer place, wouldn’t that land be equally holy?

Let us investigate.

At the end of Sefer Vayikra, God warns the Jewish people that if they follow the laws of the Torah they will enjoy a good life in the land of Israel, but if they do not, they will face increasingly serious consequences. In the end, they will be driven from their land and scattered among the nations. “Then the land will be appeased for its sabbaticals during all the years of its desolation, while you are in the land of your foes.”[3]

The implication is that the people will fail to allow the land to lie fallow during the seventh Shemitah years, but the Torah makes no prior mention of the violation of Shemitah as being more egregious than the other sins they commit. Furthermore, it almost seems as if the land has a personality and that it must be appeased for not being allowed to lie fallow periodically.

Earlier in Sefer Vayikra, we again encounter the land as a personality. “For the inhabitants of the land before you committed all these taboos, and the land become contaminated. Do not let the land spit you out for contaminating it as it spit out the nation before you.”[4] Rashi compares this to a prince who swallowed foul food that his stomach cannot tolerate, and he is forced to spit it out. The land of Israel cannot tolerate sinners and spits them out. Is the land spitting them out or is God spitting them out for contaminating the land? Is this just metaphor or is there a deeper meaning?

Let us now turn to Sefer Devarim, the second part of the Shema. “And if you listen well to My commandments … then I will give the rain of the land in its time …and you will eat and be satisfied. Beware lest your hearts be seduced and you turn away to serve other gods and bow down to them. Then the wrath of God will flare against you, and the land will not produce its crops, and you will be swiftly banished from the good land that God is giving to you. And you shall place these words of Mine upon your heart and on your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign upon your arm and let them be an ornament between your eyes … and you shall write them on the doorposts of your house and upon your gates …”[5]

After we are warned about banishment, we are again commanded to wear tefillin and to put mezuzos on our doorposts. Rashi explains that the Torah is telling us that even after we are banished we should continue to perform the commandments, such as tefillin and mezuzah, so that they won’t be new to us when we return. The commandments are apparently meant to be performed on the land. This doesn’t mean that prohibitions, such as theft and bloodshed, or social commandments, such as kindness, charity and safety precautions, do not apply in other lands. It refers to religious observances and includes the celebration of the festivals. Religious rituals depend on the holiness of the land, which derives from the Divine Presence that resides in the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

How are we to understand this? Why shouldn’t we be required to put mezuzos on our doors in Europe or America or anywhere else? Why does eating matzah on Pesach require that we be in a holy land?

If you look at a map of Israel, you will see that Jerusalem is up in the mountains out of the way of the main thoroughfares. Most important cities sit on great rivers, but no great river flows through Jerusalem; it is not accessible by water. Why then did God choose to place the Holy Temple in Jerusalem?

The Talmud tells us that the Holy Temple sits astride the highest point in the land of Israel. It is understandable, therefore, that the Divine Presence should be situated where the entire land looks up to it, where you have to travel up to reach God’s spiritual Abode. But then the Talmud adds another point. The land of Israel, it claims, is higher than all the other lands. Consequently, the Holy Temple is not only at the top of Israel. It is also the crowning jewel at the top of the entire world.[6]

But is Israel really the highest of all the lands? What about the Himalayas, the Alps, the Andes?

According to the Talmud, when God created the earth, He started with a single rock called the even shesiah, the foundation stone, and all the rest of the earth grew from it.[7] The foundation stone is considered the top of the world, because everything else was built downward. The Holy of Holies in the Holy Temple stands on top of the foundation stone, and thus, it is the highest point on earth. Actually, any point on earth could be considered the highest if you tip the globe on its side. In the view of the Talmud, the highest point is not determined by elevation from sea level. It is not the North Pole or the South Pole. It is the location of the foundation stone.

Besides being the highest point, the foundation stone is also the center of the earth’s landmass which grew out of it more or less uniformly in all directions. This is where the Holy Temple belongs, atop the world at its very center. This is the appropriate place for the Divine Presence to rest. This is the true gateway to Heaven.

The Holy of Holies in which the Holy Ark stands atop the foundation stone is the holiest place on earth, but there are other holy zones that radiate from the Kodesh Kadashim, the Holy of Holies, the Inner Sanctum of the Sanctuary. The Mishnah enumerates nine additional zones with descending levels of sanctity, including the Sanctuary itself, known as the Kodesh; the area between the altar and the Sanctuary; the Courtyard of the Kohanim; the Courtyard of the Yisraelim; the Courtyard of the Women; the Bastion of the Steps; the Temple Mount, the walled city of Jerusalem; cities that were walled at the time of the Conquest; and the outlying districts of the land of Israel.[8] It seems that each descending level of sanctified zone was an extension of the Holy of Holies, from where it drew its holiness; the closer to the Holy of Holies, the greater the holiness.

This leads us to a new understanding of the holiness of the entire Holy Land. It, too, was a place of avodah, of divine service. It took the form of all the ritual commandments of the Torah, and it was not restricted to the Kohanim. Every time a man put on tefillin; he was performing Temple service. Every time a woman ate matzah on Pesach, she was performing Temple service. The Jewish people were truly a mamleches kohanim.[9] These avodah rituals could only be performed in the land of Israel, because it is a Temple zone, not in other lands which are unsanctified. Nonetheless, Rashi told us, we were commanded to perform the ritual in other lands as well so that they would not be new to us when we returned.

The performance of avodah rituals was not an incidental feature of living in the land of Israel. It was the very purpose of our being there. The Kohanim whose turn it was to serve in the Temple also slept and ate there. They even relieved themselves there. It was an accommodation during the term of their service. If a Kohein was not on duty, however, he had no right to use the Temple facilities for his personal needs. The Jewish people living in the land of Israel were always priests on duty to perform the daily and periodic avodah rituals of Jewish life. They could also tend to their day-to-day needs for food, clothing and funds for general expenses, but it was only an accommodation. As long as they performed their avodah duties, they could stay there and take care of their personal needs. If, however, they failed to perform their prescribed avodah rituals, they had no right to remain in the sanctified zone.

The cities of Israel that were walled at the time of the conquest and sanctification have a slightly higher level of sanctity. Sanctified zones are, for the most part, defined by boundaries, such as walls or curtains. The walled cities had the sanctity of the outlying districts, but since they were defined by walls, their sanctity was higher.

The Torah forbids a landowner to sell his land permanently. All sales are canceled during Yoveil, the Jubilee year, “because the land is Mine, and you are sojourners and residents with Me.”[10] Sforno comments that the statement that “The heavens belong to God, but He has given the land to people” applies only outside of Israel. In Israel, however, there can be no permanent ownership. We are tenants in the land, and we must never forget that it is not truly ours.

This then is the concept of the Shemitah year. Its primary purpose is not to condition us to have faith and trust in God, because if so, we would be required to observe the Shemitah in other lands as well. The Shemitah reinforces the idea that we are living in a sanctified zone, and we may only live there if we perform our avodah responsibilities. But if we do not, the land will spit us out, because we do not belong there. We are trespassers on the outlying Temple grounds, and we will be evicted.

When God promised the land to Abraham, it was not the assurance that the great nation that would emerge from him would have a homeland. It was the promise that his descendants would live in a sanctified zone, that they would be a kingdom of priests, that they would live their lives on a transcendent level and always be close to God. Abraham understood this, and that is why he was so excited.

In our times, millions of Jewish people have returned to Israel, but this is not the end of our long exile. We have not yet reached the time of our ultimate redemption. God, in His kindness, has allowed us to find a place of refuge from the nations that oppress us and want to destroy us. But we are living there in a state of constant war. In the fourteenth century there was a war in Europe called the Hundred Years War. It lasted for one hundred and sixteen years as England and France fought over the control of the French throne. They did not fight every day or even every year, but it was one long drawn-out war with periodic eruptions of violence. We are witnessing a seventy-five-year war in Israel. This is not redemption.

What is the war about?

I believe the cause is the internal struggle in Israel. On the one hand, there is a great indifference to God and His Torah, and the land wants to spit us out. On the other hand, there is a tremendous amount of Torah and avodah in Israel that militates against our expulsion. The land is actually gagging. It wants to spit us out, but it cannot. When Nebuchadnezzar drove the Jewish people from Israel, it was undoubtedly the land spitting us out. Nebuchadnezzar was just the agent. Today, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran are the agents. We must, of course, fight them on the battlefield, but we must also fight in the spiritual realm. We must reduce the desecration of the Holy Name of God and embrace His Torah, at least on some level. Perhaps then we will be able to live in a semblance of peace until the time of our final redemption, may it come speedily in our times.

[1] Bereishis 12:1-2.

[2] Ibid. 12:7.

[3] Vayikra 26:34.

[4] Ibid. 18:27-28.

[5] Devarim 11:13-20.

[6] Kiddushin 69a.

[7] Semachos 1:1.

[8] Keilim 1:6-8.

[9] Shemos 19:6.

[10] Vayikra 25:23.