Once again, since one of the most fundamental foundations of Judaism is the mitzvah of living in Israel, we will review some of the things we’ve emphasized over the course of this blog. This is necessary because there are always newcomers who may not have been exposed to these understandings and laws. In addition, because of the supreme importance of our conquest and settlement of the Land of Israel as the necessary prerequisite in establishing the Kingdom of G-d in the world, the evil inclination employs all of its wiles and force to confuse Jews, in order to discourage and prevent them from performing this all important mitzvah.   

The Torah states in this week’s portion of Reah:

“For you shall pass over the Yarden to go in to possess the Land which the L-rd your G-d gives you, and you shall possess it and dwell therein” (Devarim, 11:31).

Here we once again have a clear commandment to conquer and settle in the Land of Israel.

The next verse states:

“And you shall observe to do all of the statutes and laws which I set before you this day. These are the statutes and laws which you shall observe to do in the Land which the L-rd G-d of thy fathers gives thee to possess all the days that you live upon the earth” (Ibid, 12:1).

First of all, it is clear that the Torah is talking about Eretz Yisrael, and not about Australia, South Africa, Tahiti, or Monsey, New York.   

Secondly, the verse  clearly states that a Jew is expected to always live in the Land of Israel, as it says, “to possess all the days that you live upon the earth.”

Is something not perfectly clear with this?

The Torah doesn’t make the obligation to live in Israel dependent on any conditions, by saying that you have to live here if you like the weather, or if you approve of the government, or if the religiousity of the inhabitants is up to your stature. Like with every other mitzvah, we are not to set ourselves, and our own personal opinions, over what G-d commands us to do. He makes the rules. Period.

Among the greatest commentators of the Torah and authorities of Jewish Law is the Ramban. He writes:  

“Hashem said to them, ‘Inherit the Land and dwell there, for to you I have given the Land to possess, and you shall inherit the Land that I swore to your Forefathers’ – behold, we are commanded with its conquest in every generation (Ramban, Supplement to Sefer HaMitzvot of the Rambam, Positive Commandment 4).

The Ramban continues:

“This is what our Sages call ‘Milchemet Mitzvah,’ an obligatory war. This Land is not to be left in the hands of the Seven Nations, or in the hands of any other nation, in any generation whatsoever…this is a positive commandment which applies at every time” (Ramban, ibid).

The Ramban concludes:

“And the proof that this is a Torah commandment is this – they were told in the matter of the Spies, ‘Go up and conquer the Land as Hashem has said to you. Don’t fear, and don’t be discouraged.’ And further it says, ‘And when the L-rd sent you from Kadesh Barnea saying, Go up and possess the Land which I gave you, and you rebelled against the L-rd your G-d, and you did not believe in me, and did not listen to this command’” (Ibid).

The Ramban clearly states that there is a positive mitzvah of the Torah to conquer and live in the Land of Israel in all generations.  

All of the early and later Torah authorities, the Rishonim and Achronim, decide the law in this fashion on the basis of the Ramban, that the precept of conquering the Land applies in all generations, and all of them agree that it is a commandment of the Torah (Shuchan Oruch, Pitchei T’shuva, Evan HaEzer, 75:6). 

Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook emphasized that, “There are religious Jews who express a type of criticism and say, ‘If the State of Israel were run according to our lifestyle and spirit, then we would accept it. Until then we abstain from it…. This is a tragic mistake.”

Just as settling and building the Land is a great mitzvah, people who discourage others from performing this all-important commandment are committing a grave sin. Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook stressed:

“In our generation, we are in a situation of war, and we must be careful over what we say. We must strengthen the conquest and settlement of the Land with intelligence and reason, boldness and strength, and by guarding our speech. We must guard against language which leads to discouragement. The Torah forbids this weakening of others by saying, ‘Lest his brother’s heart melt like his heart’ (Devarim, 20:8). In our time, weakheartedness is as forbidden as pork.”

Whether this discouragement comes from diehard leftists in Israel, or from talkbackers on the Internet whose evil inclinations have gotten the best of them, all of their pseudo-intellectualism and highfalutin speeches are as traf as pork.

Oink, Oink!

There are confused and poisoned souls who think they are wise and understanding because they have studied some world history, political science, and adult-ed night courses in propoganda and modern warfare. With great self-admiration in their intellectual prowess, they can spout off what Che Guevara ate for breakfast, the socio-economic causes that led to the pygmy revolution in South West Africa, and the most effective poisons for darts.  If these people were gentiles, this sort of trivia might be considered impressive, but for a Jew it is just a lot of meaningless nurrishkeit.

Pygmies

For a Jew, true wisdom and understanding means living a life of Torah in Eretz Yisrael, as Moshe says: “Behold, I have taught you statutes and laws, as the L-rd my G-d commanded me, that you should live by them in the Land wither you go to possess. Keep them therefore, and do them, for this is your wisdom and your understanding in the eyes of the nations, who shall hear all these statutes and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people” (Devarim, 4:5-6).

Readers, please do not be fooled by these misguided Jews, who seek to cover up their rejection of Torah by spouting all kinds of pseudo wisdoms and meaningless chatter. These are the people who are always finding things wrong with life in the Land of Israel. They look at life in Israel through the distortion of high-powered magnifying glasses, but instead of seeing all of the good and wonderful things in the Land, and the L-rd’s great blessing here, they focus only on the bad. They project the malaise of their souls out onto the Land and its inhabitants, just like with the sin of the Spies, who also purported to be wise and understanding people.

Sure, once and a while, they will find something good to say, just like with the Spies who admitted that the fruit of the Land was superlative. But, all in all, their negative vibrations have a poisonous influence, discouraging others who are thinking of moving to Israel, but who are wavering in their decision. Often, the glib and pseudo-intellectual speeches of these false soothsayers attract followers who are uncertain in their own orientation to Israel and Torah. These misled souls jump on the bandwagon, thinking they have found authoritative support for their own lack of learning and fears. This is exactly what happened in the tragedy of the Spies who discouraged a whole generation from coming to Israel.

These self-acclaimed wise men will insist that they love the Land as much as anyone, and that it is only the evil things in the Land that they scorn, but this too is exactly the way of the Spies, who said that the Land was indeed a good land, but that there were dangerous and formidable giants there, and that the land devoured its inhabitants.

Often these negative mongers will scream out “Amalek” and “Erev Rav,” pointing accusing fingers at anyone who doesn’t meet their fancy, but it is they themselves who are using the strategies of Amalek to weaken others, as the Torah testifies: “Remember what Amalek did to you on the way when you had come out of Egypt; how he met you on the way and smote he hindmost of thee, all that were feeble in the rear, when you were faint and weary – and he feared not G-d” (Devarim, 25:17).

Rashi’s derives one of his explanations of “on the way” from the root word of “karcha,” which means “cooled off.” Amalek succeeded in cooling off the faith and confidence of the Jews, and cooling off the fear that the gentiles felt toward the seemingly invincible Israeli Nation. The constant criticizers of Israel do the same.

The truth is the very opposite of the picture they paint. How wonderful is the Land! How brave are its people! How inspiring is its noble history and future aspirations! How deep is its holiness! How vast are its mysteries! How breathtaking and awesome are its innovations and incessant rebuilding! How exciting are its challenges! How fortunate are we who are privileged to live here, a Land flowing with milk and honey, in the Land which G-d cares for and watches over from the beginning of the year to its end! {Parshat Ekev)

As it also says in this week’s Torah portion, for those who trouble themselves to read it: “For the L-rd your G-d brings you into a good Land… a Land where you shall not lack anything” (Devarim, 8:6-10).

To what are these sad cases like? To the compulsive obsessives who go to a restaurant and order a health salad piled with a wide assortment of fresh vegetables, bean sprouts, and nuts.   Then, to everyone’s astonishment, they study each leaf of lettuce and tomato under their pocket magnifying glasses. Finding an insect, they scream out, “Trafe! Trafe!” Instead of removing the insect, they throw the whole salad away. Observing them, other customers throw their salads away too.

The difference is on where you place your focus - on the salad or on the insects?

Shabbat shalom!

I had to rent a car for a day, and every time I forgot to fasten my seatbelt, a little bell rang over and over to remind me. The dashboard was illuminated with all kinds of symbols designed to inform me if something was amiss in the car’s performance.

Check your flashing signals!

How wonderful it would be, I thought, if a little warning bell rang every time a person spoke badly about someone else, or clicked on an erotic site on the Internet, or took a bite of unkosher food. Of course, the dashboard of a Jew is far more complicated than the dashboard of an auto. In fact, the control panel of a Jew more resembles the cockpit of a jet.

It isn't easy to be a Jew.

For a Jew to function at proper standards and levels, every minute detail of his or her behavior has to be in line with the guidelines of the Torah. What he eats; what he looks at; what he wears; what he hears; what he thinks; what he does; where he goes; when, how, and with whom he conducts his sexual relations. Everything.

Since we don’t have a dashboard to guide us, the dials and levels of our control panel are precisely recorded in the halachah – codes of Jewish Law.

If we are not living in the guidelines of halachah, our performance as Jews is bound to be off, and sooner or later, the system will crash.  

In addition, our Sages established the proper aspirations and feelings that every Jew should have. They wrote them down in the order of our daily prayers. For instance, a Jew should feel happy when he wakes up in the morning, knowing that the new day brings another opportunity to serve the King of the World. A Jewish man should feel thankful that G-d made him a man and not a woman, who have a much harder time of things with having to bear and raise children, do all of the housework and cooking,  and put up with a husband’s unceasing passions and demands.

The Sages established the order of prayer, three times a day, to serve as constant reminders, like seatbelt warning rings, to keep us pointed in the right direction. For instance, if a Jew isn’t yearning for redemption from the galut, for the ingathering of the exiles, and the rebuilding of Jerusalem, he should hear a DING, DONG, DING ringing inside his brain.  

Before reciting the morning’s “Shema Yisrael” prayer, we beseech G-d, “And shatter the yoke of the gentiles from over our necks, and speedily lead us with upright postures to our Land.”

"Shatter the yoke of the gentiles from about our necks and speedily bring us upright to our Land."

The Sages are reminding us that if we don’t feel the yoke of the gentiles over our necks in our exile existence, then something is out of whack with our Jewishness. If the exile seems pleasant in our eyes, and we imagine that we live there in freedom, then something is amiss with our proper Jewish sensitivities. In the exile, the Sages tell us, we are like broken people, bowed down to our foreign master, always trying to be a “an acceptable just-like-everybody-else Jew” to get along with the ruling landlords. In our hearts, we should be longing for true Jewish pride, which can only be achieved when we walk back upright to our own Jewish Land.

This understanding is emphasized in this week’s Torah portion, as it says regarding exile: “And the L-rd shall scatter you among the nations, and you shall be left few in number amongst the nations… and there you shall serve gods, the work of men’s hands, wood and stone” (Devarim, 4:27).

“Hey, we aren’t serving other gods!” I can hear you protesting. But Rashi explains that by serving the gentiles who serve other gods, it is like idol worship itself (See Rashi there). Our Sages inform us that the “wood and stone” of the verse refers to the Christians who bow down to wooden statues, and to the Moslems who bow to the big black rock in Mecca. In other words, living in the exile is living under the yoke of the gentiles, and a Jew should always feel an inner sense of not belonging and a compulsion to leave.

We are not supposed to recite our prayers by rote like parrots who don’t know what they are saying. We are supposed to internalize the words, and their messages, and act on them to the best of our ability.

DING DONG DING! DING DONG DING!

Buckle up!

Get it?    

In the old days when I watched movies, before I became a baal tshuva, I used to like prison films. A different twist on the old prison movie came to me the other day while I was reading the Torah portion.

Alcatraz

What if there was a film about a convict who had a life sentence. One day, unexpectedly, he discovers the door to his prison cell unlocked. All of the corridor doors are unlocked as well. And the main prison gate is also wide open, without a prison guard in sight. Suddenly, he freezes. He gazes outside at the freedom before him, at the buses, the birds overhead, the pedestrians walking freely on the street. For a long moment, he stares at the beckoning yet frightening world before him. Then he does an about face, retraces his tracks, and returns to the familiar comfort of his prison cell, where all of his needs are taken care of for him - his food, lodging, daily exercise, even prayer.

The parable is clear. Whether it’s Moscow, Boca Raton, Monsey, or Melbourne, the exile is a prison. In most of the lands of the exile today, there aren’t any bars preventing the incarcerated from escaping, but they remain in exile all the same, even though the gates are wide open.

Boca Raton

Perhaps that’s what makes it so difficult to leave - the fact that there aren’t any visible bars and barbwire fences. But it is a prison all the same, more difficult to escape from than Soviet Russia, where the iron curtain was a constant reminder of the harsh imprisonment, inspiring the inmates with a constant yearning for freedom.

Make no mistake, my friends, exile is a prison. Being outcast from the Land of Israel is no different than sending a convict to St. Helena or Alcatraz. A Jew living in someone else’s land is not a free man. His mind and values are always exposed to the foreign culture around him. He is always dependent on the gentiles who lord over him. He has no national existence as a Jew. He is always a defenseless minority, waiting for the next whack on his head.

"I'm not in prison."

Why was I reminded of this as I studied this week’s Torah portion? Because it repeats, again and again, that a Jew is meant to live in the Land of Israel:

“Now therefore hearken, O Israel, to the statutes and to the laws which I teach you to do, that you may live and go in to POSSESS THE LAND….” (Devarim, 4:1).

“I have taught you statutes and laws that you should act accordingly IN THE LAND whither you go to possess,” (Idid, 4:5).

“And the L-rd commanded me at that time to teach you statutes and laws that you may do them IN THE LAND into which you go over to possess,” (Ibid, 4:14).

“But you shall go over and possess the GOOD LAND,” (Ibid, 4:22).

“Thou shall therefore keep His statutes… that it may go well with thee, and with thy children after thee, that you may prolong thy days ON THE LAND which the L-rd your G-d gives thee” (Ibid, 4:40).

“I will speak to thee all the commandments… which thou shall teach them that they may do them IN THE LAND which I gave them to possess” (Ibid, 5:28).

“That you may prolong your days IN THE LAND which you shall possess,” (Ibid, 5:30).

“Now this is the commandment… that you may do them IN THE LAND which you go in to possess,” (Ibid, 6:1).

“That you may increase mightily IN THE LAND that flows with milk and honey,” (Ibid, 6:3).

“And thou shall do what is good and right in the sight of the L-rd, that it may be well with thee, and you will go in and possess THE GOOD LAND,” (Ibid, 6:18).

“He brought us out of Egypt that He might bring us in, to give us THE LAND which He swore to our fathers,” (Ibid, 6:22).

Because of our sins, we were exiled from our Land to the many St. Helenas and Alcatrazes around the world. For nearly 2000 years, we were imprisoned. But now, the doors of the prison are open.  People have money for airplane tickets to Israel. There is a Jewish airline that serves kosher food. Apartments and villas are waiting, including beautiful cities with modern industrial parks. For those who prefer a more rural environment, there are lovely and vibrant religious settlements and moshavim all over the country. The Israel economy is strong. No place in the world has more Torah learning, yeshivot, heders, and ulpanot for girls. Not to mention Jerusalem, the Holy City of our prayers, resplendent with beauty and rebirth, the most spiritual place on earth. And there even are agencies like Nefesh B’Nefesh that help people make aliyah. Yes, freedom and change can be challenging indeed, but millions of former prisoners have escaped their former exiles and found a wonderful new life in Israel.     

The gates are open. In a wink of an eye, with a little courage and faith, you too can be here, a free man in the Jewish homeland.  See you soon!

One of the most basic premises of Judaism is that man has free choice. Again and again, the Torah commands us to choice good and reject evil. To help us, the Torah makes absolutely clear what is considered good and what is considered evil. For instance, in this week’s Torah portion, we read:

“Now therefore hearken, O Israel, to the statutes and to the laws which I teach you to do, that you may live and go in to possess the Land….” (Devarim, 4:1).

“You shall not add to the word that I command thee, neither shall you diminish from it, that you may keep the commandment of the L-rd your G-d which I command you” (Devarim, 4:2).

A person cannot say, “Because I have an inclination to eat lobsters, I am not to blame for eating lobsters.” Nor can he say, “Because I have an inclination to look at pretty women, I am not to blame for looking at pornography on the Internet.” Nor can he say, “Because I have an inclination for men, I am not to blame for engaging in homosexual relationships.”

The Torah makes clear that even though man is beset with many evil inclinations, such as for forbidden foods, theft, speaking bad about others, sexual transgression, covetousness and hatred, it is his task to overcome them.

This is a fundamental principle of Torah. A Jew is commanded to keep the commandments and overcome the urging of the evil inclination which leads him astray. Though a person may be born with a craving for cheeseburgers, he is to refrain from eating cheeseburgers. Though a person may be born with a craving for looking at women, he is to refrain from following after his eyes. Though a person may be born with passion for sexual transgression, he is to refrain from indulging in lusts prohibited by the Torah.

For instance, the Talmud teaches us that a person born with a leaning toward bloodthirstiness, should turn his inclination away from murder, and direct it instead to a more noble purpose, such as becoming a mohel or ritual slaughterer of kosher meat.

No matter how hard the passion is, we have the capability of overcoming it, and of choosing good instead of evil. No one has the right to say, “I was born that way, with a lust to eat shrimp, and that’s the way it is.”

As I wrote in a recent blog, homosexuality is an abomination. But so is incest, pre-marital sex, adultery, sexual relations with non-Jews, violations of the laws of niddah, and other sexual deviations, as it says in the Torah at the end of the long list of sexual transgressions numerated in the portion of Achre Mot: “You shall safeguard My decrees and My laws, and not commit any of these abominations… for if anyone of you commits any of these abominations, the people doing so will be cut off from amongst their people. You shall safeguard My charge that these abominable traditions that were done before you shall not be done, and not make yourselves impure through them, I am Hashem your G-d” (Vayikra, 22-30).  

In other words, people who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones.