I never intended to become a therapist for Diaspora couch potatoes. From now on, we will be keeping a low profile, down at the bottom of the A7 blog line-up, just keeping things warm, like a Shabbos platter. Over the past year, we have focused on the two things that most people don’t want to hear: the imperative for a Jew to live in Israel, and the parallel imperative for a person to clean up his sexual life. For those who got the message, Baruch Hashem, and for those who didn’t, “Zoy gatis,” as my grandmother would say, “That’s the way it goes.”

Couch Knishe - Some can even type with their toes!

With Bush coming to Israel to keep Olmert in office, and with the nations of the world united against Jerusalem and Jewish sovereignty in the Holy Land, the real battleground is here in Israel and not on the web. So I hope to turn my attention to the Hebrew-speaking public in Israel, write some books, put out some posters, make some movies, help some groups who are working in the field, and support the kids, which you can’t do by writing blogs for Arutz 7.

Along with my blessings and a fond “L’hitraot,” here is an insight into this week’s Torah portion of Shemot. The whole purpose of the Exodus from Egypt was to bring the Jews to Eretz Yisrael, as it says, “And the L-rd said, I have surely seen the affliction of My people who are in Egypt, and I have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters, for I know their sorrows, and I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of Egypt, to bring them up out of that land to a good and large Land, to a land flowing with milk and honey….” (Shemot, 3:7-8).

With all of the tremendous importance of Sinai, receiving the Torah at Sinai was only a temporary station on the way to the Land of Israel. A Jew can only be true to himself and his destiny in the Land of Israel. For, as we have noted again and again, and as the Torah itself makes clear, the commandments were given to be observed in the Land of Israel. In addition, the Jewish People can only be a nation in the Land of Israel, and the Nation of Israel can only truly keep the Torah, in all of its entirety, in the Land of Israel, as it says, “From Zion shall come forth the Torah, and the word of G-d from Jerusalem,” and not from Virginia, or Monsey, or Manchester, England. In the Diaspora, we are scattered individuals and impotent communities with no power at all. For the nearly 2000 years that we were doomed to wander in exile, we had no choice but to live in foreign lands. But now that G-d has given us back our cherished Holy Land, there is no excuse for clinging to gentile lands. That’s the truth, and all of the whinings and rebuttals are just a lot of blah, blah, blah, “full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”