This week's Biblical portion of Ekev is, in effect, a song of praise to the Land of Israel:
What this verse teaches us is that our price for living in Israel is our commitment to the commandments of the Torah. Indeed, our backsliding will result in the loss of the land, in our exile from Israel. As the Biblical text has previously exhorted: "You must not become defiled with all of these (immoral acts of sin).... Then the land will become defiled and I will visit the iniquity upon it; and the land will vomit out her inhabitants." (Leviticus 18:24, 25)
From this perspective, the Land of Israel must be seen as a test. We must be worthy to live in what we believe is a special land, constantly under direct Divine supervision, which is especially sensitive to the proper conduct of its inhabitants. Just as occurred in the Garden of Eden, the punishment for sin is exile.
Our Biblical portion of Ekev makes one additional point clear. After it speaks of the special quality of the land, it recounts the sins of the desert - especially the idolatry surrounding the Golden Calf - and the breaking of the Sacred Tablets of Stone. Moses was told by G-d to go down from the mountain and go out to his nation, which was acting sinfully and perversely. Once again, the sages of the Talmud clarify precisely what G-d's message to Moses was:
G-d is explaining to all generations that He did not enter into the Covenant of Torah with the intellectual or spiritual elite of Israel alone, but that he gave His holy teachings to the entire nation, "from those who chop down the trees to those who draw forth the waters." (Deuteronomy 29:10) And because the Torah is the treasure of all of Israel, Moses' place is in teaching them rather than in learning alone from G-d.
This will explain an amazing teaching of the sacred Zohar, that every Jew has his own special letter within the Torah; and therefore, each letter is, in effect, a soul of another Jew. Insofar as a Jew is ignorant of Torah and has not connected his soul with its Divine letter, the Torah itself becomes incomplete and even invalid. The completion of the Torah requires the connection of each Jew to at least some part of its teaching. To put it in a slightly different way, our Torah is the heritage of the entire Jewish nation and it is too precious to remain in the hands of only one small sector of world Jewry.
And just as every Jew must be involved in Torah, so must every Jew be involved in the Land of Israel. The Talmud teaches that every Jew has four cubits in the land of Israel - and each and every Jew must, at the very least, claim his portion. Maimonides teaches that the sanctity of the Land of Israel depends upon the Jews living therein, and that the specific laws of the land of Israel - such as the tithing of the produce and the sabbatical laws - only take effect when all (or at least, most) of the Israelites live within its borders. (Maimonides, "Laws of the Chosen House" 6:16 and "Laws of Tithings" 1:26)
What this means is that our claim to the Land of Israel is only valid when all of its inhabitants live in a manner worthy of its sacred soil, especially in terms of our interpersonal relationships (see Isaiah 1); similarly, the sanctity of the Land of Israel can only be fully expressed when all of the Jewish people are settled within it. Ultimately, both the Torah of Israel and the Land of Israel cry out for every single one of the people of Israel to become intimately involved with them.
The Lord your G-d is bringing you to a good land, a land of streams of water, wells and deep reservoirs, which come forth from valleys and mountains. It is a land of wheat and barley, of vines, figs and pomegranates, a land of olive oil and date honey. It is a land in which you will eat bread without suffering, which lacks for nothing, a land whose stones are iron and from whose mountains you can mine forth copper. And so you shall eat, be satisfied, and praise the Lord your G-d for the good land which He has given to you. (Deuteronomy 8:7-10)But there is an introduction to the paean of glory to the Land of Israel that the Biblical text records: "The whole of the commandments that I command you this day to observe to do is in order that you may live, propagate, come to and inherit the land that the Lord has sworn to your ancestors." (Deuteronomy 8:1)
What this verse teaches us is that our price for living in Israel is our commitment to the commandments of the Torah. Indeed, our backsliding will result in the loss of the land, in our exile from Israel. As the Biblical text has previously exhorted: "You must not become defiled with all of these (immoral acts of sin).... Then the land will become defiled and I will visit the iniquity upon it; and the land will vomit out her inhabitants." (Leviticus 18:24, 25)
From this perspective, the Land of Israel must be seen as a test. We must be worthy to live in what we believe is a special land, constantly under direct Divine supervision, which is especially sensitive to the proper conduct of its inhabitants. Just as occurred in the Garden of Eden, the punishment for sin is exile.
Our Biblical portion of Ekev makes one additional point clear. After it speaks of the special quality of the land, it recounts the sins of the desert - especially the idolatry surrounding the Golden Calf - and the breaking of the Sacred Tablets of Stone. Moses was told by G-d to go down from the mountain and go out to his nation, which was acting sinfully and perversely. Once again, the sages of the Talmud clarify precisely what G-d's message to Moses was:
Said Rabbi Eliezer, "The Holy One, blessed be He, said to Moses our teacher, 'Get down from your greatness! The only reason I gave you your great role was because of the Israelites. If the Israelites are sinning, what do I need you for?' "Just imagine the scene: Moses is atop the mountain in a supernal spiritual realm, in splendid isolation with G-d. He needs neither food nor drink while he is receiving the many secrets of the Torah from the Divine. In effect, we are witnessing the greatest kolel in history, with G-d as the rosh yeshiva (head of the academy, as it were) and Moses as the disciple. And the Almighty is saying to Moses that he must leave this kolel and go out to an erring nation.
G-d is explaining to all generations that He did not enter into the Covenant of Torah with the intellectual or spiritual elite of Israel alone, but that he gave His holy teachings to the entire nation, "from those who chop down the trees to those who draw forth the waters." (Deuteronomy 29:10) And because the Torah is the treasure of all of Israel, Moses' place is in teaching them rather than in learning alone from G-d.
This will explain an amazing teaching of the sacred Zohar, that every Jew has his own special letter within the Torah; and therefore, each letter is, in effect, a soul of another Jew. Insofar as a Jew is ignorant of Torah and has not connected his soul with its Divine letter, the Torah itself becomes incomplete and even invalid. The completion of the Torah requires the connection of each Jew to at least some part of its teaching. To put it in a slightly different way, our Torah is the heritage of the entire Jewish nation and it is too precious to remain in the hands of only one small sector of world Jewry.
And just as every Jew must be involved in Torah, so must every Jew be involved in the Land of Israel. The Talmud teaches that every Jew has four cubits in the land of Israel - and each and every Jew must, at the very least, claim his portion. Maimonides teaches that the sanctity of the Land of Israel depends upon the Jews living therein, and that the specific laws of the land of Israel - such as the tithing of the produce and the sabbatical laws - only take effect when all (or at least, most) of the Israelites live within its borders. (Maimonides, "Laws of the Chosen House" 6:16 and "Laws of Tithings" 1:26)
What this means is that our claim to the Land of Israel is only valid when all of its inhabitants live in a manner worthy of its sacred soil, especially in terms of our interpersonal relationships (see Isaiah 1); similarly, the sanctity of the Land of Israel can only be fully expressed when all of the Jewish people are settled within it. Ultimately, both the Torah of Israel and the Land of Israel cry out for every single one of the people of Israel to become intimately involved with them.