HaRav Shmuel Eliahu is Chief Rabbi of Tzfat
Sefardi communities have begun the Selichot prayers which parallel the forty days from Rosh Chodesh Elul to Yom Kippur which Moshe Rabbeinu spent on Mount Sinai. It is written in the Responsa of the Ramaz (16) that regarding Selichot it is preferable to pray over the troubles of the general exile rather than over our individual sins. “For this is in essence the greatest form of forgiveness and the most accepted prayer before the Almighty, for the hour calls for it, and the time is appointed for every faithful one not to forget the love of Jerusalem and the affection for Zion, and great is his merit before the Supreme One.” We learn this from the prayer of Moshe Rabbeinu concerning the sin of the Golden Calf.
Therefore, in Selichot we pray over the sins of exile and we say, “We have been more guilty than all nations,” for we do not have the Beit HaMikdash: “The dwelling of our sanctuary is destroyed because of our sins.” We confess the sin whose consequence is that foreigners dwell in the Land of Israel and we say: “The beauty of our land [has gone] to strangers, our strength to foreigners.” This is the opposite of what the Torah commanded: “Do not grant them favor” and “They shall not dwell in your land.” And when we leave them in the Land, they plunder our property: “Before our eyes they robbed our toil, dragged and stripped from us” and they bring afflictions upon us: “Many troubles have surrounded us.”
The Inheritance of the Land - A Wonder Unlike Any Other
In Moshe’s forty-day prayer there is a promise of Redemption; therefore, a new covenant was made regarding wonders that had never been before:
“Behold, I am making a covenant. Before all your people I will do wonders such as have not been created in all the earth nor in any of the nations; and all the people among whom you are shall see the work of Hashem, for it is an awesome thing that I do with you” (Exodus 34:10). This is difficult to imagine - wonders greater than the Exodus from Egypt that will be seen by Israel and the whole world.
Some people ask: what were the new wonders that did not previously exist? (see Ramban, Exodus 34:8). The answer is in the verses that follow (see Malbim on Joshua 10:13), which deal with the inheritance of the Land: “Observe what I command you today: behold, I drive out before you the Amorite, the Canaanite, the Hittite, the Perizzite, the Hivite, and the Jebusite” (Exodus 34:11). The Malbim explains that the miracles of inheriting the Land in the days of Joshua were the standing of the sun over Giv’on and the publicizing of Hashem’s miracles throughout the world.
So too will it be in the future, as written in Tehillim: “Hashem has made known His salvation; before the eyes of the nations He has revealed His righteousness. He remembered His kindness and His faithfulness to the House of Israel; all the ends of the earth saw the salvation of our God” (Psalms 98).
What Will Be With Those Who Say: ‘Palestine - From the River to the Sea’?
The prophet Ezekiel indeed foretold (38:23) about all those who proclaim that the State of Israel must be erased and replaced with “Palestine from the river to the sea,” Heaven forbid. God will judge them in the harshest way: “I will contend with him by pestilence and by blood; and an overflowing rain and great hailstones, fire and brimstone will I rain upon him, and upon his hordes, and upon the many peoples that are with him” (Ezekiel 38:22). Through this all humanity will understand that Hashem is King: “Thus will I magnify Myself and sanctify Myself, and I will be known in the eyes of many nations, and they shall know that I am Hashem.”
Therefore, during those forty days, Hashem warns Moshe not to make agreements with the inhabitants of the Land: “Take heed to yourself lest you make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land to which you are coming” - do not make any pact that allows them to remain in the Land of Israel. Not Oslo, not Disengagement, not any form of Two-States. The reason is that they will be a powder keg that will, God forbid, cause us great harm: “Lest it be a snare in your midst.”
We Have Not Returned From Our Straying
In every Selichot we confess that we did not keep what Hashem commanded us in the month of Elul through Moshe Rabbeinu, for we signed agreements with our enemies and left them in the Land. The painful result we saw in all the terror attacks that followed the Oslo Accords, and in the recent massacre on Simchat Torah. Over this mistake we confess in Selichot for forty days, saying: “And still we have not returned from our straying. How dare we lift our faces and stiffen our necks to say before You, Hashem our God and God of our fathers: we are righteous and have not sinned?”
“And The Children Shall Return to Their Borders”
In the Selichot of Elul of this year, 5785, we are in a process of teshuvah. Not only have we struck down our enemies in the past two years with mighty blows, but we have sanctified Hashem’s Name before the eyes of all flesh, who saw how Hashem fulfills in us: “And five of you shall pursue a hundred, and a hundred of you shall pursue ten thousand; and your enemies shall fall before you by the sword.”
And moreover, we are now settling Judea and Samaria with renewed strength and vigor.
Behold, currently the People of Israel are correcting these sins of surrendering chunks of our Homeland through the decision to settle the area between Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim - land that will have tens of thousands of housing units, becoming part of Greater Jerusalem. It is called by a foreign name, “E1,” but in truth it is a manifestation of teshuvah toward the Land of Israel.
We also are establishing dozens of hilltop farms established in the past year throughout Judea, Samaria, and Binyamin, on thousands upon thousands of dunams of the Land of Israel that had been abandoned and are now returned to the children of Avraham the Hebrew: “And the children shall return to their borders.”
Moshe Rabbeinu prayed and pleaded before the Master of the World that even if Israel sins by relinquishing the Land, Hashem should not annul His covenant with them and will still bequeath the Land to them. The words are explicit: “And he said: If I have found favor in Your eyes, my Lord, let my Lord go among us, for it is a stiff-necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us as Your inheritance.” And what is meant by the final word “inheritance”? That You will let us inherit the Land even if we were stiff-necked and did not heed Your voice, and signed Oslo and Disengagement agreements.
The current Rising Lion War is part of the teshuvah process for the sins of Oslo and the Disengagement, in which we relinquished the Land of Israel - the opposite of what was said to Moshe at Sinai in those forty days from Rosh Chodesh Elul to Yom Kippur. We pray in this month of Elul that we advance in our process of teshuvah, inheriting more and more of the Land of Israel - not leaving it in the hands of others or to desolation.
May the inheritance of this generation continue with greater strength and vigor in the coming years, so that even the territories we once relinquished and called Areas A and B will be called by their true name - the Land of Israel - and not “territories” that we surrendered, the complete opposite of what the Torah obligates us to do. And through our sincere and heartfelt teshuvah, we shall merit a complete Redemption, may it come soon!