Rabbi Dov Begon is Head of Yeshivat Machon Meir in Jerusalem.
“And it shall be when you come into the Land which the Lord your God is giving you as an inheritance, and you shall possess it and dwell in it, then you shall take of the first of all the fruit of the ground… and you shall come to the priest that shall be in those days, and you shall say to him: I declare today to the Lord your God that I have come to the Land which the Lord swore to our fathers to give us” (Devarim 26:1-4).
Rashi explains: “’And it shall be when you come… and you shall possess it and dwell in it’ - this teaches that they were not obligated in bikkurim (first fruits) until they conquered the Land and divided it."
The commandment of bringing the bikkurim is a tangible and concrete expression that we are not ingrates. On the contrary, we are filled with recognition of the kindnesses and the good that the Holy One, Blessed Be He, did with us when we came to the Land of Israel, the land of our life, the good and cherished Land, the Land where the Torah is meant to be kept, the Land in which the goodness of God and His Kingship are revealed.
Also from these verses, we learn that the revelation of the light of the Holy One, Blessed Be He, and His kingship in the Land is dependent upon our conquest of the Land and the rule of the Jewish People over Eretz Yisrael, as it is written: “and you shall possess it and dwell in it.”
Only through the return of Am Yisrael to the Land of Israel, and dwelling in it according to the Torah of Israel, is the Name of Heaven sanctified and magnified in the world - through the union of the Jewish People with their Land and their Torah.
As of now, our generation is a generation of wars. We have not yet completed the task of conquering the Land and settling it. The role of our generation in the chain of generations is not only to ascend to live in Eretz Yisrael and to establish a Jewish State in order to solve the distress and persecution of our people in exile, but to settle the entire Land, as the Holy One, Blessed Be He, promised to Abraham our father when He made a covenant with him, as it is written: “On that day the Lord made a covenant with Abram, saying: to your seed I have given this Land’ (Bereshit 15:18; and see Rashi there).
The goal of the ingathering is not only to establish a refuge for the Jewish People, and not to only a create a strong national home, but to fulfill the cosmopolitical mission of our people and to bring light and goodness to all humanity so that all the families of the earth be blessed through us, as was promised to Abraham our father: “And I will make you into a great nation, and you shall be a blessing, and all the families of the earth shall be blessed through you’ (Bereshit 12).
That mission can only be fulfilled here in Israel, in our unique Holy Land, and not when we are scattered minorities in foreign lands amongst the Gentiles.
Looking forward to victory and complete salvation, I send my blessings, the blessings of a Kohen, for a good and sweet year.