It is stated in our parasha, “The priests, the Levites, shall have no portion and no inheritance with Israel; the offerings of the Lord, and His inheritance, they shall eat. And he shall have no inheritance among his brethren; the Lord is his inheritance, as He has spoken to him." .
There are words of special significance in the Torah, words that symbolize a goal for the Jewish people from the very dawn of the nation, which some today seek to belittle and even turn into terms of contempt. One of them is the word “inheritance" and its derivatives, “settler" and “settlers." It is therefore incumbent upon us to return to the sources and restore the word “inheritance" to its full glory, bringing it back to the forefront so that it will once again become our birthright, with the full force of pride and destiny among all the tribes of Israel.
I recall how, one day in 2006, then-Deputy Defense Minister Dr. Ephraim Sneh came to a meeting in Modi’in Illit and demanded a dramatic reduction in the number of soldiers stationed there, from teams of six at the checkpoints to a single team at only one checkpoint. The meeting was attended by the then-mayor, the then-deputy housing minister, and the writer of these lines, as the developer of the Brachfeld housing project in the area.
Deputy Minister Sneh then said: “If I could, I would make sure that Modi’in Illit was built within the Green Line, and not as another settlement. But what can I do? You have already established facts on the ground."
The deputy housing minister replied: “You are mistaken. We are not settlers; we are simply solving the housing problems of the Haredi public." The municipality’s mayor also nodded in agreement.
“And what do you say?" Sneh asked. Since he had said that we had already established facts on the ground, I replied, half in jest and half seriously, that I was locating customers and settling them in a place where, after a while, you would say that “this is a fait accompli." I added that they had earned the honorable title of “settlers" - settlers returning to their land after two thousand years of exile from our inheritance, similar to those who were privileged to settle in Ramat Aviv on the lands of the village of Sheikh Munis. With one difference: we purchased the land from our “cousins" at full price, from a willing seller to a willing buyer, unlike the lands of that village. Incidentally, good came out of evil, and the checkpoint was moved beyond Modi’in Illit, which today numbers more than one hundred thousand residents.
Needless to say, among others at the opposite end of the spectrum of the tribes of Israel, the term “settlers" will usually appear alongside “right-wing extremists," and it is rare to find a positive article about them. I will never forget that in my youth I worked in the State Attorney’s Office, and a senior prosecutor who also taught the Bible part-time told me that she skipped the Book of Joshua because it was all about conquest and settlement. Let us therefore return and examine how the word “inheritance" appears both in our parasha, in the Torah, and along the Sages in general.
Indeed, in these two verses of the parasha with which we began, which speak of the role of the tribe of Levi, there are three different meanings of the word “inheritance," and not by coincidence. First, inheritance means land, a piece of land. The Land of Israel is the inheritance of our fathers. The tribe of Levi does not have such an inheritance, as each of the other tribes of Israel does. For its role is to connect heaven and earth, to transmit the Torah to the Children of Israel so that it becomes the heritage of the entire nation. Therefore, they eat the offerings of the Lord, and He is their inheritance. Through the connection of the Children of Israel who settle in their land to His Torah, to the heavenly inheritance, and to the fulfillment of the Torah and its commandments in their inheritance - “the Lord is the inheritance of the tribe of Levi." We have learned that there is a Land of Israel, a Torah of Israel, a people of Israel, and the God of Israel. The tribe of Levi is charged with the immense task of connecting the people of Israel to the Torah of Israel and to the God of Israel. It connects the territories, with all their implications, to a territory with one meaning, connecting the Jerusalem below with the Jerusalem above through the Temple service, through the offerings of Israel.
Indeed, Rashi says on the verse at the beginning of the parasha: “Judges and officers shall you appoint for yourselves in all your gates, which the Lord your God gives you for your tribes, and they shall judge the people with righteous judgment": Appoint expert and righteous judges to judge righteously. And further on: “Justice, justice shalt thou follow, that thou mayest live, and inherit the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee" - teaching that the appointment of judges is sufficient to sustain Israel and settle them in their land, and not cause them to fall by the sword. Therefore, “If there be a matter too hard for thee in judgment, you shall rise and go up to the place which the Lord your God shall choose, and you shall come to the priests, the Levites, and to the judge who shall be in those days, and you shall inquire, and they shall tell you the word of the law. Here is the unbreakable bond of the eternal triangle between the Jewish people, the Land of Israel, and the Torah of Israel, with the role of the priests serving as the glue that ensures that all three remain connected to one another.
The Midrash in the Mekhilta to Exodus 15:17 says: The Holy One, Blessed be He, said: Let Israel, who are called an inheritance, come to Eretz Yisrael, which is called an inheritance, and build the Temple, which is called an inheritance, through the merit of the Torah, which is called an inheritance. “Israel" as it is said: “My people and My inheritance are Israel". “Eretz Yisrael" as it is written: “In the land which the Lord your God gives you for an inheritance to possess it" . The Temple, as it is written: “You will bring them in and plant them in the mountain of Your inheritance" . The Torah, as it is written: “And from a gift, an inheritance" .
In order to maintain this tripartite bond, as mentioned, the Torah continues in our parasha: the tribe of Levi is not only engaged in the transmission of the Torah and the service of the Temple. In addition, “And you shall divide the border of your land, which the Lord your God gives you to inherit, into three parts, and it shall be for a refuge there for every manslayer" . In three, and in the future six, cities of refuge out of the forty-eight cities of his residence, he must take care of the rehabilitation of the weak in the nation. He must rehabilitate all those who have failed because they have not sufficiently internalized the Torah that the Levites have transmitted to them, including the caution in conduct and driving that derives from our heritage, our Torah, which the Lord our God bequeathed to us at Mount Sinai, in the prohibition of “Thou shalt not murder."
A mitzvah that requires extra caution, and therefore even the one who commits it in error goes into the cities of the educators, the cities of the Levites, the cities of the rehabilitators, who return the sinner to the internalization of his inheritance. This reflects the obligation of extra caution required of a person of Israel toward his fellow man. A heavy responsibility, which is not without reason why the one who kills accidentally must remain in the city of refuge until the death of the High Priest. Not only did he apparently fail to pray sufficiently that no mishap would occur, such as an accidental killing, but his tribe also failed to educate the generation so that taking a life would not happen in our territory, neither intentionally nor accidentally. “And blood shall not be shed in your land which the Lord your God gives you for a possession, and blood shall be upon you" . And as the Shefa Etz Chaim says, even the accidental manslayer has no place in our ancestral homeland, but the Creator did him a kindness by allowing him to flee to the city of refuge.
These three functions of every Levite - the transmission of Torah alongside the rehabilitation of the sinner, and, of course, the service of the Temple - apply also to anyone who seeks to be like one of the tribe of Levi, as the Rambam teaches at the end of his book on the sabbatical year.
In the context of the transmission of the Torah, immediately after the parasha of the accidental and premeditated murderer comes a negative commandment, a kind of “preventive medicine" - the prohibition against encroaching on the territory of the Almighty. For out of a dispute over an inheritance, the parties may fail in “Thou shalt not murder." “Thou shalt not remove thy neighbor's boundary, which thy ancestors have set in thine inheritance in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee to possess it" . And the Maharshal, Rabbi Shlomo Luria, a contemporary of Rabbi Yosef Karo and the Rema, added that anyone who deprives his fellow of his livelihood is also included in the category of one who encroaches upon his neighbor’s territory [Responsa of the Maharshal, Siman 89].
Moshe Rabbeinu merited to bequeath a portion to the two and a half tribes. Yehoshua merited to bequeath a portion to five additional tribes by the command of Hashem, until it is written: “And they finished dividing the land by its borders, and the children of Israel gave a portion to Yehoshua ben Nun among them" . And so it is said regarding Yehoshua in preparation for the conquest and bequeathing of the land, first in the book of Numbers and repeated and tripled in the book of Deurteronomy: “These are the names of the men who shall apportion the land to you: Eleazar the priest and Joshua son of Nun" . This is the new team that was to complete the tasks assigned to Moses and Aaron, and that might have been fulfilled by them had they not sinned in the incident of the waters of strife. And in Deuteronomy: “Yehoshua ben Nun is standing before you, he will come there with him, strengthen him, for he will inherit it for Israel" . And again: “And command Yehoshua and strengthen him and encourage him, for he will go before this nation, and he will inherit for them the land which you will see" . And once again: “And Moshe called to Yehoshua and said to him in the sight of all Israel, Be strong and of a good courage, for you shall go with this people into the land which the Lord has sworn to their fathers to give them, and you shall cause them to inherit it. And the Lord, He it is that goes before you, He will be with you, He will not fail you, nor forsake you, fear not, neither be dismayed" .
There is special importance to these words of encouragement by God and by Moshe to Yehoshua. The repeated words of encouragement, as mentioned in the plains of Moav on the eve of the entry into the land, prepare and establish the status of Yehoshua as the leader of Israel during the period of conquest and settlement. It is no coincidence that Moshe personally lays his hands on Yehoshua, his student and successor, in the realization of the Divine goal of the Exodus from Egypt - his entry into the Land of the Fathers at the head of the settlers in the Land of their Fathers. Even the tribes of Gad and Reuven, who were to go out as the vanguard of the army, speak in terms of inheritance: “We will not return to our homes until the children of Israel have inherited their portion" .
Despite these pioneers, several times the Almighty tells Yehoshua, “be strong and courageous" before he goes out to the war of conquering the land of the forefathers, before he begins the war that took seven years, and before he apportions the land to Israel for another seven years. Even the warriors receive in our parasha words of encouragement from the lips of the anointed priest of war. A reinforcement needed both for the conquest of the ancestral homeland and for its preservation: “Let not your heart faint, fear not, and do not tremble, nor be terrified of them; for the Lord your God is He that goes with you to fight for you against your enemies, to save you" .
This language of “the inheritance of our fathers" was also used in the revolt against Greek rule in the land by Shimon, the second son of Mattityahu, who was the High Priest and leader of the Jews. And so he said with great courage when Antiochus demanded from him to surrender Jerusalem: “We did not take a foreign land, nor did we take the property of strangers. For if our fathers’ heritage, which at some time was unjustly taken from us, we have recovered it, and have restored the inheritance of our fathers" [1 Maccabees, Chapter 15, verses 33-34].
The question arises: is this verse, “Do not be afraid and do not panic and do not tremble before them," in war and in guarding our heritage, a matter of encouragement or a command prohibiting a soldier from being afraid? And if we are dealing with a command, how can we instruct in practice to prohibit fear? A similar question was asked of Rabbi Yitzchak Zilberstein, the son-in-law of Rabbi Elyashiv: Is it permissible for a doctor to leave a besieged city because of danger because he is afraid? And the rabbi answered that this verse is not a command, but a promise that there is nothing to fear. And the Steipler, author of Kehilos Yaakov, says that Am Yisrael as a nation will win, even though it is possible that individuals will die in battle defending our nation and our land.
Rabbi Zilberstein explains that the promise is that in practice the hearts of those going out to battle will not be weakened by the noise of the horses’ neighing and the clashing of swords, the slamming of the gates and the multitude of the legions and, in our days, by the sounds of tanks rumbling, drones buzzing, and the like. The fear of the sounds of war heard in the background may instill cowardice in the hearts of the warriors and bring them to the conclusion that it will be difficult to win the battle by natural means. This is the promise of the Torah: “Do not fear." An Israeli warrior will not fear the sounds of war, for he always knows that the guidance of the Almighty is not subject to the laws of nature, but rather to our actions and our merits. Here we have words of encouragement and a promise to the settlers in their land who guard the land in both the earthly and spiritual senses.
Even in the Kiddush and the Sabbath songs, our heritage is at the forefront of our minds. In the Kiddush Rabba it is said: “If you refrain from travel from the Sabbath, from doing your will on My holy day, then you will delight in the Lord, and I will make you tread on the heights of the land," says the Radak and the Ibn Ezra, referring to the Land of Israel. The Lord will bring us to the Land of Israel, and we will rule over it as a reward for keeping the Sabbath and other commandments. “And I will feed you the heritage of Jacob your father, for the Lord has spoken." That is, I will give you the heritage of Jacob your father, which is the Land of Israel.
Radak says: Eretz Yisrael, which was given to the seed of Yaakov alone, and not to the seed of Yishmael or the seed of Esav! “For the Lord has spoken" - this is the promise of the Creator, and since He has spoken, He will surely fulfill it. And in Shabbos 118b, Rashi brings in the name of the Sages that all who delight in Shabbos will merit an inheritance without boundaries, without limits. The inheritance of Yaakov specifically, to whom Hashem promises: “And you shall spread out to the west and to the east and to the north and to the south," meaning without borders. And not as was said to Avraham: “The land that you see, I will give to you and to your seed" , and not as was said to Yitzchak: “For I will give to you and to your seed all these lands" [Genesis].
In the poem “Baruch El Elyon," composed by Rabbi Shmuel of Mainz in 1290, the poet writes: “And happy is he who waits for a double reward from the One who dwells in the cloud, the One who sees everything, for he will inherit the mountain and the valley, a heritage and a resting place, as did the one for whom the sun shone, he is our father Jacob." As it is said in Isaiah, “And I will feed you the heritage of Jacob your father, for the mouth of the Lord has spoken" .
May our prayers be accepted: “Save Your people and bless Your inheritance" , “For the Lord will not forsake His people, nor will He abandon His inheritance" . And may the words of inheritance and settlers settle in every heart, and may the sun shine upon them as it did in the beginning, with great appreciation for the “mighty men of valor who do His word, to hear the voice of His word," who are attached to the inheritance of the fathers with valor, while fulfilling our inheritance, which is the Torah - some in the farms, some in the mountains, and some in the valley. And with the help of Hashem, may we merit a portion without borders throughout all the expanses of our inheritance, in peace and tranquility, to “bring them and plant them in the mountain of Your inheritance," and to the building of “the place of Your dwelling," the Holy Temple, speedily in our days.