Day after day, we read about anti-Semitic attacks throughout Europe. Fox example, today, Arutz 7 reported about three Jewish teenagers in London who were assaulted while riding on a bus . Also we read about the fear of Jewish hospital patients in England due to threats and expressions of anti-Semitism in hospitals across the country
These are merely two examples out of thousands. So I ask, shouldn't the Rabbis of Europe be calling for Jews to make Aliyah now?
Truthfully, the question could have been asked over a hundred-and fifty years ago when Jews began immigrating to Eretz Yisrael in greater numbers. After all, the Jewish People had been praying for almost two-thousand years to return to Jerusalem. Certainly the question could have been asked after the Balfour Declaration when Jews were awarded the right to rebuild their national homeland. Understanding the greatness of the hour, Rabbi Kook urgently called upon them to come home in widespread public announcements.
Again, the question could have been asked some eight decades ago after the Holocaust and upon the creation of Medinat Yisrael.
To be fair, there was a Rabbi in Paris who did call for the Aliyah of French Jews about a year ago and was met with stiff opposition prompting him to take back his words - and The Netherland's Chief Rabbi told Dutch Jews to come on Aliyah before that.
And while the Jews in America have not yet encountered anti-Semitism on the level it has reached in Europe, there is certainly cause for deep worry and the same question can be asked - shouldn't Rabbis in America be calling on their congregations to make Aliyah? We know that entire synagogue congregations are buying apartments in the Givat Hamatos neighborhood of Jerusalem, but do they really intend to live in them?
Any answer from me can be easily dismissed. After all, what does a baal t’shuva from Hollywood know about crucial issues of Torah and Jewish History? How can someone who isn’t a Rabbi speak about Torah Scholars immersed in Jewish scholarship and law, Rabbis in Europe and America who are dedicated to upholding the foundations of Torah? That is a fair question.
So let’s hear the answer of the holy Rabbi Yisachar Shlomo Teichtal, a onetime leader of the Haredi community in Hungary and author of the book, “Eim HaBanim Semeichah." Once a fierce anti-Zionist and leader of the Haredi community in Hungary, he realized his error when he was forced to go into hiding during the Holocaust. In his book, an encompassing halakhic examination of the mitzvah to live in the Land of Israel, he concludes that the horrors of his time were the result of the failure of the Jewish People to heed the Torah’s call to return to the Land of Israel. He writes:
“Therefore, those people who have a predisposition on the matter (Aliyah) will not see the truth and will not concede to our words. All the evidence in the world will not affect them, for they are smitten with blindness and their inner biases cause them to deny even things which are as clear as day.
"Who amongst us is greater than the Spies in the Wilderness? The Torah testifies that they were upstanding individuals (Rashi, BaMidbar 13:3). Nonetheless, since they were influenced by their desire for honor and leadership, they rejected the desirable Land and led others astray… for the Spies were prejudiced by hidden motives" (see the Zohar, Vayishlach, 3:158A; and the “Shelah" Shnei Luchot HaBrit, Torah SheBichtav - Shelach, 2:68a, s.v. “be’inyan"; and the book “Mesillat Yesharim (Ch.19 on Hasidut. Also the Gaon of Vilna, Kol HaTor, Ch.5).
Rav Teichtal continues:
“The same (rejection of living in the Land of Israel personified by the Spies of the Wilderness) holds true in our times even among Rabbis, Rebbes and Chassidim. This one has a good rabbinical position; this one is an established Admor and this one has a profitable business or factory, or a prestigious job which provides great satisfaction. They are afraid that their status will decline if they go to Eretz Yisrael. People of this sort are influenced by their deep-rooted selfish motives to such an extent that they themselves do not realize that their prejudice speaks on their behalf. They will not be convinced to accept the truth, even if they are shown thousands of proofs from the Torah."
Unfortunately, as Rabbi Teichtal predicted, his calls for Aliyah were ignored. He himself was killed while being transported to a death camp but his warning message lives on in his book.
Long before Rabbi Teichtal, the universally acclaimed Torah Genius, the Gaon of Vilna, taught his students:
“In the time of Mashiach, the Sitra Achra attacks the Guardians of Torah with blinders… Many of the sinners in this great sin of ‘They despised the cherished Land,’ and also many great Torah Scholars, will not recognize or understand that they have been sucked into the Sin of the Spies in many false ideas and empty claims, and they cover their ideas with the already proven fallacy that the mitzvah of the settlement of Israel no longer applies in our day, an opinion which has already been disproven by the Torah giants of the world, the Early and Later Torah Authorities" (Kol HaTor, Ch.5; see Shulchan Aruch, Pitchei Tshuva, Even HaEzer, Section 75, Sub-section 6).
The Gaon of Vilna (the Gra) sent his students to settle the Land of Israel long before Herzl was born. He lived in the thriving Torah community of Vilna, where great yeshivot abounded, yet he wrote: “Since the Beit HaMikdash was destroyed, our spirit and our crown departed, and only we remained, the body without the soul. And exile to outside of the Land of Israel is a grave. Worms surround us there (the non-Jewish culture), and we do not have the power to save ourselves from the idol worshippers who devour our flesh. In every place, there were great Jewish communities and yeshivot, until the body decayed, and the bones scattered, again and again. Yet, always, some bones still existed, the Torah Scholars of the Israelite Nation, the pillars of the body - until even these bones rotted, and there only remained a rancid waste which disintegrated into dust - our life turned into dust."
Tragically, the situation which the Gra describes is still with us today.
In conclusion, Rabbi Kook offers a different perspective. In the second chapter of his book “Orot," he explains that the alienation from Eretz Yisrael occurs when the Torah is learned in a superficial manner:
“By being alienated from the recognition of the secrets of Torah, the Kedusha of Eretz Yisrael is understood in a foggy, unfocused fashion. By alienating oneself from the secrets of Hashem, the highest Segulot of the deep Divine life become extraneous, secondary matters which do not enter the depths of the soul, and as a result, the most potent force of the individual's and the nation's soul will be missing, and the Exile is found to be pleasant in its own accord. For to someone who only comprehends the superficial level, nothing basic will be lacking in the absence of the Land of Israel, the Jewish Kingdom, and all of the facets of the nation in its built form."
In simpler words, the Jews in America and Great Britain have English - why do they need Hebrew? They have the governments of the United States and Great Britain to provide for their needs - why do they need their own Jewish government? They have the American and British army to protect them - why do they need Tzahal? They have their own lovely houses and beautiful views - why do they need the more expensive housing and biblical panoramas of Israel?
Finally, in the words of the famous Rabbi Meir Simcha of Dvinsk, known as the “Ohr Sameach" and author of the Meshech Chochmah:
“Behold, ever since the Jews have lived among the nations - for so many years, during which no one believed that they would survive in such a unexplainable fashion… Divine Providence functioned as follows: The Jews find rest for close to a hundred or two-hundred years. Then a storm wind arises and disperses its myriad waves, utterly destroying and washing them away without mercy until they are scattered about, all
alone.
"They run, they flee to a far-off place where they unite and become a community once again. They intensify their Torah learning; their wisdom succeeds greatly,
until they forget that they are strangers in a foreign land. They think that this is their place of origin and they no longer anticipate Hashem’s spiritual salvation at its
designated time. Then, when that occurs, an even stronger stormwind will visit that place and remind them in a thunderous voice: ‘You are a Jew!’"