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Beit Midrash
- Torah Portion and Tanach
- Bamidbar
- Masei
Translated by Hillel Fendel
The very source of the Torah commandment to settle and live in the Land of Israel is found in this week's Torah portion of Mas'ei [Bamidbar 30,2 - 32,42]: "You shall clear out the Land and settle in it, for I have given you the Land to inherit it" (33,53). This is an important tenet in the teachings of Rav Kook, who adopted the position of the Ramban, that there is a Torah commandment not only to settle in Eretz Yisrael, but also to ensure that the Land is under Jewish control – i.e., to conquer it.
In addition to the basic mitzvah involved, there are many other benefits to settling the Land in terms of other mitzvot and Torah-related areas of sanctity, Israelite nationalism, a Torah atmosphere, saving lives, and more.
We now approach the Nine Days of Mourning, the first nine days of the month of Av [beginning this year on Friday, July 29], in which we mourn as a nation over the destruction of our Holy Temples. It is therefore appropriate to study the following passage by Rav Kook in his work Ein Ayah, his commentary to the well-known Ein Yaakov compendium of Talmudic Aggadot. Rav Kook emphasizes here that Jewish life in the Land of Israel is a life of nature, a life of balance among all the forces of life. Jewish existence without Eretz Yisrael is part of the catastrophe of the Exile.
The Book of Lamentations, which we read aloud on Tisha B'Av, states: "I have forgotten what goodness is" (3,17). The Talmud (Shabbat 25b) explains the various types of physical goodness that this is referring to, such as even just a good shower – but the bottom line is that the curse of Exile is "forgetting the goodness." Rav Kook elaborates:"The content of serene and complete life should be [that in which] all of the most spiritual and abstract demands jibe with the natural inclinations and everything that is natural – to the extent that even men of holiness with all their heart and soul for sanctity and wisdom, will be able to introduce into their souls, with no resistance, the proper functioning of normal life and all the suitable enjoyment that is natural for man, together with the light of wisdom and the holiness of fear of G-d… Nothing of these [natural enjoyments] should block one's uplifting to sanctity… The soul will be able to give everything its proper sustenance…
"But during the times of the Exile and the general turmoil, it is nearly impossible to find a complete and totally healthy soul, and therefore the inclination to the extremes is a necessary result, and the spiritual and material situations necessarily clash with each other." (Ein Ayah, Shabbat, passages 65-66)
That is to say, outside the Land of Israel, our engagement with the physical world comes at the expense of Torah and sanctity. We in fact see that the Torah studied in Exile shuns in an extreme manner many areas of natural life. Only when the Nation of Israel is in the Land of Israel is "normal," natural life enabled – for, in fact, even that which is material and physical is holy. As the Rambam (Maimonides) writes (Laws of Kings 5,10), "The greatest of Sages would kiss the ground of Eretz Yisrael, kiss its stones, and roll around in its dirt – and so says King David (Psalms 102,15), "For Your servants hold her stones dear and cherish her very dust."
Rav Kook further writes (in his Orot Yisrael):
"The revealed unity between the ethical, spiritual and intellectual world, on the one hand, with the material, practical, technical and social world, on the other hand, is expressed in the world by Israel. It is the special characteristic of the Land of Israel to establish in the world the manifestation of this unity – unity that gives a new character to all human culture and all its functions…
"In Eretz Yisrael, it is possible to grasp how the flesh of the Israelite body is holy precisely as much as the holiness of the soul – and there is no great need to frustrate the body from its natural rest, but rather to upraise it…"
In short: Eretz Yisrael is far from being just another geographical location, but rather has ramifications of holiness upon all areas of life.
In order to get articles like this delivered straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the Israel National Torah newsletter here.
The very source of the Torah commandment to settle and live in the Land of Israel is found in this week's Torah portion of Mas'ei [Bamidbar 30,2 - 32,42]: "You shall clear out the Land and settle in it, for I have given you the Land to inherit it" (33,53). This is an important tenet in the teachings of Rav Kook, who adopted the position of the Ramban, that there is a Torah commandment not only to settle in Eretz Yisrael, but also to ensure that the Land is under Jewish control – i.e., to conquer it.
In addition to the basic mitzvah involved, there are many other benefits to settling the Land in terms of other mitzvot and Torah-related areas of sanctity, Israelite nationalism, a Torah atmosphere, saving lives, and more.
We now approach the Nine Days of Mourning, the first nine days of the month of Av [beginning this year on Friday, July 29], in which we mourn as a nation over the destruction of our Holy Temples. It is therefore appropriate to study the following passage by Rav Kook in his work Ein Ayah, his commentary to the well-known Ein Yaakov compendium of Talmudic Aggadot. Rav Kook emphasizes here that Jewish life in the Land of Israel is a life of nature, a life of balance among all the forces of life. Jewish existence without Eretz Yisrael is part of the catastrophe of the Exile.
The Book of Lamentations, which we read aloud on Tisha B'Av, states: "I have forgotten what goodness is" (3,17). The Talmud (Shabbat 25b) explains the various types of physical goodness that this is referring to, such as even just a good shower – but the bottom line is that the curse of Exile is "forgetting the goodness." Rav Kook elaborates:"The content of serene and complete life should be [that in which] all of the most spiritual and abstract demands jibe with the natural inclinations and everything that is natural – to the extent that even men of holiness with all their heart and soul for sanctity and wisdom, will be able to introduce into their souls, with no resistance, the proper functioning of normal life and all the suitable enjoyment that is natural for man, together with the light of wisdom and the holiness of fear of G-d… Nothing of these [natural enjoyments] should block one's uplifting to sanctity… The soul will be able to give everything its proper sustenance…
"But during the times of the Exile and the general turmoil, it is nearly impossible to find a complete and totally healthy soul, and therefore the inclination to the extremes is a necessary result, and the spiritual and material situations necessarily clash with each other." (Ein Ayah, Shabbat, passages 65-66)
That is to say, outside the Land of Israel, our engagement with the physical world comes at the expense of Torah and sanctity. We in fact see that the Torah studied in Exile shuns in an extreme manner many areas of natural life. Only when the Nation of Israel is in the Land of Israel is "normal," natural life enabled – for, in fact, even that which is material and physical is holy. As the Rambam (Maimonides) writes (Laws of Kings 5,10), "The greatest of Sages would kiss the ground of Eretz Yisrael, kiss its stones, and roll around in its dirt – and so says King David (Psalms 102,15), "For Your servants hold her stones dear and cherish her very dust."
Rav Kook further writes (in his Orot Yisrael):
"The revealed unity between the ethical, spiritual and intellectual world, on the one hand, with the material, practical, technical and social world, on the other hand, is expressed in the world by Israel. It is the special characteristic of the Land of Israel to establish in the world the manifestation of this unity – unity that gives a new character to all human culture and all its functions…
"In Eretz Yisrael, it is possible to grasp how the flesh of the Israelite body is holy precisely as much as the holiness of the soul – and there is no great need to frustrate the body from its natural rest, but rather to upraise it…"
In short: Eretz Yisrael is far from being just another geographical location, but rather has ramifications of holiness upon all areas of life.
In order to get articles like this delivered straight to your inbox every week, subscribe to the Israel National Torah newsletter here.
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This may be the most important class of the entire book, where we finally get to the Jewish proof of the existence of G-d and truth of the Torah. We should follow His own direction where He tells us how to get to Him: through the Nation of Israel: Jewish history, Jewish prophets (and today, prophecies fulfilled), and national reward & punishment towards Am Yisrael.
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