 This is actually the first time in my life that I've spoken about the topic of Israel. And one of the things that I found disturbing, actually, was that as I began thinking about this issue and trying to do some research, one of the places I turned aside from my library was this thing called the Internet. And I mentioned this when I was beginning my talk here a few months ago about the Talmud. That if you try doing any kind of research on the Talmud on Google or anywhere else on the Internet, almost all of the articles that come up on the first few pages of your Google search will be about how the Talmud is the most satanic book in the world and it's the most evil book in the world. You don't really find anything truly accurate about the Talmud until you start digging down a bit, drilling down into the Google search. And what I found as well when I was just poking around to see where we can learn about the significance of Israel, what is special about Israel on the Internet, which is today where frankly speaking most people do their learning and their research, almost all of the material that I found was written from either a Christian or Islamic perspective. And it really wasn't so easy to find Jewish material on this topic. That's one of the reasons why tonight's program was difficult for me. And I want to share at the outset tonight another reason why I had difficulties with this topic. One of the greatest personalities in medieval Spanish Jewry was Rabbi Yehuda Halevi. He was born in Toledo, Spain, Toledo, Spain in 1075 and was a practicing physician as well as a successful businessman. He achieved his fame in the Jewish world as a poet fairly early in life. He has over 800 poems that we know about today and there were probably others that were lost. His poems deal with a wide range of subjects. Some are liturgical and we actually still sing them at our Shabbat tables and at other occasions. But his most famous poems are referred to as Shirei Tsiyon, songs about Zion. And they describe Rabbi Yehuda Halevi's incredibly passionate love and appreciation for the land of Israel. He is best known to us for his monumental work of Jewish philosophy known as the Kuzari. He completed the Kuzari at the end of his life after working on it for 20 years and it purports to record a dialogue between the 8th century king of the Khazars which was a people living in southern Russia between the Black and Caspian seas. So there was a dialogue that took place between this king and a rabbi. What happened was the king of the Khazars was seeking the true religion and he invited to his court representatives of Christianity, representatives of Islam and this rabbi, the representative of Judaism. At the end of this process the rabbis arguments appealed most to the king and he and his entire nation ended up converting to Judaism. There are people who think this is just a mythological story but a significant number of scholars and historians actually ascribe some credibility to this account. There was such a nation and the nation did ultimately embrace Judaism in around the 8th century. In the second part, the second essay of the Kuzari, the king asks the rabbi about the land of Israel and the rabbi launches into a long discussion about how special the land of Israel is, how unique it is and how holy it is. But then the king challenges the rabbi and he questions the rabbi's fidelity to the land of Israel and his sincerity and he asks rhetorically to the rabbi that if Israel is really so important and Jews have yearned for centuries to live in Israel, why is it that the rabbi isn't living there and the rabbi humbly responds to the king, you have shamed me king of Kuzaria and unfortunately the rabbi confesses that this has been a pattern for much of Jewish history. After we were exiled to Babylon after our first temple was destroyed four or five hundred years before the common era, we were in exile in Babylon for seventy years and finally we were permitted to return. The Babylonians were conquered by the Persians, the king of Persia allowed the Jews to return to Israel but the prophet the book of Nechemia in our Bible records that only forty two thousand three hundred and sixty Jews returned to Israel. The vast majority remained in exile and the rabbi speaking with the king of the Kuzars acknowledges that this ambivalence between talking the talk about the importance of Israel and walking the walk is embarrassing. Now Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi was chronicling the dialogue that supposedly took place three hundred years earlier. This was not a dialogue between himself and the king of the Kuzars. He's merely chronicling this discussion that took place earlier. However, it's pretty clear that he himself probably felt similarly conflicted. Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi spent almost all of his life living in Spain and from a young age he already expressed his yearnings for Israel in his poetry and in his writings and yet somehow despite all of his strong feelings for Israel and his yearnings to go there he still remained in Spain. His great love for Israel finally moved him to undertake the arduous and dangerous journey to Israel from Spain in what turned out to be the last year of his life. At the age of sixty five in the year eleven forty he and his companions arrived in Alexandria Egypt from Spain. Now it's not clear based upon historical sources whether he ever made it to Israel from Alexandria. He may have died there and been buried there. Some say he might have reached Damascus in Syria but according to a very popular legend Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi did make it to Jerusalem and as he kneeled on the ground to kiss the stones reciting one of his poems, Siyon HaLotishali, Zion will you not inquire which we recite every Tisha Ba'av in our synagogues when we commemorate the destruction of both the first and second temple. An Arab horseman trampled him to death and he was killed there on the spot. Now I have to confess that as I was thinking about this talk and preparing for it I was strongly confronted by my own dissonance about the land of Israel. Truth be told I felt this way for many years and it seems obvious to me that any thoughtful Jew living in the diaspora today needs to seriously contemplate what we are doing here. There is a substantial amount of literature regarding whether or not there is actually a biblical commandment to move to Israel. We are not going to explore that in any great detail tonight. Nachmanides, Rabbi Moshe Benachman wrote a very important commentary to Maimonides' the Ram Bomb, Sefer Hamitzvot, his book of commandments where Maimonides enumerates the 613 biblical commandments. Nachmanides was surprised that the Ram Bomb did not include as a commandment the obligation to go to Israel and settle the land. Nachmanides and many others definitively rule that the obligation to settle the land of Israel was not just a directive to the Israelites coming out of Egypt but that it is obligatory for all time. Some commentaries maintain that even though Maimonides did not classify the obligation of making aliyah, of going to settle the land of Israel as a biblical commandment, he may have considered it to be a rabbinic commandment. Others say it still may have been a biblical commandment but didn't make it into the list of 613 commandments where Moshe Feinstein who was the great Halachic authority of the 20th century seemed to understand that immigrating to Israel is a mitzvah ki-yumit rather than a mitzvah ki-yuvit. I'll explain that in a moment. A mitzvah ki-yuvit means an obligatory commandment and that's what Nachmanides and others seem to rule that we today have a religious obligation to leave the exile and move to Israel. Where Moshe Feinstein seems to understand that going to Israel is not an obligatory commandment but what he refers to as a mitzvah ki-yuvit meaning that you do fulfill a spiritual act if you go but there is no absolute obligation to go. For example, there is no absolute obligation today to eat meat and slaughter the animal according to the biblical laws of slaughter. We have laws in the Bible about how to slaughter an animal but there is no absolute obligation to do that. In the same way we have laws of divorce. There's no obligation to get divorced so that you can fulfill the laws of divorce. If you happen to get divorced the Bible explains how you are to do it and if you fulfill the biblical laws of giving a divorce according to the laws of the Bible you fulfill the biblical commandment. The same with eating meat. If you're going to eat meat and you slaughter the animal properly you have fulfilled the biblical obligation and so Moshe Feinstein seems to say similarly there is no absolute obligation to pick up and move to the land of Israel but if you go there you have fulfilled a very very critical and important religious precept. Regardless of whether or not there is an absolute obligation to pick up and move to Israel we're going to see tonight that our Torah and our rabbinic sources speak about the land of Israel in the highest terms as the optimal place for Jews to live and as an awesomely special place. Some of our sources say that the mitzvah of going to Israel is considered like you fulfilled all the other commandments in the Torah. Similar to for example Shabbat where our sages say if you properly observe Shabbat it's as if you fulfilled all the commandments of the Torah. Our sages teach that it's better to live in the land of Israel in a city of all non-Jews than to live outside of Israel in a city of all Jews. Shlaw teaches that if a woman who's married wants to move to Israel she can basically force her husband to go and if he refuses to go she's able to divorce him and collect the settlement of her marriage contract. Likewise if the husband wants to move to Israel and the wife does not want to move he is able to divorce her and not pay her any money for her katubah. We have many many laws in our literature and our halachic codes which speak very clearly about the preeminence of the land of Israel. At a minimum every Jewish person living in the diaspora should at least be sensitive to think about what we're doing here. There may be many reasons even legitimate reasons why a particular person or family are not able to move to Israel at the present time and it may not be advisable for them to move at the present time. But as Rabbi Yehuda Levi wrote in one of his famous poems, Libi Bemisrach, my heart is in the east and Israel should always be on our horizon. The land of Israel becomes relevant at the very beginning of the Torah itself. Writing around 1,000 years ago in France, Rashi Rabbi Shlomo Bemisrach the preeminent commentary to our Bible questions why the Torah begins with the account of creation. Our Bible begins in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth and Rashi wonders if the Torah is a book of religious instruction, the word Torah itself means instruction. So if the Torah is the book of instructions that God gave the Jewish people for how we are to live, why doesn't the Torah begin with the first commandment that God gave the Jewish people, which appears in the book of Exodus chapter 12, the commandment to sanctify the new moon. Rashi suggests that's where the Torah should begin. Who needs to hear about the creation of the world? So Rashi explains in his answer that the reason that the Torah begins with creation is to establish that as the creator of the world God owns the entire world, the entire world belongs to him. And therefore he can determine according to his will who he will apportion various parts of the world too. And therefore since God determined to give the land of Israel to the Jewish people, Rashi says that the creation of the world is what gives God the ability legally so to speak as the owner of the world to promise the land of Israel to the children of Israel. Our story begins in Genesis chapter 12 verse 1 where God says to Abram, go for yourself lech lecha from your land, from your relatives, and from your father's house to the land that I will show you. This is the beginning of our national story, the beginning of the Jewish narrative. And it begins with, in the very first verse, God's telling Abraham to go to the promised land. The very first moment of our destiny begins with a directive to go to the land of Israel. And then God says in verse 2 of chapter 12, and I will make you a great nation. I will bless you and make your name great, and you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who curses you, I will curse. And all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you. Abraham then travels to the land of Canaan, which was called back then. And in verse 7 of chapter 12 we are told that the Almighty appeared to Abram and said to your offspring, I will give this land. Abraham then ends up going down to Egypt as a famine in Israel, but he returns soon afterward. And God repeats the promise of the land in chapter 13 verses 14 to 17. The Almighty said to Abraham, raise now your eyes and look out from where you are, northward, southward, eastward, and westward. For all the land that you see to you, I will give it and to your descendants forever. Arise, walk about the land through its length and breath, for to you I will give it. So from the very beginning of the story of our people, there is an intimate connection between the destiny of our people and the land of Israel. In Genesis chapter 15, God promises Abram that he will have offspring, and that they as well will inherit the land. So in Genesis chapter 15 verse 7, God says, I am Hashem who brought you out of Ur-Kazdim to give you the land to inherit it. Abram is then instructed to take various animals and birds, to cut them in half, to lay them side by side, and this will become the sign of a covenant that God is going to make with him. And in chapter 15 verse 18, it says that on that day Hashem made a covenant with Abram saying to your descendants, have I given this land from the river of Egypt to the Great River? And then two chapters later in Genesis chapter 17, we read that Abram at the age of 99 is given the covenant of circumcision by God to seal this relationship with Abram and his descendants. Once again the land comes up and in chapter 17 verse 8, God says I will give to you and to your descendants after you the land of your sojourns, the whole of the land of Canaan as an everlasting possession. Abram's name is then changed to Abraham and his son is born to him and to his wife Sarah. The son is named Isaac and God repeats the promise of the land to Isaac as well. There was a famine in Canaan but God tells Isaac in Genesis chapter 26 verses 2 to 3, do not descend to Egypt. Dwell in this land and I'll be with you and bless you. For to you and your offspring will I give all of these lands and establish the oath that I swore to Abraham your father. Again as the story proceeds from the very birth of the Jewish people we see God is constantly reiterating the connection of the people to the land. The same promise is then made and given to Isaac's son Jacob in Genesis chapter 35 verses 9 to 12. God appeared to Jacob and blessed him. He says your name will not always be called Jacob but Israel will be your name and the land that I gave to Abraham and Isaac I will give to you and to your offspring after you I will give the land. When the children of Israel are later enslaved in Egypt God says to Moses to redeem them and in Exodus chapter 3 verse 8 God says I will come down to rescue them from the hand of Egypt and to bring them up from that land to a good and spacious land to a land flowing with milk and honey. Most of the narrative of the rest of the five books of Moses, the books of Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy basically focuses on the journey of the children of Israel from Egypt to the promised land. That is the basic narrative of the five books of Moses. Tragically Moses is not allowed to enter the land at the end of his life. God allowed him to look at the land from the top of Mount Nevo. The five books of Moses ends with God poignantly telling Moses in Deuteronomy chapter 34 verse 4 this is the land that I swore to Abraham to Isaac and to Jacob saying I will give it to your descendants. The rest of the Bible starting with the next book of Joshua and the rest of Jewish history after the completion of the Bible is the story of the children of Israel coming into the land settling the land being exiled from the land after the first temples destroyed about 400 BCE returning from exile once again settling the land and then being exiled once again when the Romans destroyed the second temple in the year 70 and ultimately the modern story of our return to the land of Israel in 19th and 20th centuries after almost 2,000 years of exile. I should point out by the way that we were never fully exiled from the land. Throughout our history there are always some Jewish people living in the land of Israel. Now we understand that God chose the land of Israel for his chosen nation but what is so special about this land? We know that when God told Moses that he wouldn't go into the land Moses did not just acquiesce. In Deuteronomy chapter 3 verses 23 and 25 we're told Moses says I beseeched God at that time saying let me pass through and see the good land and according to our sages Moses prayed 515 prayers to be able to go into the land of Israel Rabbi Nathan Shapiro was the chief rabbi of Krakow and he was born in 1591 one of the greatest cabalists in Poland at that time. He wrote a work called Megaleh Amukot revealing of profound matters or the revelation of profound matters and in this book what he does is he explores 252 different arguments used by Moses to explain why he craved to enter into the land of Israel. Obviously this is a very special land. We're not going to go through all 252 arguments tonight but we'll go through some of them. The Talmud the Babylonian Talmud in tractate Sota 14a explores one of the most significant aspects of the land of Israel. Rabbi Simlai expounded why did Moses our teacher desire to enter the land of Israel? What was so important about going into the land of Israel? And the Talmud asks rhetorically did he want to eat of its fruits or be satisfied with its goodness? Was Moses simply interested in some of the physical bounty of the land of Israel? And the Talmud answers surely not but this is what Moses said. Israel was given many mitzvot many commandments that can only be fulfilled in the land of Israel. Moses said I want to enter the land of Israel so that I could be I should be able to fulfill all of those commandments. One of the aspects of Israel that is most significant is that it's only in the land of Israel that we are able to fulfill the entirety of the Torah. For example there are 58 agricultural laws that apply specifically to the land of Israel that don't apply to living outside of Israel. And there are many other laws that apply specifically to the land of Israel the commandment to appoint a king for the Jewish nation all the laws that surround the Jewish army many many other laws we are able to observe only if we're living in the land of Israel. I should point out that according to Nachmanides by the way and several other sources all commandments were given primarily and specifically to be observed in the land of Israel. It's not just that there are specific commandments like the agricultural laws of the sabbatical year or the different tithes that apply to the land of Israel specifically. Nachmanides says that even putting on philin even observing Shabbat were specifically given to the Jewish people so they could observe those commandments in the land of Israel and Nachmanides maintains that outside of Israel it's not a full commandment we're only keeping it outside of Israel as practice so that we won't forget how to do these commandments so we can go back to Israel and ultimately keep them fully. Outside of Israel it's like training wheels or like being in basic training in the army. It's not the real thing outside of Israel. Now this view is not universally accepted but we should realize that this view is an important view and it says something about the dimensions of what makes the land of Israel special. Another issue that's discussed in our literature is the special and intrinsic holiness of the land of Israel a unique holiness that applies specifically to that land. According to the Kuzari or B'yuhudah levi in the Kuzari when Cain was punished by God to wander the earth after he killed his brother Abel and the verse says that Cain went out from before the Lord. B'yuhudah levi says this means that he was banished from the land of Israel and later when the prophet Jonah left the land of Israel the bible describes it as a flight away from God it says in the book of Jonah chapter one verse three and Jonah arose to flee to Tarshish from before Hashem and so according to Yudah levi being in Israel is considered to be being before Hashem. In Israel you are living in the presence of God outside of Israel you are not before God. So even though the entire world belongs to God only the land of Israel specifically is referred to as God's land. We see that many times in the bible for example the prophet Joel in chapter four verse two God says Israel is my land. He doesn't describe Monsi or Toronto as my land. To go a little bit deeper according to Kabbalistic teaching the special holiness associated with the land of Israel is connected to the process through which the world itself was created. When anything is created it results in a separation and a distance from its creator for example before the birth of a fetus it is part of its mother it's nourished by the mother it is literally at one with the mother. At birth the infant becomes a separate being from the mother. Similarly when an artisan makes something it becomes an object separate from the imagination of the artist or the craftsman. At first it is an idea that is contained within the imagination of the artist but then the painting or the statue the bust becomes a distinct object separate from its maker. According to the Svasemes who was a brilliant Hasidic master when God created the world the world became separated from God and that's why the bible begins Bereishit Barah Bereishit in the beginning Barah created and the Svasemes points out that the word Barah contains the word Bar. The word Bar means outside. So he reads this phrase Bereishit Barah as in the beginning something became outside or separate from God. The Kabbalists explain that the physical world is too fragile to contain God's essence. It would be like plugging a vacuum cleaner directly into a nuclear power plant. Don't try that at home. So the Kabbalists explain that to enable God to be present or manifest in our world his holiness went through a series of separations in order to so to speak dilute his holiness like a series of step down generators and transformers that will finally enable us to plug our computer into a wall socket without frying its insides. Now each of these spiritual layers that descend one after the other that devolve from one layer above it to a layer below it as you go from one layer to the next layer it becomes further distanced from the creator and therefore it contains a decreased intensity of the spiritual. After an incredible number of these devolved layers God's essence was finally diluted to the point where physical matter could come into existence. We see this detachment and separateness in the Hebrew word for the word world. In the Hebrew world is olam and olam means hidden or concealed because ultimately the creator is concealed in the world we inhabit. We don't see God. We don't immediately sense his presence in a visceral way like you can see the person next to you here tonight. The creator is concealed in this world. Again if God was not concealed the world couldn't handle his presence. For example we wouldn't have free will. You wouldn't have free will if God's presence was immediately evident to you. You would not be able to steal something. You would not be able to violate his will. His presence would overwhelm us and so this process of stepping down God's presence to become less and less and less intense and holy and spiritual to allow it to finally become part of our world allowed us to be human beings. We don't experience God's reality full force but we experience him in a greatly diluted and reduced manner. It's actually not possible to perceive God's presence unless either you are very sensitive to spirituality or you work very hard at trying to perceive his presence. Otherwise it's not going to be possible. According to our mystical literature the land of Israel was the first place to devolve from the last entirely spiritual layer that preceded it. So again there were a series of layers many many many layers going from God all the way down less and less and less spiritual until that final layer that allowed the physical world to emanate and that first emanation of the physical world from the spiritual was the land of Israel. The rest of the earth devolved into places of less spirituality less dense spirituality than land of Israel. So this is what is meant when we learn that Israel is closer to God and has a denser spirituality than other places. That's what it means when it says when you're in Israel you are in the presence of God. The Svasemmes provides an example to illustrate this. One of the 613 commandments we have is to thank God for our food after we've eaten the meal. It's one of the commandments of the Torah. The source for this commandment is found in the book of Deuteronomy chapter 8 and I'm going to read you the source. For Hashem your God is bringing you to a good land a land with streams of water a land of wheat barley grape fig and pomegranate a land of oil olives and date honey a land where you will eat bread without poverty you will lack nothing there you will eat and you will be satisfied and bless Hashem your God for the good land that he gave you. That's chapter 8 verses 7 through 10. Now the Svasemmes points out that what's unusual about this passage is that the Torah does not use an imperative form for you shall bless. It's not put into a command form that you shall bless as a commandment. It uses rather the future form merely observing that indeed you will bless. It's almost a prediction not a commandment and the Svasemmes explains that this commandment comes as we saw in the context of a passage describing the magnificence of the land of Israel. Therefore as a place where God's presence is palpable and more accessible and more easily experienced the Torah is basically saying that you will undoubtedly come to bless God for your food on your own without the need of an explicit commandment. You won't need to be commanded because living in Israel you will feel God's presence and you understand intuitively that you should thank him for your food. Another example of the special spiritual nature of the land of Israel is that it is specifically and specially suited as a place that cultivates prophecy. According to Abiodah Levy in the Kusari, different places in the world are suitable to produce certain crops more than others. We know there are certain places in the world that are really great for producing grape wine or grapes or olives. Not everything grows equally all over the world and so because of Israel's connection to God and intense spirituality what it produces is prophecy and prophets and he observes that virtually every single prophet in our history either lived in Israel or prophesied about Israel. The Torah states that God's involvement with the land of Israel is more intense than elsewhere. God's involvement with Israel is different than his involvement with other places in the world. In Deuteronomy chapter 11 verse 12 it says Israel is a land that Hashem your God scrutinizes constantly. The eyes of Hashem your God are always upon it from the beginning of the year until the end of the year. According to Moshe Chaim Lutzato the Ramchal in his book Derech Hashem, The Way of God, what this means is that God oversees the rest of the world with a general providence and God supervises the rest of the world by delegating that supervision to different angelic forces. But the land of Israel God supervises directly without delegating it to any other power in the world. So God's providence over the land of Israel is direct unmodified supervision. Another manifestation of God's connection to the land of Israel is that the land of Israel is extremely sensitive to the behavior of those people living there. The Torah says in a number of places that if we violate the moral and spiritual laws of the Torah the land itself will vomit us out in the same way that if you eat food that is not agreeable to you and it's not good for you your stomach will regurgitate it so that the food will not harm your body. So in the same way we're told that the land of Israel is a very sensitive land. The land itself cannot tolerate certain moral and spiritual sins and if we violate those standards the land itself will regurgitate us, will vomit us out. The Bible uses very colorful language there but on purpose. Now these are just a few of the numerous illustrations of the special nature of the land of Israel. I'll mention just one more. Our sages teach that in the Talmud the air and the atmosphere of Israel itself makes one wise. Just being in Israel and imbibing the atmosphere and the air of Israel makes you wise and that's why the Talmud teaches that the land of Israel is the prime place for studying the Torah. As our sages say there is no Torah like the Torah of the land of Israel. Land of Israel is not just the place where each individual Jew is able to actualize their individual potential but it's the vehicle chosen by God to actualize the potential of the chosen people. When we go back to the beginning of our national story we read before in Genesis chapter 12. God did not just choose Abraham to be a separate nation. At the very beginning of our history God says to Abraham that you're being chosen for a purpose. God says to Abraham that you will become a blessing and that the entire earth will be blessed by you. God says to us, to our people immediately, the purpose you are being chosen for is to bring blessing to the rest of the world. Later on before the Torah is given, on Mount Sinai in Exodus chapter 19 verse 6, God tells the Jewish people you are to be a Mamlechet Kohanim ve Goi Kadoosh. You people are to be a kingdom of priests and a holy nation just as among the Jewish people the priests, the Kohanim are the teachers. So to God says to the entire people of Israel you are to be priests, teachers, to the rest of the world. The Torah itself is given in the desert in a public place that's ownerless. It wasn't given in the land of Israel where you would think maybe that's what a Torah should have been given in the land of Israel but no. The Torah is specifically given in an ownerless place in a desert to teach us that it is relevant to the entire world and not just to the Jewish people. And before entering the land of Israel Moses is told to inscribe the Torah on large stones. In Deuteronomy chapter 27 verse 8 he's told to inscribe these words of the Torah Be'erhete very clearly. And the Talmud teaches in Traktate Sota 35b that means that you're to translate the Torah into 70 languages for the 70 nations of the world. Every nation has some relevance to the Torah. The prophet Isaiah teaches us in chapter 2 verse 3 Kimetsion Tetsetorah with Devar Hashem and Yerushalayim because Adam's Zion will go forth the Torah. It's going forth to the rest of the world. And the word of Hashem from Jerusalem. Famously Isaiah teaches in chapter 42 verse 6 and 49 verse 6 that you Israel are to be and or Lagoyim a light unto the nations of the world. This is the incredibly vital mission that God has chosen for the Jewish people. And the land of Israel is the only place in the world where we can create an entire society according to the Torah dimensions. In Israel the language is the language of the Torah. The calendar is a Jewish calendar. The space of Israel itself is soaked in Jewish history and Jewish consciousness. In Israel we can build a model society to model the values of the Torah. Where our government, our economy, our military, our culture can be run according to Torah values. We can't do that in the exile. The vision of the prophets is that through a robust Jewish society based upon the Torah living in our homeland we will make the world itself a garden of Eden once again. Isaiah chapter 60 says that one day the entire world will come to your light. We're to be a light to the nations and the Bible never tells us to shine the light into the eyes of the nations. We're simply to be a light but the God promises that one day the world will get it. One day the world will learn but it's dependent upon us getting our act together and living according to the values of the Torah in our homeland. The prophet Zechariah teaches in chapter 8 verse 23 that in the future 10 people from each nation in the world are going to grab whole of the corners of a garment of a Jewish person and say we want to come with you. We want to follow you because we've heard that God is with you. The great promise of the Bible is that our national redemption will begin with the in-gathering of our exiles. For almost 2000 years our people have been separated from the land of Israel. The book of Deuteronomy chapter 30 itself in the five books of Moses speaks about the return of the people of Israel to the land of Israel. Incredibly there's a secret hidden in this chapter. According to Kabbalistic teaching every verse of the Bible corresponds to a year in history. So the first verse of the Bible corresponds to the first year of history. The one thousandth verse of the Bible corresponds to year number one thousand in history. The five thousandth verse in the Bible corresponds to year five thousand. Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 3 is the five thousand seven hundred and eighth verse in the Bible. The year five thousand seven hundred eight in the Hebrew calendar was the equivalent of the secular year 1948. So that passage in Deuteronomy chapter 30 verse 3 speaks about 1948. And if you look up that verse it speaks about God regathering his nation to their land from all over the world where we were scattered. And there are many many secrets and clues and hints in our literature specifically pointing to this year of 1948. The Bible says that when we are out of our land the land will be barren and it will not produce for those who occupy it. It's incredible that we know that Israel was incredibly fertile when we were there. Josephus speaks about what an incredibly productive and fertile land it was. And we know that once we left Israel after the Romans expelled us the land was basically barren. We have a report from Mark Twain that when he went to visit Israel in his days he reports the land was depressingly barren and empty of virtually everything. And yet based upon a passage in the book of Ezekiel chapter 36 verses 8 through 10 our sages teach that when the Jewish people return to their homeland the land will once again become fertile and productive. Our sages teach that one of the clearest signs of the redemption of our people will be when the land begins to flourish once again. And we see with total clarity that this has certainly been the case dramatically since our people have returned to the land of Israel in the 20th century. Anyone that just looks at what's been happening in that land in not just agriculture in incredibly different ways in science in numerous different fields Israel has become as we call it the start-up nation incredibly productive. I want to conclude tonight by revisiting the commentary of Rashi with which we began. We're going to read this commentary by Rashi in its entirety. Rashi's comment to the first verse in the bible Genesis chapter one verse one Ammar Rabbi Yitzchak Rabbi Yitzchak said The Torah really should have only begun from the passage giving us the commandment to sanctify the new moon that it was the first commandment given to the people of Israel. And why did the Torah begin with the account of creation? So Rabbi Yitzchak explains it was in order to recount to his nation his great power the power of his deeds To give to them the inheritance of the nations that's a verse in the book of Psalms chapter 111 That if the nations of the world will say Le Yisrael to the people of Israel Le Stim Atem, you are robbers, you're thieves She kavashtem artsot shivagoyim that you conquered the land of the seven nations. This is the exact same accusation that we're accused of today. The land does not belong to us we stole the land so the answer will be Haim Omrimlehem they will say to them The entire world belongs to the Almighty He created it and he gave it to those who were fitting in his eyes. Beertsono Natana Lehem in his will it was his will to give it to them or Beertsono Natla Mehem and Natna Lanu and it was his will it was his desire to take it from them and to give it to us Bottom line what the answer is to the accusation that we stole the land is no the owner of the land God gave it to us that is how this Rashi is normally read but I want to share with you an alternative reading which I think is very important for all of us this is from a safe for a book called Elahadvorim by Rabbi Slesinger in Israel and he raises a very simple question he says when you think about it what kind of answer is this to the world do you think that today an ambassador of statesmen from Israel is going to walk into the UN and quote Genesis one one and the whole world's going to go oh we didn't realize Genesis one one we'll stop bothering you or Slesinger suggests that that's not really the message of this Rashi he says this Rashi this commentary by Rabbi Yitzchak is not a response to the nations of the world he explains this Rashi based upon a verse later on in Genesis in the story of Adam and Eve and the snake in the garden of Eden where the snake says to Eve you're not going to die if you eat from the fruit of the tree and it's an obvious question how in the world does the snake have the chutzpah to say to Eve you're not going to die God told Adam and Eve if you eat from that tree you're going to die I mean you can say many things but you can't speak nonsense so if Adam and Eve were told to their faces directly by God if you eat from that tree of knowledge of good and evil you're going to die how in the world does the snake have the gall to just say to them no you're not going to die so he answered this question based upon a teaching from the Gona Vilna the Vilna Gona the Vilna Gona sites a verse later on in the story of Cain and Abel where after killing his brother Abel God says to Cain that if you do well that's good and if not sin will crouch at the door at your doorway sin will be crouching to pounce and the Vilna Gona explains the following it's impossible for any person to do the wrong thing if they are thinking clearly and if they have clarity he says the problem with Eve was that when the snake asked her isn't it true that you're not supposed to eat the fruit in the trees of the garden and Eve says no we can eat all the trees in the garden except if we eat from this tree in the middle of the garden God says you shouldn't eat it pen tamut lest you die lest you die almost perhaps you will die maybe you'll die and at that moment the snake had an opening because as the Vilna Gona explains lapetach if you give it an opening if you open the door chatat rovet sin is going to go right in and that was the opening that Eve gave to the snake God told her directly you will surely die but she says to the snake perhaps we'll die the clarity was lost and now it became not so clear and so the snake was able to come in and say you're not going to die if you eat from the tree and so Rosalina suggests that this is what's going on in this Rashi it's not a concern about what the nations of the world are going to accuse us of this Rashi is addressed to ourselves we the people of Israel who begin to doubt and question whether we ourselves have a right to be in the land of Israel and that's why the Rashi begins by saying this verse from Psalms it was in order to teach his people God's people the power of his deeds not to teach the rest of the world and that's why according to Schlesinger's reading this Rashi this is how it works that if the nations of the world say to Israel you are robbers you conquered the land of the seven nations listen carefully now this is Rashi's words haim omrim lahem those jews who are certain of our right to the land of Israel will say to other jews who are not so certain and who question it we're going to say to them the whole world belongs to God hubraah he created it he gave it to those who were appropriate in his eyes now listen carefully it was his will to give it to them now if this was an address to the nations of the world if this was an answer to the nations of the world it should have said it was God's will to give it to you and then God took it from you and gave it to us but that's not what it says here it says that really they are among Israel people who are clear about our right to the land and we are addressing those people who are questioning our right and we're going to say to them that God gave the land to them to the nations of the world ubertsono and it was his will to take it mayhem from them not to take it from you it's not addressing the nations it was God's will to take it from them from the nation speaking about them not speaking to them venas nalano and he gave it to us so i believe that for us as a people today in the world to exist with any kind of strength we have to have a moral clarity we have to have a spiritual clarity we cannot go about our lives questioning and wondering and second guessing ourselves do we really belong there is this land really ours i believe it's important number one to understand what is special about the land of israel what makes it unique what makes it holy and to understand that ultimately our right and claim to the land of israel is simply because the creator of every molecule of existence very clearly as we went through the verses in the bible bequeath this land as an internally inheritance to the people of israel i want to encourage all of us to become clear about this and again i want to encourage all of us to always be sensitive to that dissonance that rabbi utah levy was sensitive to even though he was living a very comfortable life in spain a very comfortable life he understood that that was not his place and that living in the exile is not really the place for any jew and that we may not all be able to go back tomorrow but to realize that we do belong there and that god willing ultimately we will all make it there one day