From the Rebbetzin's Shabbat Table - Parashat Pinchas

Dear Friends,

The first time I dreamed of Eretz Yisrael was when one of my friends in Camp Emunah mentioned casually that a relative was going to visit the Land. I was fully aware of Israel’s existence, (both I and Israel were 16) but it still felt almost legendary. No one I knew had been there. I had learned about both its otherworldly sanctity and its very this-worldly difficulty. In the mid-60s, poverty and war were part of the backdrop when you thought about Israel, but so too was Eretz Yisrael, the land where Hashem’s focus is revealed from the beginning of time to the end of time. The day-to-day reality had features that you never consider mitzvot observed by the only people obligated to perform them, in a place where heaven and earth were meant to meet.

Conceptually, at that time, Israel and Eretz Yisrael lived in close, but separate compartments. In Camp Emunah (Chabad) and earlier when I summered in Camp Banot (Agudat Yisrael), any treats sold in the canteen that originated in Israel were understood to be unquestionably kosher. It was almost inconceivable that it could be otherwise. Many serious rabbis marched in Israel parades. Only as time went on did the gap between “Israel” and “Eretz Yisrael” become more and more painfully real, and did that assumption begin to shift.

I began to think.

I started with the Torah itself. The Land is mentioned again, and again, and again – promised to each of the Avot. It was a promise given even before Avraham had children: that his descendants would inherit the land. It is repeated to Moshe, and throughout the Torah. But the promise is never unconditional. It depends not only on the Giver, but on the receiver. In the Shema we say every day that the threat of expulsion is explicit and direct.

It is difficult to grasp why a land is so central to a way of life in which there are so many other mitzvot – tefillah, Torah study, chessed – all of which can be done anywhere.

It was deeply important to Rav Yehuda HaLevi. His poems are still read today, expressing longing for a land he only lived in briefly. He was killed on his way toward Eretz Yisrael – toward the Kotel. In the Kuzari, he explains that just as a plant requires sun, water, and soil to grow, so too the Jewish people exist within a spiritual ecology that includes Torah and mitzvot – but also includes soil, earth, and place: Eretz Yisrael itself.

The Maharal takes this idea further, explaining that it is built into the very structure of reality. The “order” that underlies reality includes the alignment of holiness with the physical world, and without connection to Eretz Yisrael something essential is missing. Exile, he suggests, is not a natural state, even though nothing may feel more natural to us.

Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch gives this vision a concrete expression. Judaism, he writes, is not confined to private belief or ritual life, but is meant to shape an entire civilization – its agriculture, its justice system, its social ethics, and its national rhythm. Such a vision requires a land in which a people can live as a collective, building a society infused with moral and spiritual purpose. The Land is therefore not a reward appended to the Torah, but the setting in which the Torah’s ideals unfold fully within the fabric of history.

Some taught that every nation has its proper place in the world, and that exile is not merely geographical displacement but a kind of incompleteness, like a tree uprooted from its soil. Others taught that there is something unique about this Land itself, that the relationship between Hashem and His people finds its fullest expression here. Whatever language they used, they all shared the same intuition: there is a connection between the Jewish people and this Land that is deeper than politics, economics, security, or even history.

Perhaps that is why the Torah uses the word “inheritance” so often. An inheritance is different from ownership. Ownership can be bought and sold.

This idea may help us understand the daughters of Tzelafchad. On the surface, they could have just found husbands from their own tribe and settled down to what they could have mistakenly called Real Life.

After all, their father died in the wilderness and left no sons. As the Jewish people prepared to enter the Land, these five women came to Moshe with a question: “Why should our father’s name disappear because he had no son?”

On the surface, they were asking about inheritance law. But our Sages understood that they were asking something much deeper. They loved the Land. They did not want their family’s place in the story of the Jewish people to disappear.

The generation of the spies asked, “Why should we enter the Land?”

The daughters of Tzelafchad asked, “How could we possibly be left out of it?”

Hashem’s response was extraordinary: “The daughters of Tzelafchad speak correctly.”

Perhaps they understood something that Jews have understood in one form or another ever since.

Our connection to this Land is not simply about where we live. It is about who we are.

Neither the Maharal nor Rav Hirsch were able to live in the Land, and Rav Yehuda HaLevi’s arrival remained an unfulfilled dream. For many of us, living here is still an unattainable vision. It is a mitzvah, but according to many poskim, not an obligation. What Banot Tzelafchad understood was that it is something one can want.

Sometimes, wanting is all you can do – and all Hashem asks of you.

May we all be worthy of touching the place inside ourselves where wanting is alive and real, wherever we are. And may the fasts we are about to begin, become like shovels – tools that clear away what blocks what is already beneath the surface.

If you want to dig a well, you need a shovel to remove the dirt that hides the water.

May all of us – those here and those still far away – come to feel more deeply that Hashem’s eyes are upon this Land from the beginning of time until its end, and may we find our way home.

Love, Tziporah

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