Parsha Lech Lecha 5766: Aliyah — To The Jewish Big Leagues
By Moshe Burt
“Hashem said to Avram, Go for yourself from your land … to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation…” (Breish’t, Perek 12, posukim 1 & 2) I call this the “Aliyah Parsha.”
Rashi writes on the posukim, “For your benefit and good. It is there that I will make you a great nation …” (Rashi on Breish’t, Perek 12, posuk 1)
Sefat Emet asks, “if G’d himself promised … that the move would be for his good and his benefit, why should this have been such a great test?” It seems that it was exactly because of Hashem’s promise to him that the test was of greater magnitude because when Avram actually went, he did so “as Hashem had spoken to him.” (Breish’t Perek 12, posuk 4) “In other words, he went purely because he had been told to do so by G’d, without any intention of deriving any benefit from his actions. The test … was whether, after all of these promises. he would still be able to fulfill G’d’s will without even the hint of any desire for any benefit for himself.” (Word and quotes attributed to Sefat Emet, Torah Gems, Aharon Yaakov Greenberg, Parsha Lech Lecha, pge 97)
I think back to a vort that I wrote about 4 years ago after visiting friends for a Hanukas HaBayit in the Old City. I had then been living in Eretz Yisrael for two years.
The family had returned home to Israel after a two year stay in the United States. That evening, many visitors came to wish the family success and happiness in their new abode in Israel. Individual visitors stood and spoke words of Torah relating to the Rabbi and his family and their sojourn in the United States and subsequent Aliyah.
One such visitor spoke words which were particularly poignant to me as I recalled that they mirrored similar words spoken to me early in my travels along the road to closeness with Hashem.
He spoke about the Mitzvah of Yishuv Eretz Yisrael (the importance of settling The Land of Israel) and equated different levels of Jews with those who love sports. There are sports fans who like to read accounts of a game in the newspaper. There are fans for whom the print of the sports section is not enough. These people want to watch their favorite sports events and teams on television or internet at every opportunity. There are fans for whom television or “the web” is not enough and who enjoy being at the stadium or arena to view the event in person. And finally, there are those whose love of the sport drives them to play — to be participants in the game.
A similar point was made to me, now some fourteen and a half years ago. After having attended a number of weekend or one-day “Discovery Programs” given at local sites by the Aish HaTorah Yeshiva, I decided to take the plunge — to start learning our history, traditions and laws in an Observant community. Shortly thereafter, I started coming into the Religious Community in Northeast Philadelphia for Shabbos once, then twice a month. In the summer of 1990, I made my move and became religious and Shabbos observant.
During one such Shabbos back in 1989, my host drew a similar equation. I was asked, are you a spectator — an observer or are you a player??
I always identified Jewishly and with Israel, and at 57 years old, I was actually born in the same month, within days of Israel’s Statehood. Unlike all of the previous generations of the dispersion of the Jews, I have never known a day in my life when there was not an Israel.
I have felt as one with my brethren in Israel and with the Land through the various wars, terrorist attacks, trials, tribulations and political machinations. Since my first visit to Israel made in February, 1975, I sought to come home to Israel to live. But lo, there are marital and child-rearing responsibilities, mortgage and debt responsibilities, often disagreements with one’s spouse who may not share the love and commitment to Our Land vs. day-to-day responsibilities of current residence — all of these responsibilities and difficulties obscure our will to come home. And in many cases, there is divorce, subsequent spousal support and child support responsibilities which make any attempt at Aliyah even more difficult. We find ourselves in a “vicious cycle”, locked “in a box” (as the Rav always says) of the responsibilities of day-to-day life in the nation in which we reside from which we seem not able to break out.
For many of us born in the “enlightened” 20th century, our grandparents emigrated from Eastern European dictatorships. The Jews of Eastern Europe held stubbornly to the uniqueness of our Religious/Spiritual/National purpose throughout the dispersion up to the turn of the 20th century. We, who were born in the 20th century were born in or resided in a land, a nation which “killed us with love.” Our first allegiance, we perceived, was to the nation of residence as was inculcated into our learning and our lives.
Therefore, the Jewish People’s unique status as a spiritual religion, culture and nation based on our divine legacy of the Land of Israel became subserviant to allegiance to the sovereignty of one’s residence. This allegiance to the land of one’s birth or residence necessarily meant that he must assimilate — melt into the mass of population, be like everyone else thereby losing his separate, distinct, multi-dimensional Jewish heritage lest he be seen as holding dual-loyalties.
I recall the story often told by Rabbi Moshe Ungar of Philadelphia about a criminal who has been imprisoned for many decades. In prison, he was assigned the task of turning a large wheel. Each day, through all of his waking hours, for all of the years of his imprisonment, he dutifully turned that wheel. After decades in prison, it was time for him to be set free. As the prisoner was about to exit the prison for the last time, the prison warden asked to show him the fruits of his labor. The warden took him to the spot on the opposite side of the wall from where the prisoner turned that wheel from morning until night. And there was…nothing! Our prisoner turned that wheel for years and years, morning until night and … nothing.
And so, in my case, I said at age 27, maybe by age 30, I’ll make Aliyah. And lo, age 30 came and went, as did age 40, and age 50 and I was still stateside. I was divorced for some 15 years, working the same job for the previous 12 years, had an apartment, a TV/VCR, an archaic old MAC SE-30 and a car. But what did I REALLY have besides a lot of temporary material things?? I was religious and attended Shul and Torah Shiurim (lectures) regularly. I had/have many friends. My adult children had, by then, moved to a different state, far from Philadelphia, with their Mom and her husband. My parents were in their 80’s, retired and living in Florida. What did I have in Philadelphia??
The Nationalist in me was heartsick as I watched Oslo unfold. I tried to do what I could from the US — pray a lot and find old, posul Sifrei Torah for repair and recycling to needy locations in Israel but felt as if I was accomplishing little. I even made 3 trips to Israel between 1995 and 1998. But I was not living there — I had not done my Yishuv Eretz Yisrael yet.
Our connection with G’d is strongest when we live in Israel where there a direct, unhindered connection to the divine presence. There are Torah commentators who say that the Mitzvah of Yishuv Eretz Yisroel is equal to all of the 613 Mitzvot. The commentator Rashi, who expounds on the words of Torah, says that performing Mitzvot in Galut is considered merely a rehearsal for performing them in Eretz Yisroel. In Israel, It’s the “Big Leagues”, “Showtime”, the “Real Deal”, the “Whole Enchilada” for performance of Mitzvot.
We recognize that things are not easy here; unwieldy, thoughtless, insensitive bureaucracies, a government lacking all truth and candor, low earnings, high taxation, a personal/business ethic where commitments such as employee salaries, business/personal financial obligations, etc. are often not fulfilled on time and often not for months or years later. These all lend to worsen the over-all economic morass.
But imagine, it’s the Big Game, the whole season’s on the line, 50,000 plus people, 100,000 eyes glued on the center of attraction with two gone, the bases jammed and a full-count on the other teams top slugger. Just as the sportsman’s passion is in the direct participation in the game, this Jew’s passion was/is for Eretz Yisrael, to be part of bringing about change, closeness to Torah, Torah ethic, expressing the solid, direct inseparable connection between Torah, the Jews, Eretz Yisrael and our source — HaShem. That very next Mitzvah might just be the one, the one that opens the floodgates to the Geula Shlaima and all of the good for Am Yehudi.
But, just as the guy in Triple-A Ball gets the call from the “Big Club”, In the summer, 1997, it was my time to get called up to the Big-Time, to come home. It was then that I got my Aliyah paperwork moving with the local Shaliach (Israel’s local Aliyah emissary). In March, 1999, I boarded the plane for Israel. And after 6 1/2 years and all of the trials, travails and self-inflicted national crises, I’m glad to be home and “in the game.”
Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, of Blessed Memory, beautifully expressed Yishuv Eretz Yisroel when he penned an English translation to the Hebrew prayer of “V’HaSheiv Kohanim” — “Restore the Kohanim to their service…” It reads in part, “Return again, return again, return to the Land of your soul. Return to who you are, return to what you are, return to where you are born and reborn again….”
May it be in this new year and beyond, that our brethren — the refugee families from Gush Katif and the Shomron as well as our dear brother, Jonathan Pollard are central in our thoughts, prayers, chassadim and actions.
B’Ezrat Hashem, may we soon know the day when Torah is the law of the land, when we pray thanks to Hashem for the Ge’ula Shlaima and for the restoration of our Brethren, expelled by the evil regime from Gush Katif and the Shomron towns to bigger and more beautiful homes and neighborhoods, Bati Knesset, Yeshivot in Gush Katif and the Shomron and only happiness and success for all time. May this abominable period of history called hitnatkut be as a bad dream. And may we soon see freedom and long life in Eretz Yisrael for Jonathan Pollard.
May we be zocha in this coming year take giant steps toward fulfilling Hashem’s blueprint of B’nai Yisrael as a Unique people — an Am Segula, not to be reckoned with as with “the nations.”
May we be zocha the Moshiach, the Ge’ula Shlaima, “Yom Hashem V’Kol HaGoyim”, the Ultimate Redemption, bim hay v’yameinu — speedily, in our time”, — Achshav, Chik Chuk, Meiyad, Etmol!!!
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Moshe Burt, an Oleh, is a commentator on news and events in Israel and Founder and Director of the Sefer Torah Recycling Network. He lives in Ramat Beit Shemesh.