By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron
בס"ד
לשכנו תדרשו
Uniting with the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land
"כִּי מֵרֹאשׁ צֻרִים אֶרְאֶנּוּ וּמִגְּבָעוֹת אֲשׁוּרֶנּוּ הֶן עָם לְבָדָד יִשְׁכֹּן וּבַגּוֹיִם לֹא יִתְחַשָּׁב"
"You are One, and Your Name is One, and who is like Your People Israel, one people in the Land." It is on our holiest day, Shabbat, and on its highest spiritual height, the Minha prayer, that we proclaim these words, proclaiming our tremendous "oneness" with HaShem - just as He is One, we, the People of God, are ultimately united with and by Him.
It is when our People are in the Holy Land, united with and by the Holy Presence therein, that we will truly express our great Godly potential, so much so that in the future the righteous will be called in the Name of God (in addition to MaShiah and Jerusalem - Baba Batra 75b). Indeed, the term used for dwelling in the Land in our title quote is "yishkon" - strongly connected, by our Sages, with the term Shechina, as we showed in parshat Toldos by the Midrash on the commandment on Yitzhak to dwell - "shechon" - in the Land - to revive the power of the Shechina within it.
Our title quote also alludes, according to our Sages, to our Patriarchs and Matriarchs, who were the forerunners in reviving the power of the Shechina (Pesikta, 1). Thus, according to our Sages, our title quote should be interpreted as follows: "For from the days of the Patriarchs ("heights of cliffs") I shall see them, and from the days of the Matriarchs ("hills") I shall gaze upon them, surely they are a People that will dwell ("and 'revive' the Shechina) alone, and will not be considered (in the same status) as other nations".
These words are not said by the lovers of Israel, and not even from the greatest of Prophets, Moshe, but rather are delivered from the mouth of one of Israel's greatest foes, Bilam (acc. to Midrash he advised Pharoh to kill all Jewish males), a matter that highlights that the praises of Israel in this week's parsha cannot be even mistaken as stemming from anything close to nationalistic pride, but rather from sole Divine Truth.
That said, what is the significance of Israel being "alone" in the Land, and to be "considered apart from other nations"? Does this mean that other nations cannot live in the Land of Israel? To begin with, we definitely do see a halachic allowance of gentiles dwelling in the Land of Israel in the form of "residential converts" ("ger toshav" - to be differentiated from a "ger tzadek", a Jewish convert), who take on just a few basic obligations of citizenship, but remain gentiles.
That said, we see that the Torah, in its commandment "lo tehonem" (Deut. 7, 2), and Halacha, explaining this commandment, do give a certain validity to our title quote, not only as a future prophecy, but also as a viewpoint to be brought down in today's practice, to a certain extent. The term in Dvarim "lo tehonem" is interpreted by our Sages, and ultimately Halacha, to mean "not to give other nations 'anchorage' ("honem"="hania") in the Land" (A"Z 20a). This is the source for the Shulhan Aruch's (and Rambam's) ruling that: "one is not to sell to them (gentiles) houses or fields in the Land of Israel" (Yorah Deah 151, 8 - a competent posek should be consulted in regard to practice).
This said, what meaning can we gather from the complexity of the laws regarding gentile "residential converts" and the prohibition of selling the Land to gentiles? Isaiah (62, 5) compares our People to a husband and the Holy Land to a wife. Just as in regard to husband and wife intimate union (see Isaiah) is only achieved by the absence of other beings in their midst, so too the full connection of our People to the Land is only achieved by full-undivided and committed union between our People and the Land. Thus, just as the Shechina rests between husband and wife, so too the Shechina rests between the People and the Holy Land.
However, this union is primarily established by the commitment of settling the Land in the form of ownership. Therefore, the allowance of other nations to be present in the Land without ownership is not necessarily considered a disruption of this intimate union. Hebron, by its very name, incorporates this union. By connecting to Hebron, we unite with the Land, we unite our People through the Land and our common roots, we unite with the "heights of cliffs", our holy Patriarchs who 'revived' the Shechina in the Land, we become one with the One and Only Unique Holy One. "Shema Yisrael, HaShem Eloheinu, HaShem Ehad".
Real Stories from the Holy Land #23: "We were in need of a light-weight stroller for our infant, who had "graduated" from her heavy-weight baby-carriage. I prayed to HaShem that He provide us with such a stroller. Shortly after praying, I found an operating light-weight stroller next to the dumpster, for the first time in a numbers of years."
