Parshat Korach
By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron
בס"ד
לשכנו תדרשו
"Fighting the Case" for the Shechina in Our Holy Land
""וַאֲנִי הִנֵּה נָתַתִּי לְךָ אֶת מִשְׁמֶרֶת תְּרוּמֹתָי... לְךָ נְתַתִּים לְמָשְׁחָה וּלְבָנֶיךָ לְחָק עוֹלָם:" (במדבר, יח, ח)
"Please, my Beloved, reveal Yourself and spread upon me the shelter of Your peace. Illuminate the Land with Your Glory that we may rejoice and be glad with You. Hasten, show Your love, for the time has come, and show us grace as days of old" ("Yedid Nefesh").
When HaShem's "Glory", the Holy Presence, is revealed to us in our Holy Land, that is the greatest joy of all. So too, the gifts of Teruma to the Cohanim are granted by HaShem with joy, as our Sages (Sifrei Zuta) learn from our title quote that the word "hineh" always denotes joy, as in "hineh (Behold), he (Aharon) comes out before you and shall see you and rejoice in his heart" (Ex. 4, 14).
Indeed, the Holy Land is the Land of Joy with the Shechina (as the Torah explicitly says that in Exile God will give the people a "spirit of sadness" (Deut. 28, 65)), and the mitzvah of Teruma, unique to the Holy Land, is given with joy. How is teruma unique to the Land of Israel? The laws of Teruma and Maaser in Shulhan Aruch Yoreh Deah 331 open up as follows: "Trumot and Maasrot are only practiced by Torah ordination in the Land of Israel... Today, even areas (in the Land) settled by those who returned from Babylon even in the time of Ezra are not liable for trumot and maasrot on a Biblical level, but only on a rabbinic level, for it says, "when you (plural) come (to the Land)" - "when you come" - as a group whole, and not individuals as it was in the time of Ezra (when the majority of the Jewish People did not return to the Land)".
Let us remember too that this mitzvah of teruma in this week's parsha comes in context of showing the special status of the Cohanic rite despite the claims of Korah and his followers. Let us also remember that one of Korah's primary claims, aside from the demand to obliterate the Cohanic rite, was also against the Holy Land: "it is not enough that you have taken us away from a land flowing with milk and honey (Egypt)... and you have not even brought us to a land of milk and honey" (Num. 16, 13-14).
Just as Korah and his followers were mistaken to think that we can obliterate levels of holiness with the claim of equalizing all as "all are holy", so too Korah failed to understand the unique level of holiness in regard to the Holy Land, equating "the flowing of milk and honey" both to the Land of Israel and Egypt. Therefore, it seems that nothing is more befitting to rectify this mistake as HaShem's subsequent command to give the Teruma to the special Cohanic rite and also to do so specifically in the Holy Land.
As we mentioned last week, it takes courage and bravery to "fight the case" against those who talk against the Holy Land and the settlement of our People therein. From where do we instill ourselves with the courage to speak forth? It is by following in the footsteps of Kaleb, it is by connecting to Hebron and its spirit, that we instill ourselves and others to "fight the case" for the Shechina in our Holy Land.
Real Stories from the Holy Land #21: "One evening, while walking outside, I suddenly started to ponder cases in which a sibling intervenes in a husband-wife relationship. When I returned home it "turns out" that at the same time I was thinking those thoughts, my brother-in-law called my wife, intervening in our relationship, something he hasn't done for numbers of years (this is not to encourage such intervention)."
|
