from the heart of jerusalem

Taking charge of ourselves, and our environment

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I remember that ride, passing Agam Karun (Karun reservoir) and then the road below the Beaufort fortress, imagining what that would have been like if the PLO still controlled that high ground.

Passing through Marja’oun and getting close to the border, you could taste; home was that close. There was no shortage of stories of convoys being ambushed on this road and we were obvious targets in open safari trucks with no armor. Once you’ve been through such an ambush you no longer focus on the beautiful scenery of Lebanon; every tree could be cover, every turn could have something nasty waiting around the bend.

But when you crossed over the border and drove the last few kilometers into Kiriat Shmoneh, helmets came off, flak vests were torn open and the sound of Velcro openings filled the air. Heading to the central bus station in Kiriat Shmoneh, we’d pass an intersection which came to be known as Tzomet Hasaftot, or just saftot (grandmothers), named for the elderly women who would stand there waiting with piles of free Baguette sandwiches and drinks for the soldiers heading home. It was a simple act of appreciation but it always meant the world to me; I got to recognize a few of their faces after a while and I still remember, after a particularly rough few weeks when we finally got out for a long weekend, one of the guys engulfing one of the saftot in a massive hug and lifting her up in the air.

It’s hard to explain what it felt like, to be back home, back in the place where you belong. But to this day, there is a feeling for me when I land back in Israel and get in the car and drive through the beautiful Judean hills home, of where I belong. 

What is it about a particular place that makes it so powerful?

This week in parshat Vayera we are introduced to a powerful idea by no less than Avraham himself. It’s hidden in the details of the powerful stories we read this week and we might miss it, which is perhaps why the Talmud takes pains to point it out. 

Avraham has challenged no less than G-d Himself to save Sodom (Bereishit 18), but G-d has decreed that a society based on such evil must be destroyed, and finally (ibid. 18:33) Avraham “returns to his place.”

The next day, when G-d prepares to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, Avraham awakens early (the word used in the Torah, “vayashkem” implies a sense of mission and purpose) and again, “returns to the place where he stood before.” 

The Talmud tells us (Berachot 6b) that from this moment we learn the halacha that a person should always pray in a set place, a makom kavua. In fact, Rav Chelbo quotes Rav Huna who says that whoever has a set place for his prayers is considered to be a true student of Avraham, and when he leaves this world it will be said of him that he is humble and pious.

What is so significant about the place where a person prays? 

I am indebted to Rav Dovidl Weinberg, who teaches at yeshivat Orayta and who introduced me to the Shaarei Orah who has a magnificent idea on this topic.

The Mishna in Pirkei Avot (5:19) clearly contrasts Avraham with wicked Balaam. Whoever is humble and generous (literally “with a good eye”), says the Mishna, is a student of Avraham, and whoever is arrogant and stingy or with a negative perception, is a student of the wicked Balaam. The antithesis of Avraham is the way of Balaam.

Isn’t it interesting, says the Shaarei Orah, that when Balaam sets out to curse the Jewish people (Bamidbar 22-23), every time he fails, he changes his place. Indeed, Balak (ibid. 23:13) exhorts him to follow him to a “different place” from which to curse the Jewish people and spiritually defeat us. 

Again and again, Balaam changes his place to try and achieve his aims and yet, again and again, he fails. The implication is that Balaam’s failure is not attributed to who Balaam is, but rather to where he is. In fact, at the beginning of that story there is a tension between the messengers of the Moabite King Balak and Balaam precisely because Balak wants Balaam to come to a place where he can curse Israel and Balaam is not sure he can or should go. It never occurs to those wicked people that their failure is the result of their wickedness, they simply assume it is because they are in the wrong place. This is the classic perception of blaming the ills of society on the environment.

Avraham on the other hand, goes back to the same place to pray yet again, knowing he had failed there the day before (Sodom would still be destroyed). It is not where Avraham is, but who Avraham is that will make the difference.

To be sure, environment is a powerful influence and Jewish tradition teaches (and Maimonides rules halachically in Hilchot Deot, the laws of character traits) that a person must distance him or herself from a negative environment. But that does not mean we can ever lay the blame totally on the environment.

Once we know that we cannot place the onus entirely on the environment we are challenged nonetheless to create an environment that will be a positive environment.

Way back when we are created, the first thing G-d does is place us in the Garden of Eden (Bereishit 2; 8 and 15), an environment conducive to spiritual growth.

Yet it does not work, we make the colossal mistake of eating from the Tree against G-d’s wishes and must leave Eden. Eventually, we will build a Temple twice in an attempt to recreate that spiritually conducive environment. (We, not G-d, had to build it, just as the second Tablets were formed by man.)

W

e cannot completely rely on our environment but must nonetheless work to create a health environment. Perhaps that is why coming home to Israel is so special: nowhere else in the world is there a Jewish environment more conducive to growth than in Israel, both because of the history and energy imbued in this place by our holy ancestors long ago, as well as the fact that Israel is an entire country whose society and standing are determined by the Jewish people.

When the Jews began coming back home to Israel in the nineteenth century it was anything but an objectively wonderful place to live. As Mark Twain pointed out in a famous article he wrote for Harper’s magazine after visiting Israel at the time, “it was a barren place better suited to wild beasts and marauders, rather than habitation by civilized man.”

But we were never meant receive a place, we were always meant to be partners in building it; so, with G-d’s help, the desert of Palestine has been transformed into the modern State of Israel which is a veritable Garden of Eden in ifulfillment of the verse from Isaiah:

“Va’yasem Midbara ke’Eden” — There will come a time when the desert will be transformed into the Garden of Eden.” 

Perhaps one day soon the entire Jewish people will realize there is nowhere else that is truly home, and we will succeed at long last in building together a model of what a healthy society can be, as a model for a better world.

Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem.

Contact Rabbi Binny Freedman: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com