Our homeland is our heritage and legacy

Of all the unexpected visitors I have ever received, none even come close to the surprise I got in the summer of ‘94.

I was teaching a course on Jewish values deep in the mountains of Pennsylvania, at a camp called Moshava, near Indian Orchard. We were in the middle of an intense discussion on Jewish ethics, when I noticed three fellows standing at the entrance to the lodge. Their features were far- eastern; Chinese, it seemed, and they were standing patiently at the door, taking it all in.

You must understand, we were really in the middle of nowhere. The group of teenagers sitting before me was part of a very special group of kids who had been chosen to join a Jewish experience away from all the hustle of computers and cell-phones, television and stereos. I couldn’t imagine how these three fellows had ended up here, especially as they looked like tourists.

“Where are you from?” I asked.

“We come from Tibet, though we are living in Nepal right now.”

But what really shocked me was their next question:

“Are you Rabbi Freedman?” I was amazed. They were actually looking for me, in the wilderness, having arrived all the way from Tibet!

It transpired that they were followers of the Dalai Lama, who, along with 80,000 followers, had been forced to flee Tibet in the early 1950s, when the Chinese had taken over their country and destroyed the infrastructure of their Tibetan religion.

Recently, they had begun coming to terms with a new challenge. Having lived in exile for nearly fifty years, a new generation was now coming of age, who had grown up in India and never even seen the ‘old country’ of Tibet. So they were trying to figure out how to keep the dream of Tibet alive in the hearts of their children who had never seen, much less experienced, the homeland they still longed for.

So the Dalai Lama decided to consult the experts, and sent over 300 students all over the world to every major Jewish Organization to ask for help in learning how to respond to this dilemma. Who better to explain how to stay connected to a land in exile than a people that had managed to retain a dream over 2000 years, finally realizing their goal and coming home after nearly fifty generations?

Nearly sixty-five years ago, against all the odds, the State of Israel was born. After 2000 years of dreaming and wandering, the Jewish people were finally coming home.

So unlikely an event as was this, it shocked the world. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, with nearly seven million Jews dead and the major institutions of Judaism across Europe destroyed, the world-famous historian, Arnold Toynbee, wrote an article, entitled “the fossil,” explaining how the Jews, so long an aberration to all normal historical patterns, were finally falling prey to the normal course of human events. Throughout history, whenever a nation was conquered, it gradually disappeared as a separate entity, assimilating into the culture of the conquerors, or destroyed entirely against an unbending and mighty foe. Only the Jews, hounded and targeted by every major power in the history of the western world, refused to go quietly into the night….

Five years later, after the end of the War of Independence in Israel, Chaim Herzog, who would later become the President of the State of Israel, wrote a response entitled: “The Fossil Lives.”

Toynbee, to be fair, was not wrong. If you had told a Jew in the barracks of Buchenwald in 1945 that three years later he would be dancing in the streets of a new State of Israel, he would have said you were mad. But there we were, dancing….

What is, in the end, the secret of our survival? How is it, after so long, that we can walk once again the ancient cobblestones of the Old City of Jerusalem, or climb the fortress of Masada, still hearing the echoes of prayers offered so long ago, while the Roman Empire has been dust for fifteen centuries?

There is an exchange in this week’s portion Va’Yechi, which is as powerful as it is puzzling, and which may contain the secret of Jewish survival.

“Yisrael (Yaakov)’s days were numbered, and he begins his preparations for death.”

Interestingly, this is the first instance we have in the Torah of someone sensing they are near death. And what is Yaakov’s wish prior to his death? He wants a promise from his beloved son Joseph, that he will not be buried in Egypt, but rather, that his body will be returned for burial in the land of his fathers.

But if the essence in Judaism is not the body, but the soul, what does it matter where the body is buried when it is, in the end, only temporary, and survived by the spirit?

This request of Yaakov makes such an impression on Joseph that he, too, in the final words of the book of Genesis (50:24), swears his brothers to perform the same kindness for him, and to one day not forget his bones in Egypt when they return home.

Why this pre-occupation with death and burial? And why is this so important that it is actually the concluding topic of the entire book of Genesis?

What really, is burial? And why must burial be in the ground, in the land itself?

Indeed, in the beginning of everything (Genesis 3:19), the last words G-d tells Adam before exiling him from the Garden of Eden, are:

“Me’Afar Atah, Ve’El Afar Tashuv”;

“You are from the earth, and you will return to the earth”

Why this pre-occupation with earth, with land?

Interestingly, the first challenge G-d ever gives a Jew is his exhortation to Abraham:

‘Go… to the Land that I will show you…’ (12:1)

Why, in order for Abraham to achieve his mission, did it matter where he was? One would have expected that what was really important was who he was?

Indeed, G-d promises Abraham:

“All of the land that you see will I give to you and your offspring, forever. And I will make your seed like the dirt of the land…” (13:15-16)

What a strange blessing! Your children will be like dirt?

The Jewish story really does begin with Abraham. Four thousand years ago, one man, alone in a morass of pagan idolatry, believed it could be different. Life didn’t have to be idols and child sacrifice and the worship of the cruelty of nature. The world could learn to change. And it could begin with one man and one dream. Perhaps one person could teach the world, not by preaching, but by example.

G-d tells Abraham that if he wants to be His partner, to be a model for what the world could be like, he needs to let go of where he is. If “through you will be blessed all the families on the face of the earth,” then you need to be separate.

People have often misunderstood the essence of what Judaism is all about, because although Judaism is a religion, it is also a nation. And to be a nation, you need to have a home. To be a role model, you need to be seen, to be visible. Judaism dreams of creating an entire society based on ethics and love; based on Torah. And that can only begin in our own land. Only in our own place can we stand apart enough so that we can be seen.

And being apart isn’t just about how the world sees us; it is also about how we see ourselves. When you are in a separate place, it forces you to consider who you really are.

Further, Yaakov wants to be buried in the land of his Fathers, because if I don’t know where I am from, I don’t really know who I am. Abraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel & Leah, are not just part of my past; they are a part of who I am today.

For the last fifty years, the Jewish people, especially in the land of Israel, have been going through an identity crisis. Who are we? Are we a Jewish people, or are we Israelis?

Joseph, in these last few portions, represents the first Jew to experience exile, in a strange land, constantly reminded that he is not really home.

His children, Menashe & Ephraim, are the first Jewish children born in exile.

Ephraim & Menashe have never seen the land of Israel. They have grown up in Egypt, as Egyptians. Do they know their heritage? Do they understand their great legacy? That they are the great-great grandchildren of Abraham? That a dream the world so desperately needs will, ultimately, depend on them? Are they, in the end, Egyptian Jews, or Jewish Egyptians?

When I was a boy, my grandmother, z”l, would always end her letters to us (she lived in England) with the enjoinder: “remember who you are.”

When Yaakov commands Joseph, indeed swears him, to take him home to the land of Israel, he is making a statement not of where we are, but of who we are. Our place, in the end, is at home, in the land of Israel.

And we are buried in the earth, which represents potential. Left alone, it is a barren field, where only weeds will grow. But when sown and ploughed, reaped, threshed and winnowed, it will feed the world, and become a vehicle for our partnership with G-d. We come from the earth and will ultimately return to the earth; the question is only whether we succeed in making a difference in-between.

The blessing of being ‘like the dirt,’ given to Abraham, reflects the fact that, no matter what one does to the earth, it can never be destroyed. Earth, in the end, is eternal, and our desire to be interred in that earth, reflects our belief that life is eternal, and does not end with the physical.

Burial represents the belief in eternity; where I choose to be buried represents where I really want to be, and, therefore, who I really am.

At the end of the book of Genesis, the family of Yaakov is about to become the nation of Israel. Becoming more and more entangled in the culture and land of Egypt, Yaakov, and then Joseph, reminds them that, one day, they will return home. And that will depend not on where their bodies are enslaved, but where their hearts and souls freely yearn to be.

Shabbat Shalom

R. Binny Freedman

Rav Binny Freedman, Rosh Yeshivat Orayta in Jerusalem’s Old City is a Company Commander in the IDF reserves, and lives in Efrat with his wife Doreet and their four children. His  weekly Internet ‘Parsha Bytes’ can be found at www.orayta.org