Why Is Everyone Obsessed With Israel?

Parashas Shlach, Sefer BaMidbar

What is it about Israel that makes it so desirable? It’s like everyone is obsessed. The entire world can’t stop fighting over this little sliver of land in the Middle East. Americans recently asked how big they thought Israel is weighed in with responses as hefty as Russia, Australia, or at least the size of the United States. Otherwise, what is everyone so up in arms about?

In truth, Israel is 8,000 square miles large. To put that into perspective, the entire country could fit into the state of Florida eight times.  Nobody wants Israel for the size.

Plus, Israel has almost no oil. Not that has been found, anyway. 99% of the tiny country’s own consumption is purchased on the global market. (Unwilling neighbors like Saudi Arabia make that a tad more of a crunch, but that’s a different story.)

Israel is gorgeous, certainly, but not in a flashy, Grand-Canyon-esque sort of way. Let’s put it like this: Israel isn’t New Zealand. No local sheep farmers are protesting the number of high-budget movies shot here annually. It just isn’t like that. Don’t get me wrong! Gorgeous, yes. Flashy ecotourism and blockbusters? No.

What is it about Israel? What is it that we have been praying to return to across the wide, colorful bolt of fabric that has been our exile, tossed and still unrolling over the course of some 2,000 years?

 

Home

It’s easy to list off the reasons – 343 of the 613 mitzvos (commandments) directly involve Eretz Yisrael; everything means more here; this is a land that produces spiritual growth like Iowa produces corn and soybean – but the truth is that the best proof is in the pudding.

How can you describe that feeling at the Kosel (Western Wall) at sunset, as the pigeons and doves swirl in a rosy halo above all the people’s heads, snatches of tunes rising and mingling in the warm evening air as dozens of minyanim (prayer groups) lift their voices in song and praise to welcome Shabbos? Here’s the truth: you can’t. Something happens inside your heart that doesn’t have words. It’s more than a feeling. It’s more than a sense of inspiration. It’s like suddenly realizing that you have come home, but home in a sense truer than any material thing will ever express. You know that something vital in you is expressed here, is gloved here in the perfect setting for living in the fullest sense of the word.

You visit Ma’aras HaMachpelah and the tour guide tells your group that you have fifteen minutes to pray before heading back towards the buses. “By the way,” he mentions casually, “That room to your left is right above where Avraham and Sarah are buried.” Something like a cardiac shock shimmers through your body. These aren’t “your people” in some vague, disembodied sense; these are your mother and your father, the mother and father of all that has ever been meaningful to you. You walk over almost stumbling with emotion, lean your head against the cool, smooth stones, and cry. You aren’t usually a crier, you don’t go in for spirituality, but something speaks here.

“Hello,” you whisper, wet face cupped in the palms of your hands.

You visit the winding cobblestone roads of Tzfat (Safed), take a hike out into the surrounding Galilee, where country green meanders and mixes and merges with the lowing of wandering herds of cows who look so relaxed, where a soft breeze breathes the whispers of trees, where wildflowers seem to spring up underneath your steps, so profusely do they blossom in the spring.

And, wait, another thing – it’s not just beautiful, it’s dotted with strange, light-blue stone huts where the long-since resting bodies of the scholars whose debates make up the Mishna and Talmud are buried. They’re here among the flowers. They’re not just on a page, again disembodied, theoretical, a skinless and scentless scholarly work. They lived and walked among these same green hills. You continue along and come upon one, and then another, modest structures dappled with sunshine through gentle and vibrant foliage.

You hike down into Amuka and enter one of the little stone huts – here lie the remains of Rav Yonasan Ben Uziel, who spent his entire life absorbed so deeply in his Torah study that birds flying directly over his head were burnt. You pick up one of the soft, worn prayer books lining the walls of the small synagogue surrounding his grave. It’s so quiet here.

 

Not Just Physical, Not Just Spiritual

Jerusalem, the heart of the country, is a hot thicket, a flame, a burning bush. How aren’t we all consumed? The buses have exploded, the fear has risen thick and potent in our throats, the walls have all come tumbling down, but my neighbor took a bullet to the arm in a nearby gas station a few years ago when some lunatic from nearby Ramallah decided to show up with a gun and try to take out a few Jews. My neighbor stopped the terrorist. That’s Jerusalem. It’s not just heroism, it’s peace. Who wants to die of old age when you could die of real living? My neighbor grieves his lost arm but is a happy man.

That’s Israel. Israel is where our dreams lay buried like jewels beneath the rocky soil. Why?

Because G-d said so. Because the very first communication to the very first Jew took place when the Almighty commanded Avraham to “Go [for your benefit], from your land, from your relatives and from your father's house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation; I will bless you, and make your name great, and you shall be a blessing.” (Beraishis-Genesis 12:1-2)

Because when G-d wrote  the Torah, His very first move in the very first verse was to declare His proprietary rights as Creator and Owner of the universe just so that, as Rashi explains, “If the nations of the world should say to Israel, ‘You are robbers, because you have seized the lands of the seven nations [of Canaan], Israel should say to them: ‘The whole world belongs to God. He created it and He gave it to whomever He deigned to give it.’” (Rashi, ibid 1:1)

Because the Talmud in Baba Basra (158b) says that the air of Israel makes you wise. Because the Talmud in Kesuvos (111a) says that anyone who walks four amos (short arm-lengths) in Israel is promised to become a member of the World to Come. Because a few blocks away from where my husband goes to kollel (rabbinical college) every day are buried several members of the Sanhedrin – Judaism here is real, not theoretical. We aren’t an idea. We aren’t even a religion in the normative sense of the word. We’re something not just physical, not just spiritual, but alive.

Israel is like our clothing, skin, the place we can be most us, “a kingdom of priests and a holy nation”. And, without even realizing what they are hungering for, the whole world wish they could taste that.

Gratitude to Asim Bharwani for use of his great Kosel shot. Nice one, Asim.