[Avodah] Israel — A Challenge

[Yitzchok Levine]

Below are some selections from Rav Dr. Joseph 
Breuer's Essay Israel — A Challenge that appeared 
in the Mitteilungen, Vol. 24, December 
1962/January 1963 and is reproduced in A Unique 
Perspective: The Essays of Rav Breuer, 1914 -1973 
recently published by Feldheim.

A trip to Israel has become routine in our time. The amazing
technological progress in the speed of air travel has helped in the
enormous rise of volume of travelers bound for Israel. The Holy
Land has become a focal attraction for the Diaspora. We would
rather not analyze whether it is longing for the ancestral land which
motivates the travelers’ plan — a longing which all but consumed
the heart of a Yehudah Halevi. Undoubtedly, the existence of a
Jewish state in the Holy Land, recognized by a majority of the
world’s nations, draws many thousands into its orbit, who then
return home warmed by the glow of the numerous achievements
which the State has accomplished in the brief period of its existence.

As for us Torah-true Jews, we must be permeated by the following
thoughts:

 From the beginning the Jewish people was assured possession
of Eretz Yisrael only as God’s nation. Every page of the Torah
proclaims this irrevocable truth. To deny it would mean a denial of
God’s Torah itself. Only he who no longer recognizes the truth of
the Divine creative pronouncement of “I shall take you as My
people” —with which God called our people into existence—will
fail to grasp the absolute interdependence between the “I shall
bring you to the Land” (Shemos 6:8) and the emergence of the
Jewish people as God’s nation. The disruption of the sole tie that
bound this nation to its land inevitably sealed the fate of nation and
land.

Similarly, the future of this land is intimately and forever tied to
the future of this nation. Redemption of the Jewish people also
means redemption of the Jewish land. Thus, a true ingathering of
our people into its land is not possible without our return to God
and His life-shaping proximity. For the Land, too, longs for the
return of God’s Shechinah.

<snip>

For God guided His people, which His creative Will awakened
to life and which can exist only through Him, and implanted it “in
the Mountain of His heritage, in the site of His presence on earth,
in the Sanctuary founded by God’s hands” (Shemos 15:17). Through
God’s nation the Divinely sanctified soil was to be transformed into
one singular Mount of Sanctity, looming high above a humanity
estranged from God, as a symbol of the Divine claim of inheritance
to His realm of earth and mankind. Who can then measure the
gloom of the Prophet’s mourning (Yirmeyahu 2:7): “. . . but you
came and desecrated My land and turned My heritage into abomination”!

Have we who tread upon the soil of our homeland still an ear
for this stirring plaint? Do we feel shame for our brethren who
respond with derisive laughter to this heart-rending pain; who feel
no compunction to demonstrate to a world, which is familiar with
the Book of the Prophets, how the very descendants of this people
ridicule their own leaders?

<snip>

Let us face it: The Jewish State in its present form is far from
being a State of God. This realization is the basis for the desperate
struggle of Torah Jewry in Israel for the salvation of Torah in Israel.
Are not the establishment of the State and the resurrection of the
land from the decay of millennia Divine challenges to our people?
Are you ready for your ultimate redemption? That is why every
truly Jewish man or woman must tremble for the future of the State,
for the future of our land.

Yet we need not tremble for the future of God’s Torah. Our
anxiety is directed to our people and its God-willed destiny. Despite
the fateful significance of the tasks confronting Torah-true
Jewry in the Holy Land, it would be of even greater fateful consequence
were we to underestimate the importance of strengthening
Torah-true Jewry in the Golah.

We applaud him who chooses to make his permanent domicile
in Israel, in order to support and strengthen the cause of Torah in
the Holy Land. However, in view of the regrettable state of affairs,
a visitor to Israel will be burdened by the experiences which may
be expected in the Golah but which are unbearable in the Holy
Land.

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