[Avodah] Without the Torah the land is not the Land of Israel

[Professor L. Levine via Avodah]

The following is part of RSRH's commentary on Devarim 4:5


5 See! I have taught you statutes and [social] ordinances as God, my
God, made it my duty, so that you may act accordingly in the midst of
the land to which you are coming to take possession of it.


You see that I have taught you statutes and social ordinances in accordance
with God's command, so that you should observe them in the land
you are about to enter.

Thus you have been presented with a fact that is important for your
calling and for the significance of these laws, and that sets you and these
laws apart from all other laws and nations: You are the only nation in the
world that possessed laws before it possessed a land of its own. Furthermore,
these laws are the only laws that are not intended as a means for
building up a national existence and for achieving national independence
and prosperity deriving from the national land. Rather, these laws are the
sole end for which you were given all of the above. Every other nation
becomes a nation through its land, and afterward it creates laws for its
land. You, by contrast, became a nation through the Torah, and you received
a land for [the sake of observing] the Torah.

The laws of all other nations are the product of the nation's unique
character - engendered by its land - and of the changing needs of the
nation's development. But your lawgiver, the man from whose hands you
received your Law, has never even seen your land, never set foot on it. He
merely transmitted to you the Law, and his grave in the wilderness is the
Divine seal on the Law that he, the lawgiver, transmitted; his grave attests
that this Law is eternal and immutable.

The laws of the Torah are absolute, whereas you and your land are
conditional. The laws of the Torah do not change in accordance with

changes in your fortunes or in the fortunes of your land. Rather, your
fortunes and the fortunes of your land change in accordance with the
extent to which you are faithful to the laws of the Torah. With the Torah

in your arms, you now stand on the border of the land you are to enter,
in order that you may there observe the Torah in its entirety. With the
Torah in your arms, you will be temporarily exiled from the Land, but
again and again you will stand as a nation whose whole purpose is to live
for the observance of this Torah. Thus shall you await the moment when
you will be able once again to enter the Land, which was given to you so
that you may observe the Torah in its entirety. You are the people of the
Torah, not the people of the Land; the land is the Land of the Torah, and
without Torah the land is not the Land of Israel.
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