[Avodah] A Land to Which I Bring You

[Prof. L. Levine]

The following is from the sefer Rav Schwab on Chumash on Bamidbar 15:18

דַּבֵּר֙ אֶל־בְּנֵ֣י יִשְׂרָאֵ֔ל וְאָֽמַרְתָּ֖ אֲלֵהֶ֑ם בְּבֹֽאֲכֶם֙ אֶל  הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֲנִ֛י מֵבִ֥יא אֶתְכֶ֖ם שָֽׁמָּה

Speak to the children of Israel and you shall say to them, When you arrive in the Land to which I am bringing you,

As a young man, I was zocheh to spend time in the presence of the great and
unforgettable sage, the Chafetz Chaim zt"l of Radin. After the Friday night meal, I returned to the
Chafetz Chaim's house, hoping to be able to visit with him again (I'd met him and had a long audience with him earlier in the day).
While I was there, I watched the Chafetz Chaim open a Chumash at random. He then read and translated the
following pasuk , word for word, into Yiddish, as if he were a child in cheder:

בְּבֹֽאֲכֶם֙ -Vehn ihr veht kumen [when you will come), אֶל  הָאָ֔רֶץ tzu dos Landt [to the Land], and then
he added, "!hr meint az ihr veht kumenfun zich alein [You think that you will come on your own
power], ober [but in truth], Gott Baruch Hu, zugt [G-d, Blessed be H,e, says], to which I will bring you." I wondered,
"What is the profundity of what the Chafetz Chaim is uttering?" The Chafetz Chaim
then read a few more pesukim and translated them, word for word, like a child in
cheder, reciting for his rebbi.

When I asked his students what the Chafetz Chaim was doing, they explained:
The Chafetz Chaim says that we are living in times when emunah peshutah,
simple faith in Hashem, has become weakened as a result of the spirit of atheism
engendered by Communism. Yet emunah is central, the essence of everything. And
the way to strengthen it is to learn Chumash as we learned it in our childhood.
This is the meaning of Chazal's statement that "the world exists only for the
sake of the breath of the [holy and innocent] school children" (Shabbos 119b). Our
emunah in Hashem is purest and strongest during our years in cheder. Indeed, Dovid
Hamelech says (Tehillim 8:3), From the mouths of children and
sucklings You have established strength.

We must try to recapture our absolute, unquestioning, simple faith in these holy
words by reliving our first experience of exposure to the Torah at the hands of our
loving cheder rebbi.

The Rav used to quote the Chafetz Chaim's translation of this pasuk
in order to show how prophetic his words were. The nineteenth-centurv
nationalistic fervor to return to the Holy Land culminated in the Zionist
movement and the establishment of the State of Israel. Many people
assumed that the Jewish State would solve all problems of anti-Semitism.
bringing everlasting peace to the Jewish Nation and a secession oi
hatred from the gentile world. Unfortunately, however, the opposite has
occurred. We live but a few decades after the Holocaust, yet already
the Jewish Nation is beset by anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist (the new anti-Semitism)
sentiments. In our own day, we see that the same secular
Zionists who fought to conquer every blade of grass are now willing
to negotiate giving the Land back. The State of Israel is today in more
mortal danger than ever in its sixty-five years of existence. The threat of
nuclear annihilation by its enemies, G-d forbid, looms over it every day.

The Chafetz Chaim was speaking to us when he said, "You will come
to the Land, and you will think that you brought yourselves there.
However, אֲנִ֛י מֵבִ֥יא אֶתְכֶ֖ם שָֽׁמָּה- Only if Hashem brings you to Eretz Yisrael
will it remain as a permanent inheritance."

The saintly Rav Yosef Leib Bloch of Telshe zt"/ explained Chaza/'s
enigmatic statement (Sanhedrin 99) that The son of David will not come until we abandon all hope for redemption,
as follows: The idea that the world's ultimate perfection could come
about as a result of man's efforts to bring the Geulah was expressed
in the Communist, Socialist, and Zionist movements, which were all
designed to bring the world to perfection, as expressed in the Messianic
prophecies. We now see, however, that all of these hopes and ideals
have been for naught and that no man-made movement or philosophy
will bring salvation to the Jewish People. Rather, the Redemption will
come only when אֲנִ֛י מֵבִ֥יא אֶתְכֶ֖ם שָֽׁמָּה -- -when I [Hashem] will bring you
there. The final Redemption will not come until man
abandons his attempts to artificially fabricate the Geulah with man-made
Messianic ideas.

YL
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.aishdas.org/pipermail/avodah-aishdas.org/attachments/20210606/cb5967bf/attachment-0002.htm>