Sivan 16, 5771 ~ June 18, 2011
by Barry Waldman
FROM GRASSHOPPERS TO LIONS:
RECLAIMING THE INHERITANCE OF ERETZ YISRAEL
“Always, at the beginning, there is a dance of grasshoppers...” (Emmanuel Levinas)
Returning from their tour of spying the Land, the meraglim infect the people with their doubts of its conquest: “the men there are of great stature…we were as grasshoppers in our own eyes, and so we were in their eyes.” They conclude: “We are not able to go up against these people, for they are stronger than we (mimeinu).” R. Hanina b. Papa finds this statement even more egregious than it sounds. For mimeinu can also be read “than He.” (Sotah 36a). Thus, the meraglim insinuate that – even with Divine assistance – the people would not prevail in a war against the Canaanites (Merome Sadeh). The Jewish philosopher, Emmanuel Levinas, has a novel interpretation of this gemara: the meraglim were not questioning the likelihood of winning a military campaign (with or without God’s help), but whether they had sufficient moral grounds to launch a conquest for the Land in the first place. What right did they have to usurp an indigenous population from the homes, cities, and land they had been living on for centuries? In the minds of the meraglim:
Did they think their right lacked might, or that they had no rights, that the Promised Land was not permitted to them?
The right of the native population to live is stronger than the moral right of the universal God…one cannot take away from them the land on which they live, even if they are immoral, violent, and unworthy and even if the land were meant for a better destiny... (Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings)
Is there an answer to the meraglim’s rejection of the Land on this basis?
We can always turn to the first Rashi in the Chumash (Bereishis 1:1):
Why does [the Torah] begin with "In the beginning"? This is because [of the concept contained in the verse] "He declared the power of His works to His people in order to give to them the inheritance of nations" (Tehillim 111:6). Thus, should the nations of the world say to Israel, "You are robbers, for you have taken by force the lands of the Seven Nations," they [Israel] will say to them: "All the earth belongs to G-d. He created it and gave it to whomever He saw fit. It was His will to give it to them and it was His will to take it from them and give it to us."
Hmm. Seems rather arbitrary…hard to find any superior moral argument for Israel there – unless we focus on Rashi’s qualification “whomever He saw fit.” What, precisely, would make one nation more “fit” to inherit the Land than another?
In his reply to the meraglim, Levinas offers a solution based on the idea that Eretz Yisrael “vomits its inhabitants” when they do not meet the Land’s expectations (Vayikra 18:25):
Only those who are always ready…to accept exile when they are no longer worthy of a homeland have the right to enter this homeland…
If it seems paradoxical that the only way to merit the Land is through a willingness to be exiled from it, then consider perhaps the greatest non sequitur in all of Torah: When Avraham asks “How will I know that I will inherit it [the Land]?” – God responds by showing him a vision of all the future exiles of his descendants (a vision so horrific that Avraham needed to be sedated first! – Bereishis 15)
To discover the unifying principle underlying God’s response to Avraham’s question, Levinas’ reply to the meraglim, and Rashi’s opening comment on Bereishis, we’ll now turn to some of the teachings of Rav Matis Weinberg on the singularity of the Land of Israel.
To begin: A land that can “vomit its inhabitants” implies that it knows and senses those dwelling within it. Ordinarily, we think of the earth’s surface as inert, blindly following Nature’s laws, oblivious to the humans that walk upon it. The exception is the Land of Israel. Eretz Yisrael is conscious of its inhabitants and their relationship to it, and responds accordingly. It can embrace them like a lover, as it did for Ya'akov Avinu. Even the stones he set around his head desired to be close to him:
[First] It says, “He took some stones (plural) from the Place...” But then it says, “He took the stone (singular) which he set around his head…” This teaches us that all the stones came to one place, and each one argued, “Let the tzaddik rest his head on me!” We are taught that they all were fused into one. (Chullin 91b)
Or the Land can reject them in disgust:
The land shall not yield her produce…Your land will be desolate… You will become lost among the nations, and the land of your enemies will consume you. (Vayikra 26:20 - 38)
The way in which the Land responds is a function of the choices made by its inhabitants; moreover, this responsiveness provides insight into the meaning of real freedom, as opposed to mere liberty. As Rav Matis Weinberg explains, liberty involves the ability to invent choices and the license to act upon them. On the other hand,
“…freedom demands that human choices have undeniable consequences: if choice makes no fundamental difference, then there are no genuine options and, ipso facto, no genuine freedom...Freedom provides existential options, not mere behavioral alternatives...
Yisrael needed to learn that freedom is not the trivial license to perform what you want to do – it is the inalienable right to create what you want to be. Yisrael needed to learn that choices are terrifyingly real...The more powerful and willful our freedom, the more powerful, absolute, and inexorable the impact of our will. (Frameworks, Va’era)
Never has there been a people in the history of the world who related to its land in such a way as Yisrael – incorporating into its national charter a provision to accept exile en masse if it failed to uphold a standard of just conduct. There have been “lands of liberty,” but Eretz Yisrael is the only true Land of Freedom – a Land that will coexist only with a free people who accept the consequences of their choices:
Only those who are always ready to accept the consequences of their actions and to accept exile when they are no longer worthy of a homeland have the right to enter this homeland. You see, this country is extraordinary. It is like heaven. It is a country which vomits up its inhabitants when they are not just. There is no other country like it; the resolution to accept a country under such conditions confers a right to that country... (Levinas, Nine Talmudic Readings)
Our claim to the Land, therefore, is not dependent on the degree of our religious zeal or nationalistic longings – but on whether we become B'nei Chorin (Children of Freedom). It is a matter of identity, of what it means to be B’nei Yisrael:
What is the source for the zechus for Eretz Yisrael? How do we understand that the promise to Avraham is not just an arbitrary gift, but a yerusha (inheritance)?
It requires a definition of one's identity of Yisrael in order to be zoche (worthy) to Eretz Yisrael…Self doubt is the inability to articulate an identity for oneself...if the zechus (merit) doesn't exist in your mind, [you will not have] the moral grounds to maintain the zechus to Eretz Yisrael… If you put limitations on your understanding of what you are, then you are completely lost, and you have no zechus for Eretz Yisrael, because Eretz Yisrael cannot be justified in political or religious terms. (R. Matis Weinberg: Pesach and Eretz Yisrael, 2002)
What it means to be Yisrael and to be attached to Eretz Yisrael is not something that originated at Sinai, or even with the brit with Avraham, but reaches back to the beginning of Creation and what it means to be fundamentally human and connected to the earth. This is the significance of the verse from Tehillim that Rashi brings as the rationale for Yisrael’s inheritance of the Land:
'The power of His works He declared to His people in order to grant them the inheritance of nations.' (Tehillim 111:6)…speaks to a people who must learn to experience mitzvot not as moral maxims or impersonal decrees, but as the pulse of existence, the choices that make Creation what it is.” (Frameworks, Re’eh)
Beginning with the banishment from Gan Eden, exile is the process of defining and refining the identity of Yisrael. Exile is the “long march to freedom” that transforms us from grasshoppers into lions:
And the remnant of Jacob shall be among the nations, in the midst of many peoples, as a lion among the beasts of the forest… (Micah 5:7)
The Land will ultimately welcome us back with love, as it did with Ya’akov Avinu. Nothing will
…stand in the way of the deeper inheritance of the Land of Israel by her true lovers when their time has come to love again. (Frameworks, Hayei Sarah)
No longer burdened by the guilt that accompanies self-doubt, but emboldened by the confidence that accompanies self-discovery, we will ascend to the Land like the lions we have become.
"The lion is the mightiest of animals and turns away before no one."
(Mishlei 30:30)
Postscript: After nearly 2,000 years of exile, on June 7, 1967, Israeli soldiers from the 55th Paratroop Brigade reunited the city of Jerusalem during the Six Day War. They entered through...the Lion's Gate. On that day “we were as lions in our own eyes, and so we were in the eyes of others.”
(Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Chief of Staff Yitzchak Rabin, and Jerusalem Commander Uzi Narkiss entering the Old City through the Lion's Gate.)
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