Arabs freaking out over a dvar Torah in this week's parasha

Arutz-7 published a d'var Torah this week by prominent Religious Zionist Rabbi Melamed, where he encourages Israeli Jews to have more children and for diaspora Jews to move to Israel, because he says the more Jews in the land, the more peace there will be.

In one part of the essay that mentions this week's Torah portion he says, 

Why were the borders of the land reduced in Parashat Masei?

The borders of the Land of Israel are from the [Nile] River to the Euphrates River. However, in practice, in Parashat Masei, when God commanded Israel to occupy the land and settle it, he commanded to conquer only the western side of the Jordan. Because the mitzvot of settling the land must be fulfilled according to the ability of the people of Israel. And since the number of Israel was not sufficient to settle the whole Land of Israel, the mitzvah was to first conquer the more sacred part, to the west of thee Jordan. And only after they multiply, they would be able to gradually expand towards the eastern Jordan and all the territories of the Promised Land of Israel (Ramban Bamidbar  21:21; Malbim ibid.).

Therefore, from the beginning, Israel did not intend to conquer the land of Sihon and Og, and only after they did not accept the peace offer and went to war against Israel, the people of Israel conquered their land. And there was still no intention to settle there, so when the sons of Reuven and Gad asked to cross the Jordan, Moses was very careful about them, but in retrospect he granted their request after they promised to be pioneers in conquering most of the land. In practice, there were not enough  Jews to enter the Western Jordan, and it remained sovereign enclaves of Gentiles there, who caused great trouble to Israel for about four hundred years, as recounted in the Book of Judges.

Rabbi Melamed is saying that God Himself commanded the Israelites to only conquer the land to the west of the Jordan, and not the entire expansive borders, because there simply weren't enough of them to effectively rule a larger area - and even the parts of Transjordan that they settled was a cause of problems since they didn't have enough people. Certainly it is not desirable today to conquer much of the Arab world. 

Arab media is looking at this article and saying,

Rabbi to the Jews: They multiplied so that we fight Egypt and Iraq and control the Nile and the Euphrates 

The extremist Jewish rabbi , Eliezer Melamed, claimed that the borders of the Israeli occupation should extend from the Nile River in Egypt to the Euphrates in Iraq, to ​​repeat the occupation narratives that prove Tel Aviv's desire to dominate the Arab region .  

Which he is hardly saying - he is complaining that we do not have enough Jews to even control the entire area west of the Jordan properly! Nowhere does he call for a war with Egypt and Iraq!

Now, other Arab sites are chiming in about the "racist" rabbi who merely quoted the Torah about the ideal borders of Israel that no one is calling for today. 

Usually, when these kinds of things happen -and they happen pretty often - it is a secular Israeli newspaper that misinterprets the words of some rabbi to make him sound racist. Here, apparently the Arab media themselves decided to interpret the d'var Torah in an entirely wrong way - because they know no one will fact check them.

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Chayyei Sarah -- A Parshah For Zionists (Daled Amos)

By Daled Amos

Last week, while reading online articles about the political situation in and surrounding Israel, I wasn't really expecting to come across articles discussing Chumash.

Then again, with a title like Abraham The Zionist, and this week being Parshas Chayyei Sarah, Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz's article in JNS should not have been a surprise. 

The Parsha begins, of course, with Avraham buying a burial plot for his wife Sarah in Hebron, and the Torah goes over the negotiations for the land in some detail. The commentators ask why so much attention is paid to the circumstances surrounding the sale and they offer various answers.

Rabbi Steinmetz refers to one commentator in particular:

As Ibn Ezra [23:19] notes, the purchase of a burial plot for her marks the beginning of the future Jewish state. [emphasis added]

In an article on the HaTanakh.com website, Rabbi David Silverberg makes a similar point and expands on it. He notes that

Ibn Ezra further comments that this incident is significant in that it marks the first stage in the fulfillment of God’s promise that Avraham and his offspring would possess Eretz Yisrael.

 This promise is made to Avraham earlier in Bereshit 17:8:

To you and your offspring I will give the land where you are now living as a foreigner. The whole land of Canaan shall be [your] eternal heritage, and I will be a G_d to [your descendants]. [translation: Aryeh Kaplan]

But Avraham is not the only one of the Avot (forefathers) who bought land in Eretz Yisrael. Just as Avraham bought land in Hebron, so too did Yaakov buy land -- just outside of Shechem [33:19]. 

In fact, Avraham and Yaakov were not the only two who bought land in Canaan -- just as Hebron and Shechem were not the only two areas where land was acquired on behalf of the Jewish people.

In her New Studies in Bereshit (p. 208), Nechama Leibowitz quotes from the Midrash in Bereshit 79:7

This is reminiscent of the first Rashi in Chumash, which explains that the Torah begins with the creation of the world in order to provide Jews with a counter-argument against those who would accuse them of "stealing" the Land of Israel.

Hebron.
Shechem.
Jerusalem.

All 3 cities established as Jewish cities, central to Jews.

In his Sefer, Eretz Yisrael in the Parashah: The Centrality of the Land of Israel in the Torah, Rabbi Moshe D. Lichtman points out another verse in the Chumash that highlights this Jewish connection to the land:

Land of the Hebrews? 

However we understand this phrase, this verse indicates that on some level, despite being a small group -- albeit 70 members -- living in Canaan, the family of Yaakov was recognized for its connection to a specific area in that part of the land of Canaan.

This points to the ancient history and connection of the Jewish people in the land that long precedes the appearance of the Arabs, who after all are indigenous to Arabia.

But there are Jewish groups today who recognize the Jewish connection to Eretz Yisrael, yet still maintain their distance while at the same time demanding the right to have a say in how the Jewish state conducts itself.

I mention this because of another article I came across this past week with an unexpected interpretation of the Chumash. While I enjoy Melanie Phillips's articles, I generally don't read her for her insights on the Torah. But she did have an interesting perspective on Jewish groups who criticized the recent Israel elections and took it upon themselves to advise Netanyahu on who should not be included in his cabinet.

In Dragons and Dragon-Slayers in Israel and America, Phillips writes:

Israel is indeed a state for the Jewish nation. However, membership in a nation confers obligations on its people to behave as a nation.

After all, the Torah itself tells us that when the tribes of Reuben, Gad and half of Manasseh said they wanted to settle east of the Jordan because the pastures there were more fertile, they were told they could do so only on condition that they first fought alongside the other tribes to conquer the land of Israel.

But American Jews such as those in Mercaz Olami [the Zionist umbrella arm of Conservative-Masorti Judaism] don’t feel bound by any such obligation. They not only choose not to live in Israel but also choose not to fight in its defense.

Instead, ensconced in a faraway land they prefer, they lob verbal missiles at the tribe from which they have separated themselves when it defends its Jewish identity in ways of which American Jews disapprove.

Today, the long and established Jewish connection to the land does not automatically guarantee an equally well-established sense of Jewish identity and pride in the Jewish people.

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Buy the EoZ book, PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism  today at Amazon! Or order from your favorite bookseller, using ISBN 9798985708424.  Read all about it here!

 

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