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PARSHAT EKEV - THE SOURCE OF ALL BLESSINGS

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TorahZionist:
BS"D

YESHIVAT HARA'AYON HAYEHUDI
Jerusalem, Israel
HaRav Yehuda Kroizer SHLIT"A, Rosh Yeshiva

PARSHAT EKEV
20 Av 5767/3-4 August 2007

THE SOURCE OF ALL
BLESSINGS


“You shall eat and you will be satisfied and you will bless Hashem your
G-d for the good land that He gave you.”

Rabbi Yosi asks in the holy Zohar: "You shall eat and be satisfied and
will bless Hashem for the good land He gave you." If you are in the Land of
Israel, you bless after eating, for it says "for the good land that He gave
you", but outside the land, in the exile, we don’t need to bless after
eating, for it is certainly not “the good land that He gave you”.

One possible solution could have been found in the blessing we say after
partaking of fruit. For example, olives - when we bless after eating olives
we say on "the" fruits, but if they are olives from the Land of Israel we
say on "your" fruits. We could have, then, when eating outside the Land of
Israel, in the exile, left out the parts that talk about “the good land
which You gave us”. Why, then, is this not the case, and even those Jews who
unfortunately live outside the Land still bless the same way that the Jews
in the Land of Israel bless, saying “for the good land that He gave you”?

The holy Zohar continues: When G-d created the world, He divided it into
many parts. One of the parts was for man to live in, and even that was
subdivided for the 70 nations, but all of their sustenance comes from one
small point, that being the Land of Israel, which is in the center of the
world. And inside the Land, its holiness is drawn from Jerusalem, and
Jerusalem draws its spiritual powers from the Holy Temple, from the Holy of
Holies. All the sustenance which the world derives comes from the Temple
site in Jerusalem. All goodness in this world with which the nations sustain
themselves - all comes from the Holy Temple in Jerusalem!

The Zohar goes on to teach us that all of this sustenance, which is
spread out to the world in the merit of the Temple, continues even when the
Temple is in ruins. Can one just imagine what greatness, then, awaits the
world when the Holy Temple will be rebuilt. The Midrash teaches us that if
the nations of the world would only have known of the blessings bestowed on
the world because of the Temple, they would have sent their greatest armies
to protect it.

So the Zohar concludes that even the Jews who are still living outside
the Land of Israel must bless after they eat, using the words "for the good
land that He gave you", for in essence, even though they are not in the
Land, the blessings are coming from there. For it’s in the merit of the Land
of Israel that the world continues to exist.

Similarly, we find the prophet Haggai calling the people to rebuild the
Temple in his day, as the text tells us: "Thus said Hashem, Master of
Legions: 'This nation has said, the time has not yet come, but I say it is
time for the Temple of Hashem to be rebuilt.'"

Now, one might think that Haggai would be telling the people about the
importance of rebuilding the Temple, of course, all about the spiritual
benefits ensuing with such a holy structure. This, though, is far from the
case. In fact, the prophet talks only about the material benefits one gets
when the Temple is built: “Without the temple you sow much but bring in
little to eat, you eat without being satisfied, you drink without quenching
your thirst, you dress yet no one is warm, and all who earn money earn it
for a purse with a hole. Because of My Temple, which is in ruins while each
of you dwells in his own house, therefore the heavens withhold their dew and
the Land withholds its produce.” In other words, without the temple there
is no blessing, not in the Land of Israel and certainly not outside the
Land.

Want to have the market hit the roof? Want not to have to worry about
the bank calling you over that bounced check? Then get the Temple rebuilt -
the source for all blessings in this world. Maybe, just maybe, when you put
it in terms of dollars and cents and the fiscal benefits that will be coming
when G-d’s House will be rebuilt - then maybe people will finally wake up to
want to build the House of Hashem! I, for one, cannot wait!

With love of Israel,
Levi Chazen

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