BS"D
YESHIVAT HARA'AYON HAYEHUDI
Jerusalem, Israel
HaRav Yehuda Kroizer SHLIT"A, Rosh Yeshiva
PARSHAT NITZAVIM-VAYELECH
25 Elul 5767/7-8 September 2007
"INNOCENTS ABROAD" REVISITED
1867-2007
“The latter generations will say: Your children who will come after you,
and the foreigner who will come from a distant land - when they see the
plagues of the Land and its illnesses with which Hashem has afflicted
it....”
One of the most famous of these “foreigners” to visit the Holy Land some
150 years ago was Mark Twain, who wrote about his experiences in his book
“Innocents Abroad”, Twain traveled throughout Europe, worked his way up to
Greece and Turkey, then through Syria and finally up to the Holy Land. What
awaited him in the Holy Land was unlike anything that he had seen before in
any other place.
Twain wrote: “Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the
spell of a curse that has withered its field and fettered its energies.
Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now
floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists, over whose
borders nothing grows but weeds and scattering tufts of cane, and that
treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to
ashes at the touch.”
Could this be the Promised Land, the same Land which the Torah tells us
is flowing with milk and honey? A land which the Talmud teaches us,
flourished so greatly that when Rami the son of Yechezkel traveled to Bnei
Brak, he saw goats eating under the big trees and honey flowed from the
figs, while milk dripped from the goats and they mixed together, and he
exclaimed: This is it - a land flowing with milk and honey!
How, then, did the Holy Land, which so flourished in ancient times, turn
into a dry and barren land where “even the olive tree and the sabra, those
faithful friends of barren lands, were almost completely missing from the
Land?”
The parsha tells us: “And they will say, because they forsook the
covenant of Hashem the G-d of their forefathers, which He had sealed with
them when He took them out of the land of Egypt, and they went and they
served the gods of others, and they prostrated themselves to gods that they
knew not, and He did not apportion to them.”
So great was the desolation of the Land, that all who saw her knew that
this could only be the hand of G-d. “Sulphur and salt, a conflagration of
its entire land, it cannot be sown and it cannot sprout, and no grass shall
rise up on it.”
Twain writes: “The spell of a curse hovers over her, which has blighted
her fields and imprisoned the might of her power with shackles. The Land of
Israel is a wasteland and devoid of delight. The Land of Israel is no longer
to be considered part of the actual world. We did not see a soul during the
entire journey, everywhere we went there was no tree or shrub.” Funny,
though, that Twain did not see all of those millions of "Palestinians", the
same ones that have been here from time immemorial...
If Mark Twain would arise today, some 150 years after his historical
visit to Israel, he would not believe that he is in the same place, the
place that he called “not part of the actual world.” Today the Land of
Israel flourishes beyond anyone’s wildest imagination; with the return of
the Jewish people, we have turned the desert into the Garden of Eden.
Still, this should come as no surprise, as the Talmud already told us:
“Rabbi Abba said: There is no clearer sign that the Redemption is at hand,
than when the trees in the Land of Israel once again give off their fruits.”
Looking back at this historical event, who can NOT stand in wonder at
seeing the Hand of G-d over the past 150 years, returning of the Jewish
people to its Land? How could it be that Jews still continue to live in the
exile, seeing with their own eyes that the Living G-d of Israel is bringing
back His people, and that this is His will?
Not forever will the gates remain open! Do not find yourselve on the
other side, for what will you answer on the Day of Judgment: I did not see,
I did not notice G-d's Great Hand in history???
With love of Israel,
Levi Chazen
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Topic: PARSHAT NITZAVIM-VAYELECH - "INNOCENTS ABROAD" REVISITED (Read 2163 times)