To elaborate.
The Jewish enterprise is still mainly undefined. The unconscious debate between nation and religion, past and future, the struggle for an identity, still rages on.
When deciding where you want to put down roots, where you wish to plant your seed and grow, where you want to flower into yourself...what do you do? How do you decide between a life in Israel and its national significance which enriches each individual, or a life in the United States and the religious freedom to build your identity in a world of possibilities?
Is comfort something to consider in life? Is identity? Is belonging to something bigger than you are? Can you live in a rat race to simply make ends meet? Is there a value in religious life? In national life? Is the enterprise in Israel a lasting one, worth investing your very life into?
What kind of children are we meant to leave behind? What are we leaving them, our grandchildren, our future? What is that future - a Land and nation, or a religion and culture?
And what do you do when you dont know what to do?
There is no uniform answer to this question. There are those who could never see themselves outside of Brooklyn, and there are those who feel they cannot live a full Jewish life outside of Israel. Some are unsure where they fall, and I think for such people hindsight is really the only way to see what mattered to them all along. The main issue is to actually think about life, meaning, and purpose, rather than simply float through life on the path of least resistance, as most do.
ReplyDeleteThere is a uniform answer to this question.
ReplyDelete"And it shall be, when you come in unto the land which Hashem your G-d gives you as an inheritance; and you possess it, and dwell in it" -Dvarim 26:1
Notice it doesn't say "unless you don't like the government", or "unless you're already used to the culture somewhere else".
You might say "We don't pasken from the chumash!!!"
You're right.
Halacha l'maaseh sources can be found here:
http://israel613.com/books/ERETZ_ISRAEL_SHORT.pdf
Saying "I could never see myself outside of Brooklyn" is no more of a patur for yishuv Eretz Yisrael, than "I could never see myself praying three times a day", is a patur for tefilah.
Yishuv Eretz Yisrael is like any other mitzvas aseh. Some people might be temporarily patur. A choleh is patur from tefillin. An osek b'mitzvas overes can sometimes be patur from tefilah. An onen is patur from all mitzvos aseh.
However, when that person has left those temporary situations, he is once again m'chuyav.
So too with yishuv Eretz Yisrael.
The philosophical question of nation vs. religion is an interesting one, but ultimately, both our future as a nation, and G-d's commandment in our religion, require us to return home to our Holy Land, now that we have regained the physical ability to do so.
Though, the mitzva of yishuv eretz yisrael itself is one that paradoxically is the most taken out of context - by both "sides". On one hand you have the "Kook-niks" who take the gemara that says it is k'neged kol hatorah kula and say therefore k'mat docheh everything else, and on the other you have the Satmar-niks who take the gemara of "oleh k'kir" and say therefore no one can live there.
ReplyDeleteI think in fact it is a gray area.