With this week’s Parshah we leave the general history of mankind and focus on the specific history of the Jewish people. Central to this story is, of course, the towering figures of the Patriarchs, starting this week with Abraham. Yet central to the tale, and running right through it, is a fundamental concept of Judaism, the Land of Israel. G-d’s first command to Abraham, is to leave his home and go ‘to the land which I will show you’, in other words to make aliyah. The first promise Abraham receives upon entering the Land, was the assurance of its ultimate possession and the central tenet of the basic covenant establishing G-d’s relationship with Abraham and his descendants, is the promise of the Land of Israel. This pre-eminence of the Land in the foundation stories of Judaism should alert us to its importance. Yet because the Jewish people have often lived in exile outside the Land, the centrality of Israel to Judaism has often been over looked. There are those who have believed that it is merely an instrument for the fulfilment of the mitzvot or that the destiny of the Jews was to spread the knowledge of G-d by being scattered among the nations. These concepts, while partially correct, ignore the prominence given to the Land of Israel throughout the Torah, and underestimate the role of the Jewish people. The Land itself, rather than merely a place to perform mitzvot, is the ultimate goal. Exile, while it may also serve noble purposes, is fundamentally a punishment and a profanation of G-d’s Name. The Jewish people are not meant to merely be religious individuals living life in self-contained communities in other people’s states. Rather, our destiny is to be a holy nation living in a holy land, and so provide a light to the nations. The essence of Judaism is that it is the religion of a people, a political and ethnic identity, and it aims to show how a whole nation can live in accordance with G-d’s will. That can only be fulfilled by an independent Jewish state in the land of Israel. Everything else, no matter how noble or exalted, is but a shadow of our true purpose. When reading of the origins of our nation and faith we are reminded that the Land of Israel is not merely an appendage to our Judaism, it is its source and ultimate fulfilment.

ALIYAH BY ALIYAH SYNOPSIS

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