Why do Jews insist on their right to live as Jews in countries that don’t want them, or in countries where they are afraid to outwardly identify as Jews?
by Dror Eydar Published on 2019-05-02 14:00 Last modified: 2019-05-02 19:46
Jews, come home to the Land of Israel
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It’s been 74 years since the war ended, and a large part of our people are still living on foreign soil. On the day when we remember the millions of our people who were murdered in the enormous Holocaust, we hear the phrase “never again.” Never again like lambs to slaughter. Never again the wretchedness of the Jewish fate. That’s correct. But if there is any lesson in the horror our people endured last century, it doesn’t end with what will not be, but with what will. Yes to aliyah. The Holocaust marked an end to the chapter of exile in our people’s long history – in other words, the attempt to justify the Jewish people living in foreign lands.
What those who foresaw Zionism in earlier centuries, and what Theodor Herzl saw and what the Zionist leaders of the early 20th century saw – that the Jewish people have no hope other than to return to their land and establish an independent state in their ancient homeland – we are seeing today much more clearly, especially after the Holocaust.
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Why do Jews insist on their right to live as Jews in countries that don’t want them, or in countries where they are afraid to outwardly identify as Jews? Until 71 years ago, we were tossed about throughout the world, standing like beggars in the doorways of the nations of the world, seeking their protection and sponsorship. That is what we did for hundreds of years, and every time we thought all right, they’ll leave us alone, as started to get used to a place and its landscapes and the language, a new generation would arise in that country “who did not know Joseph”, and kick us out. And so we continued to wander. For all that time, this land waited for us, its legal heirs, and when we returned over the past few generations, it began to bloom and settle, like a mother who keeps her milk for her beloved lost son.
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In the generation that came after the great national destruction of the first century C.E., Rabbi Yehoshua Ben Hanania – who had served as a Levite in the Second Temple and accompanied his teacher, Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, when the Jerusalem was destroyed – taught that “If the Jewish people do not make teshuva, G-d will raise up another despot whose decrees will be as severe as those of Haman.” Some 1,800 years later, Rabbi Yehuda Alkalai, the Sephardi rabbi of Semlin in Serbia, created a revolution in the term “tshuva” (repentance and return). Hetaught that the repentance or return that the Torah, the prophets, and our sages talked about, was not necessarily a return to observing the commandments (which he called “personal repentance”), but first and foremost a “general (i.e. national) repentance, in which they will return to the holy Land of Israel.” This was the condition for our salvation: returning home, or as Rabbi Alkalai put it: “For us to go back to the land we left, because it is the home of our lives.” All his life, Rabbi Alkalai preached that, and even published a book detailing his political vision of founding a national home for our people in the Land of Israel. The shamash (beadle) in Rabbi Alkalai’s synagogue, who would blow the shofar, was Shimon Leib Herzl, the grandfather of Theodor Herzl.
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Fifty years later, when Herzl was following the Dreyfus affair, he realized what his grandfather’s rabbi had realized: that our people would never rise again unless we returned to our land to establish an independent state. The people who heeded these calls and made aliyah changed history. But before the Holocaust, relatively few Jews did so. Our people chose to remain in exile, and in Europe a “king whose decrees were as severe as those of Haman” did rise to power. The exile ate away at us not only physically, but caused us to assimilate into the peoples through whom our path took us.
More than any other day of the year, on Holocaust Remembrance Day we have an obligation to repeat the call that is still living and breathing: Dear Jews, brothers and sisters, in every Diaspora, do right and save yourselves and your descendants, not only physically, but also nationally and spiritually. Come home. Make aliyah to Israel.
Content retrieved from: https://www.israelhayom.com/opinions/jews-come-home-to-the-land-of-israel/?fbclid=IwAR26MnBZepdBmrfv86wFkxvBiLR345rhbsPYnY5Jp5Z1JPzWfhBTJUW7Erw.