The 3 weeks  5778-How the Gedolim of yesteryear viewed Eretz Yisrael

One of the great Rabbis of the last century, who made Aliya from Europe, was called Rabbi Mordechai Gimpel-Yaffe. He settled in a small yishuv called Yahud and spent his days studying Torah (he also wrote a commentary on the Ramban, called Techelet Mordechai). When he was leaving his community in E.Europe, he was asked to speak at Seudah Shelishit before he left Riga. He began by sharing that many people were asking him how could he go to a place where there was so much Chillul Shabbat, as there was in the early days of the Yishuv among the irreligious Jews who settled there. He commented by referring to the birds in the Torah which are all not kosher. There is the ‘Ra’ah’, the ‘Aya’ and the ‘Daya’, and the Talmud comments that it cannot differentiate clearly between one and the other and they are one and the same. The Talmud asks however why is the bird called the ‘ra’ah’(lit. the seeing bird) and they explain that even though it is in Bavel it can see the ‘corpses’ of the dead in Israel. There is another statement in Talmud that refers to the location of the bodies after the flood, which were washed down to Bavel which was a low lying country. This bird has incredible eyesight and is recognized as such. Rabbi Gimpel Yaffe asks why it looks so far afield at the corpses in Israel when there were corpses in Bavel as well? He explains that this is why it is a non-kosher bird. Even though it lives in a place of tumah/impurity, it still looks for that same tumah in Eretz Yisrael. The comparison is made to the Jews who lived in Europe, where there were real issues of Chillul Shabbat etc in many places and yet they looked to Eretz Yisrael to criticize the lack of religious practice there. This is unacceptable and should be a lesson to all who denigrate the land of Israel and its dwellers, whoever they may be.

A further elaboration of this concept is given over in the name of Rabbi Shmuel Rabinow zal who lived in London post war and was a known talmid chacham and teacher. He went to Israel in 1958 and came back so excited by everything he saw. The new yeshivot, the places where Shabbat was observed and many other religious observances which so impressed him. One of his students asked him how could he be so positive when we have heard of all the Chillul Shabbat there amongst other things. He immediately responded to the student by explaining that such criticism is not acceptable. King David gave us the guideline in Tehillim(128).

 'ure'eh betuv Yerushalayim kol yemei chayecha'

‘and you shall look at the goodness of Jerusalem all the days of your life’.

This should always be our approach, even when we are not in agreement or uncomfortable with the actions that take place in Israel. The state of Israel is a blessing which our generation has witnessed and we heard this week that there are now officially more Jews living in Israel than in the USA. This is our hope for the future and any negativity has to be controlled and certainly not publicly expressed, as some Jews think to do, in the USA and in many other places. The miracle of Israel grows every day there and as Rabbi Gimpel Yaffa and Rabbi Rabinow both taught us, we must always see the good of Eretz Yisrael and Yerushalyim. These are surely appropriate thoughts when we go through the 3 weeks and pray that all Jews will be in Israel very soon indeed.

Shabbat Shalom                      Rabbi I.Shaffer                        Cherry Hill NJ              July 2018