The Gemara in Kesubos famously asserts, “Kol hadar b’chutz la’aretz domeh k’mi shein lo Elokah v’chol hadar b’Eretz Yisrael domeh k’mi sheyeish lo Elokah.” Anyone who lives outside the Land of Israel is compared to someone who has no G-d. And anyone who lives in Eretz Yisrael is compared to someone who has a G-d.
This Gemara was puzzling to me the first time that I learned it for sure, as it seems to suggest that anyone living in the diaspora is by default living without G-d. However, I believe the Gemara is talking in terms of relativism. Of course, G-d is present in heaven and upon the earth, which includes the spatial representations of heaven and earth. I mean, the very definition of infinitude, if that itself wasn’t an oxymoron, is that the essence of G-d isn’t limited or defined to one space to the exclusion of others. Honestly, that is why I never understood the assertion of those who maintain the opinion of literal tzimtzum on the basis that G-d could not possibly be present in ritually impure spaces. The fact that certain sacrosanct articles such as tefillin, sefer Torah, or sefarim cannot be brought into a putrid place on account of its holiness, those things represent revelations of G-dliness but not G-d in His essence. G-d in His essence is not repelled from any place as the verse states, “The heavens and earth I fill.”
The Midrash writes, “Just as the soul fills the body, G-d fills the world. Therefore, if the vivifying factor of the body is the presence of the soul, which reaches its outermost extremities then G-d must fill the world in the very same manner. Or the term often found in Chassidus describing the transcendental level of the enveloping light of G-d known as sovev kol olmin k’chashecha k’oirah meaning light and dark are equal to G-d from that level of transcendence. However, what I believe the Gemara is conveying is that the G-d consciousness of someone living in Eretz Yisrael is exponentially higher than anyone living in the diaspora.
My wife and I got an up-close view of what that looks like on our recent trip to Eretz Yisrael. The truth is people are often drawn towards holy people and holy places in Etetz Yisrael and we visited some of those people and many of those places during our recent trip. However, I feel like the only real indication of how deeply G-d is felt in Eretz Yisrael, or anywhere for that matter, is how deeply or how distant it reaches from its source. So although many people may have had difficulty processing the notion of people getting killed for the sake of G-d while at a music festival on yom tov, for us walking among the ruins and the memorial of the Nova festival down south the one verse that did not stop reverberating in my mind during those moments was, “Remove your shoes from upon your feet, for the place that you tread is sacrosanct.” In full view of what was going on at the time that bloodthirsty terrorists broke through the fences and started murdering wholesale hundreds of partygoers on that day, there was an innocence upon every one of those faces and a spirit of heroism that pervaded many of them in those harrowing moments.
As we walked from memorial to memorial there were tens of military people, young men and women paying homage to the young men and women who lost their lives on that fateful day. We tried to greet as many of them as we could, to hug them and to offer an encouraging word while thanking them for their service in the protection of Eretz Yisrael and Am Yisrael. One of those young men that we had greeted asked us what had brought us down south on that day, and as if G-d had placed the words in my mouth, without skipping a beat or being unsure of what I would reply, I said, “We came here to give you strength and to thank you for your service,” which they were extremely grateful for.
It was inconceivable that these young people who have literally been living in the line of fire minute by minute were thankful that we took a week out of our schedule to visit and to express our thanks. It just didn’t compute for me. In fact, towards the end of our trip we spent an hour or so in Sheba Hospital in Tel Aviv with the help of the Chabad shliach and chaplain there, Rabbi Levi Gopin, who accompanied us to many of the soldiers who were rehabbing there after being wounded in battle. Young men and women, some married with children and some not, whose lives have been altered forever standing in defense of our homeland. Each of them, despite the unique tragic circumstances that led to their injury, was capable of seeing the big picture and discerning the miracles that had allowed them to emerge from the wreckage albeit with an injury of some sort, some more severe than others. And again, each person who we spoke to was visibly empowered by our presence there telling them in person just how much their sacrifice had meant to us personally.
Then we made a trip to Hebron to daven by Kever Rochel and then onto the Mearas Hamachpela to daven at the burial place of our Patriarchs and Matriarchs. However, while we have done that previously, as many have, we did something this year that we hadn’t done previously, which made the trip there so much more special. We were filled with a desire to speak to some of the city’s residents. Only 3% of Chevron is populated by Jews, which amounts to just over 900 Jews to the 200,000 Muslims who constitute 97% of the Hebron population.
With the help of our driver for the week, Yaakov Yehuda Kuzin from Modiin, Illit we gained entrance into a couple of the locals and were given an opportunity to speak with them about what it’s like living in the holy city of Hebron. One of the esteemed families living in Hebron today is the Ra’anan family whose husband and father Eliyahu Shlomo Ra’anan, may G-d avenge his blood, was stabbed to death in his home back in 1998 at the age of 63. Rabbi Ra’anan, a’h, was a grandson of Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak Hakohen Kook. In fact, Rav Kook was the sandek at his bris. We had the great privilege to speak to Rebbetzin Ra’anan and her daughter Tzipi Schlissel, both of whom live near each other in Hebron. After exchanging pleasantries, Mrs. Schlissel appealed to us to be the messengers to corral the diaspora Jews and bring them to Hebron. She implores: Chazal say that the merit of our forefathers may expire but the covenant of our forefathers always remains. The American Jews need to tap into their covenantal responsibility towards our ancestral homeland and come home to make our fathers and mothers happy. Tzipi feels that if world Jewry would spark a mass movement of Jews to the land of Hebron then it would make it a force that political talking heads would have to reckon with which until now, it sadly had not been. After going into the story of her father’s murder at the hands of a terrorist who entered through a window as he prepared for bed, Mrs. Schlissel said that the future of the family in Hebron was all but certain. However, not wanting to signal defeat to the hands of the enemy Rebbetzin Ra’anan resolved to stay in Hebron with the assurance that a kollel would be initiated in the memory of her late husband. In fact, Mrs. Schlissel mentioned that her mother sat with her ear to the door of the kollel, which was connected to the house, listening to the voice of their studies throughout the day. We found this to be the case when we visited her later on. I asked Mrs. Schlissel if in light of that story and the challenges of living in Hebron, among so many Muslims bent on their destruction, whether she felt like she is exhibiting self-sacrifice by living there. She said, with a broad smile on her face, that it is a great merit to live in the city of Hebron. It was clear to me that Mrs. Schlissel and the people of Hebron were cut from a different cloth, not suggesting even distantly that life could be better anywhere else. Mrs. Schlissel is the author of a book Hebron Breaks the Silence, which comes highly recommended and is available on Amazon.
While it was easy to tell that Mrs. Schlissel was on a mission and was passionate about mass aliyah to Hebron, her mother was a little more direct and less politically correct about it. The way it sounded, she seemed to be repelled by the notion that Jews still live in America. She rightly thought it a joke that Jews live under Trump or Biden, the latter being a year younger than her yet much more disoriented. Rebbetzin Ra’anan related the story that Rav Kook’s mother asked a goy who she encountered on the boat to Israel why she was making the move.
She said, “We are coming to visit the gravesite of our deity.” “You?” she countered, to which Rav Kook’s mother replied, “You are coming to visit your deceased G-d and we are here because of our living G-d.” She said that someone who moves to Israel undergoes a soul upgrade that they are privy to upon merely resolving to make the move. We tend to view people with the same metrics with which we view ourselves. Meaning, however we perceive greatness in ourselves or our peers in the diaspora we tend to measure all people the same way. However, as Rebbetzin Ra’anan said, residents of Eretz Yisrael have an upgraded soul that gives them an advantage over residents of the diaspora. We came face to face with that soul almost everywhere we set our foot on in the Holy Land. What we saw during our weeklong trip to Eretz Yisrael was pshat in the aforementioned Gemara in living color and that is that the G-d consciousness of the people of Israel is on an altogether higher level and the people there are waiting with open arms to welcome us back home. n
Yochanan Gordon can be reached at ygordon5t@gmail.com. Read more of Yochanan’s articles at 5TJT.com.