Chizuk and Idud

Chizuk & Idud - Parashat B'shalach

Amidst all the excitement and tension of the liberation; the rush and hurry to leave, while the Israelites were absorbed in their own preparation, Moshe remembers the oath given to the favorite son of Yaakov and takes with him the bones of Yosef (Sh’mot 13:19). There is a world of significance to this strange sight of a royal sarcophagus being carried out of Egypt by a mass of liberated slaves. What it teaches us is that the life of every Jew, if it is to be historically and spiritually complete must contain somewhere, sometime, somehow a point of contact with the land of Israel. Given even the brilliant Galut career of a Yosef, its final chapter must be written in Israel. Yosef, whom tradition calls Yosef HaTzadik, reached great heights of personal piety in Galut. Yosef rose from rags to riches, from the dungeon to the throne in Egypt. He achieved recognition, prestige, honor and wealth. What is more, he was quite successful in raising two sons in the hostile environment of ancient Egypt who remained loyal to their Hebraic background and their father’s ideals. In spite of all of this, Yosef feels left out of the great Divine drama which is the process of Jewish history, unless at the very least his bones accompany the children of Israel into the promised land and there be laid to rest.

Our hope today must be a more maximal one - not merely to be buried in holy soil but to live upon and to walk upon holy soil. Our prayer is ‘Lead us upright to our land”.

Essentially however, our motivation must also be the understanding that no matter how religiously observant or pious or successful we might be in Galut, there will always be something lacking, something incomplete if we are not in Israel.

Moshe in the Shira prays “Thou shalt bring them in and plant them in the mountain of Thy inheritance…” (Sh’mot 15:17). For Israel to be brought into the land is for Israel to be planted, to sink her roots deep into the soil, to anchor a Torah society upon the entire range of natural processes. To be fully creative, to be truly Israel, to experience Ruach HaKodesh, the Jewish people must have once again this sense of wholeness, which can only arise in a people living and rooted in its land.

To experience Eretz Yisrael is to sense how the common land under foot and the challenges of statehood give life and substance to peoplehood in a way unimagined and unsuspected in Galut.

• Other Chizuk and Idud
• CHIZUK and IDUD for Olim not yet Olim respectively
• CHIZUK and IDUD for Olim not yet Olim respectively
• CHIZUK and IDUD for Olim not yet Olim respectively