Parshat Va'etchanan: The Truth about Zionism - Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair

[Music] at the beginning of this week's Torah portion God tells Moshe ascent to the top of the cliff and raise your eyes westward and northward southward and eastward and see with your eyes for you shall not across this Jordan imagine how Moshe felt as he stood on top of that cliff gazing out over the land that he longed to enter the Land of Israel stretched out in front of him like a map so close God knew how much Moshe wanted to go into eights as well so why did he tantalize him in this way by sending him up to the top of the mountain to see every blade of grass through prophecy each of the 'vote each of the patriarchs are associated with a specific quality Avraham Abraham with Hesed with kindness Yitzhak Isaac with guevara self-control Yaakov Jacob with Tiferet beauty the quality that's associated with Moshe is netzer eternity everything that Moshe did was forever for eternity and it was for this reason that God gave the Torah through Moshe because the Torah he turn now if Moshe had entered the Land of Israel with the Jewish people then their entry would have been an eternal entry and after such an entry the Jewish people could never again leave the land but a Shem knew that the Jewish people would have to leave the land be exiled because they wouldn't be able to maintain the high spiritual standards that land demands so much I couldn't enter Eretz Israel but Hashem wasn't tantalizing notion that feeling of longing that Moshe had when he stood on that cliff gazing into the land that feeling entered the collective consciousness of the Jewish people for all time at the sixth Zionist Congress symbol in 1903 Theodor Herzl proposed an idea that Uganda should be a temporary home for the Russian Jews the Russian delegation stormed out of the conference room now these delegates were by no means deeply religious individuals but it was self-evident to them that the compromise might spell the end of a Jewish state in Palestine and instinctively they knew that the only place that the State of Israel could be established was in the Land of Israel a little bit of Moshe in the heart of every Jew longs for the land look at our daily prayers look at the blessings that we say after eating a meal our petitions to God are saturated with the name of the land the land of Israel throughout our long long night of exile the Jewish people have never lost that same longing for Herod's Israel that Moshe felt when he stood on the top of that cliff engaged upon the land that he would never enter [Music] [Applause]