Before You Preach Morality, Let's Look at History

The nations that argue that the Jews want to take something from someone else that doesn’t belong to them… While those nations’ parents and grandparents were still entirely uncivilized, running around in the forests eating human flesh, with not even a trace of justice or morality, the Jews were already being educated and raised to know that they take only what belongs to them – and Israel belongs to them because God gave it to them – and not to take that which belongs to others. Today’s Torah portion teaches us that when Jews will be asked – and we are asked – by Jews or non-Jews: “How do you claim that all of Israel belongs to all Jews and to every Jew?” Some of them have not a shred of justice or morality – or perhaps they simply don’t know what the Torah says. Today’s Torah portion emphasizes that God Himself negates this argument: Whatever He gave the Jews belongs to them in full, because that which does not belong to the Jew we are commanded not to take. This was commanded to us, and the Jewish people behaved this way, while these savage nations – they exist in our times, as well, but they descend from those same savages who ate human flesh, while the Jews had already received the Torah and were acting according to God’s directives as they entered the Land of Israel for the first time. And they received it, at the time,