Rabbi Elliot Mathias: The Jewish Connection to Israel

good evening welcome to our second class and part of this three-part series on the israeli-arab conflict my name is rabbi Elliot Mathias for those of you that joined us last night I hope you enjoyed we talked a little bit about the Jewish connection in the Land of Israel the history the the the claim of occupation that the Jews stole the land from the Arabs and how to deal with that with that what that looks like historically tonight we're going to take a little bit of a different turn and you know I mentioned last night so those that weren't harassed not introduce myself a game again my name is Elliot Mathias for the last 19 years actually I was the founder and CEO of an organization called the house of our fellowships for we educate and train college students to do advocacy on their campuses pro-israel advocacy standing up for Israel against BDS and other anti-israel propaganda but also promoting Israel being proactive connecting with with other students and showing them why they they should support Israel when a lot of what we do is how to do advocacy the facts the figures but one thing that I always try to get across is understanding why we do this why do we want to advocate for Israel why do we feel so connected to that place you know sometimes the why if we don't have the motivation of the why it's very hard to do the what in the how right and so what I want to talk a little bit about tonight is the why why are we so connected to Israel why is that place so so so important to us and you know I when I ask students this you know what do you love about Israel right so because you know the beaches and the soldiers and the falafel and the hiking you know all these amazing things that anyone's been to Israel all those things are amazing but I always think when I hear that you know it's like imagine you meet someone who says you know I'm I'm an amazing I I am a huge loyal Yankees fan I love the Yankees right say really you love the Yankees tell me what do you love about that ah I love you know the smell when you walk into the stadium I love the the lights you know of at night when it when it's lit up right I love the uniforms those pinstripes of the student of the players right I love the hot dogs in the Cracker Jack I love the seventh-inning stretch right and you say this is the person well that's amazing you're a huge Yankees fan but what do you think about the team right what team what are you talking about right sometimes I feel because there's so many awesome parts of Israel we see I don't want to say the surface but we see a lot of the things going on and we don't always get to the essence of really what is our connection to that place why is it so important to us and really this is a crucial question because as whether it's on college campuses whether it's in the media whether it's in other arenas Israel is challenged its actions are challenged it's right to exist just challenge it's so crucial that we understand the why we understand what our connection is to that place and so and why it's so precious and by the way this is addressed at the very very beginning of the Torah the very beginning of the Bible we know that the Torah starts with in the beginning God created right piraeus bara elokim God created the heavens and the earth and the famous medieval commentator Rashi who is from France and he writes Rashi wrote a commentary on the entire written Torah and the entire Oral Torah the Talmud and Rashi says something amazing you asked the question why did the Torah start with talking about the creation of the world the Torah is a book of laws it's a book of teaching us how we're supposed to act what we're supposed to do in order to become holy people start with the commandments start with the mitzvot right and just tell us what we're supposed to do and Rashi says something amazing famously he says the reason why the Torah starts with the idea of God created the heavens in the earth is to teach us he says amazingly and he was he was alive in the 1000s a thousand years ago he says one day the nations of the world are going to come to the Jewish people and they're gonna say least timet em you are thieves you stole the Land of Israel this is what Rashi says a thousand years ago and he says what's gonna be our answer our answer is gonna be gracious bara elokim God created the heavens and the earth God created the world God created the earth God created the Land of Israel and he decided to give it to the Jewish people that's our answer now when I did that answer over to some students on campus they look at me and say rabbi that's not gonna fly too well you know on my college campuses God gave us the land and the truth is I think Rashi who was actually buying a lake quoting a Midrash which has even preceded him he understood that that answer maybe wasn't going to be heard by many of the nations of the world even though today many nations the Christian world right who accepts the Bible they do in some ways accept that answer but for many peoples they don't and I think Rashi understood that and what he was saying was it's not that you have to go you have to go tell the nations of the world that we that God gave us the land it's not that you have to convince them you have to convince yourselves you first and foremost have to believe that the Land of Israel that the Jewish people are connected to the Land of Israel that it's something that spiritually that it's in our DNA and it's something that we've been connected to for millennia and it's something that will always be collected connected to and if we really believe that if we really feel that connection and the why of why we care about Israel starts to starts to materialize you know a few years ago it's a number of years ago now it was I can't believe it's been over 20 years ago I had gone to Israel I'd spent a little time there and I'd come back home and home being like my I grew up in the suburbs of Chicago and I was visiting some friends and I remember this like it was literally yesterday I was sitting in the car with a couple friends and they knew I just spent time in Israel and we were talking about it a little bit and one of my friend says you know I just don't get it there's so much conflict over there there's so much violence people fighting they're just fighting about a bunch of rocks so he said they're just fighting about a bunch of rocks oh I can't they just get over it it's just a bunch of rocks and it hit me like literally right between the eyes like yeah if you just think it's a bunch of rocks what are we fighting about okay but if we realize that the Land of Israel is something that we've dreamed about for millennia that we've been connected to generation after generation that it means something it's not a bunch of rocks but it's what those rocks represent you know I read a I read a narrative not so long ago as a father and a son who actually had made aliyah they were from America they moved to the Land of Israel they were sitting in Jerusalem in their car actually read outside the old city in Jerusalem and they were stuck in traffic right outside the old city and traffic can be bad in Israel they were just stuck in traffic going nowhere and the father said to his son he said you know in a certain sense here we are sitting in the traffic jam just like any other city in the world you said but sometimes it occurs to me that the most boring details of our daily life were the actually the greatest dreams of our ancestors the most boring details of our life being here living in the Land of Israel were the greatest dreams of our ancestors if our ancestors and we're gonna talk about this more who prayed who yearned who dreamed to just see the Land of Israel let alone to be able to get on a plane and a few hours later they're there to be able to live there it was beyond their wildest dreams and yet the day-to-day running the day-to-day living in that land today is literally the dreams that have existed for thousands of years and when you think about it this is such a powerful powerful dream it's such a powerful motivator you know I think about sometimes what what over the centuries and even today what motivates people what motivates Jews across the globe to leave their homes leave their families leave their their life that they know to move to a place thousands of miles away where they probably don't speak the language they don't know how to navigate the culture they don't necessarily have a job and this has happened for centuries and centuries going back to the 1700s when there were custody shreddies very religious custody shreddies in places in Eastern Europe who literally picked up and brought their entire communities and got on boats that were by the way rickety boats their stories of boats that sank and Hassidim died on the way to just come to the land of Israel and to be in that holy place what motivates a an Ethiopian young man all right I heard this story recently there was a European young man his name was shim ohn and in 1983 one day he literally just started walking to Jerusalem him and thousands of others of Ethiopian Jews decided they were gonna walk to Jerusalem and they walked for weeks through the jungle and the desert literally there are old people that died of exhaustion there were babies that died from hunger and they continued walking until they got to the country of Sudan which unfortunately there was a there were Muslim authorities there who persecuted them and out of fear they had to hide their Jewish identity and hide their customs and they were there for months and months at a time just waiting literally for the knock on the tent from the Jew that they had heard about who was coming on eagle's wings airplanes which they had never heard of or seen before to take them to the Land of Israel and I think about even what motivates today a 25 year old American Jew who has a university education a university degree who probably has a great job lined up has financial and social success laying out in front of them and yet they decide to leave the United States of America and to move to Israel again they can barely speak the language they don't have a job what motivates these people over the centuries to do this and to me this is not about a bunch of rocks this is about an idea that Israel the Land of Israel represents an idea that for millennia we have been connected to we have yearned for we have dreamed for you know to Morrow it's actually tonight it starts and tonight and tomorrow starts what's called the three weeks it's actually one of the saddest maybe the saddest part of the Jewish calendar it culminates in three weeks from tonight in the holiday or the the the day of commemoration called tisha ba of the day that we commemorate the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem and this three weeks is a period that we actually the whole time we we are commemorating the destruction of the temples we slowly ramp up our mourning right until the final day in tisha Bubb will be fast we don't wear certain clothes and we really have a full day of mourning and they tell the story not sure it's a true story but the idea behind the story is probably be more powerful than whether the truth or not they tell the story that Napoleon was one day walking in the streets of Paris and it happened to be Tish above this day of mourning of the Jewish people and as he was walking through the streets he passed by a Jewish synagogue and he heard cries cries wailing tears coming from people inside the synagogue and he looked to his advisers and he said what's going on you know why is why are people crying inside the synagogue and when his adviser said to him you know the Jews their temple was destroyed he said their temple was destroyed how come nobody told me their temple was destroyed I said I don't know it happened 1,700 years ago right and supposedly the story goes that Napoleon said if there's a people today that are still crying 1,700 years today we'd say 2,000 years after their temple was destroyed and they will surely merit to see it rebuilt how does a person cry over something that happened 2,000 years ago in a few weeks if you go into synagogues and Israel in America and certain places on tissue above you will see people sitting on the ground and battered clothing literally with tears in their eyes how can we cry over something that happened 2,000 years ago and I think the the answer and the flipside of the tears is because we have so actively nurtured our hope our faith we have we have an amazing certainty that one day this this sentence that we are in right now called exile will end and that God will retrieve us from the four corners of the globe and he'll bring us back to the Land of Israel we we believe that so strongly we're sure of it so strongly we dream of it so strongly that when we have to think about the fact that it hasn't happened yet it brings us to tears and that's really what this time period is about you know sometimes unfortunately we can get used to a situation we're in sometimes a good thing right human beings we can adapt very quickly to a difficult situation and sometimes that's good right sometimes you know god forbid someone's blind right they their other senses become stronger they can almost get to the point right where they can maybe for a short period of time you can forget they're blind right because they've just become so used to it and in some ways unfortunately that can happen to the Jewish people as well we can become so used to the fact that we have amazing communities outside of Israel we have success financial success societal success we have beautiful synagogues we have beautiful Jewish schools we have the freedom to celebrate our holidays to express ourselves of Jews which are by the way all beautiful things but we can also forget that this is not really how it's supposed to be that we are in the state of exile and so at this time of year we remind ourselves of that that we have to remind ourselves about the yearning and the dreaming to go back to the Land of Israel you know this connection to the Land of Israel is so central to who we are its central obviously to the Torah the Bible itself our study of the Torah for centuries and centuries while we've been outside of the land of Israel has always connected us back to the Land of Israel one of the biggest one of the areas of Torah study that's in the Torah that we study until today our laws that specifically only pertain to the land of Israel there's laws for example that have to do with the physical land the land of Smith thus using the laws of shmita of the sabbatical year that every seventh year that we are commanded to let to let the Land of Israel the the agriculture lay fallow that we don't work the land right even in the centuries that we were not in the Land of Israel we studied these laws in and out right the laws of tithing again which is only applies to the Land of Israel we stayed connected to it there are certain ideas mitzvot Commandments in the Land of Israel that there's certain foods that we have to bring and eat only in Jerusalem and again you can go into study halls hundreds of years ago before Jews were in any way being able to go back to land of Israel in Poland and Eastern Europe today in America and there's we study these laws it's almost as if you know we we understand the rhythm of the planting and the harvesting as though we are farmers in the Land of Israel even though we might be sitting like very far away because we're so connected another aspect of the Torah and and the the laws that we study in the Torah that are so that are only unique to the land of Israel is the studying about the Temple in Jerusalem like I said we're about to enter this time of mourning for the temple and there are huge amounts of pages of the Talmud and other books that are written that people study day to day about how to run the temple what's gonna happen in the temple even though it doesn't exist today you know in fact a hundred and forty of the 613 mitzvot there are 613 commandments in the Torah a hundred and forty of them have to do so solely to the running of the temple in Jerusalem that's almost a quarter of the entire Torah quarter of the entire 613 mitzvot have to do only with running the temple and by the way they mentioned it before but there's another sixty five myths vote that have to do with the actual land but tithing and the sabbatical year the things I mentioned before which means you have over 200 Mitzvah a third of the entire Torah is totally a hundred percent tied to the land of Israel and like so about to say about talking about the temple itself 140 mitzvot you know they say that there were open miracles in the temple and when we start to get into the why why do we feel so connected to this place it was a place of miracles it was a place where God's presence could be felt right some of the we ever go through life asking ourselves is God there is there a higher purpose what is spirituality I find it so difficult to connect to going to the temple walking into the Temple in Jerusalem spirituality was revealed there were open miracles that were happening on a daily basis just to name a few that were that are that are amazing one miracle they say is that the rain never extinguished the fire that was on the altar that stood in the temple the temple had an altar there was a commandment to have a constant fire flame going on that altar and they say one of the miracles is that the rain doesn't matter if there were thunderstorms you know whatever it was it never extinguished that fire and maybe the deeper idea I heard this once the deeper idea is that you know rain water and fire or opposites they don't work together right but when they come together for a common purpose a common purpose of holiness a common purpose of spirituality they're able to coexist in a certain way they're able to nullify their own desires their own purpose for something bigger that they can come together for and that's what spirituality is that's what holiness is and that's what Israel represents another miracle that happened in the temple was that they would say again on this altar there was smoke that would come up from the fire and they say that the smoke would go straight directly up no matter how strong the winds were the breeze would never disperse the the smoke that would go up it would go directly up from the fire and again this is a tremendous lesson that we would see spirit reality right in front of us so many of us we we try to connect spiritually we try to uh you know connect to something bigger than us but you know what we're thrown curveballs sometimes there's a strong wind that pushes us off our purpose of what we're trying to accomplish and so again the temple was showing us this miracle but teaching us this lesson of spirituality that we had to be so laser focused and not be so to speak pushed off by a wind from what we know our real purpose is one other miracle they say that happened in the temple was that masses masses amount of people could come and fit into a very small place that that really according to all the laws of nature shouldn't be able to hold it every year on and the three major festivals Passover cheveux and Sukkot there was a mid sir for the Jewish people to pilgrimage up to the land of is up to Jerusalem and to come to the temple and they say the Talmud talks about the idea that that they would squeeze into the temple so many people would squeeze in literally they couldn't fit and it's described and in the Talmud that literally they say there were so many people squeezed together that their feet would be lifted off up above the floor because there was just not room for people to stand but the miracle was that when it came time in the prayer service for everyone to prostrate Prostate themselves to bend down on the ground all of a sudden there was plenty of room for everyone amazing was a miracle right and again when you talk about spirituality that was revealed in Israel in Jerusalem the temple what does this represents it represents this idea you know in the physical world there's limited resources if I have this car you can't have it right if I have this house you can't have it but in the realm of spirituality there's room for everyone there's space for everyone right there's no competition when it comes to spirituality and so when they got to the temple as crammed in as they were when they went to prostrate to bow themselves down to God there was enough room for everyone so first of all we see this when we talk about this idea of of yearning of dreaming for Israel being connected to Israel why we're connected we see there's it come in our torah study whether it's the studying and about the the myths about that have to do with the land the myths or they have to do with the temple that through the centuries even though these three couldn't do these things we stay connected to them we also stay connected to Israel through our prayers through our longing for the land right every day three times a day even if we come to synagogue and pray every time we eat a meal and if we say a blessing after the meal we invoke our dream to return to our homeland it's it's codified into our daily routine so that we're constantly talking about it remembering it thinking about it you know it's interesting there's a prayer in our daily prayers where we pray for rain during the winter we pray for rain and in the summer we pray for do now what's interesting is that no matter what the weather is outside my door I live in New Jersey now no matter you know how much it's raining here in New Jersey no matter how sunny it is right that's not what I'm praying for my prayers no matter wherever I am in the world are based on the schedule of seasons and the weather of the Land of Israel that's really what I'm praying for I go by the schedule of the rain season in the summer season right and I pray for rain and Dew in that place because that's where my prayers are directed and we know somebody at not only our prayers but so many other parts of our of our Jewish customs and our Jewish actions that we do I mentioned this last night but just to mention it again when two Jews get married under the canopy the highlight of the wedding right when everyone says Mazel Tov right actually right before that before we get to that point we say under the canopy if I forget you Jerusalem let my right hand wither right this idea again at this pinnacle of happiness of joy of two people coming together and love and commitment we remember Jerusalem and we say we commit that if I forget Jerusalem let my right hand wither and then we break the glass and everyone says Mazel Tov again why to remember the destruction of the temples to remember that we'd have to stay connected to that dream and that next year in Jerusalem the shrine aha Bob you shall I am we say on Passover at the Passover Seder when we're re-enacting our freedom we realize that the only true freedom that we can have is by being in Israel you know even I've come to learn recently there's a Jewish Ethiopian holiday called cig and have you ever heard of sig it's an interesting holiday it's an Ethiopian Jews have this holiday it's a it's it's exactly 50 days after Yom Kippur and what they would do even when they were in Ethiopia they would come from remote provinces but they do it also today the ones that are in Israel they trek up a mountain dressed in white fasting and what they used to do in Ethiopia they would turn towards Zion and they would pray for their return right today in Israel they prayed towards Jerusalem and they pray for its rebuilding so this idea of constantly being connected in our daily routines and our prayers and our Torah study of thinking about the miracles that the holiness the spirituality that Israel represented this is what the dream is this is what the vision is this is what the why of why we're so connected to that place you know in in more modern Jewish history a story but I always like like to talk about is that in the late 1800s Early 1900s as we know modern Zionism was created now the idea of modern Zionism was that pogroms anti-semitism was intensifying across Europe that we needed a solution for the problem of Jewish homelessness that the Jews were were unprotected we needed to go to a place that was our own and there was little political support across Europe for a Jewish homeland the ottomans who controlled the Land of Israel itself did not want the Jews to come back they were not accepting of any type of autonomy or independence for the Jews in the Land of Israel and in 1903 Theodor Herzl who was the leader of the modern Zionist movement was approached by the British and he was approached by the British with an idea that the Jews would be given territory for independence in Eastern Africa it was called the the Uganda plan that basically the British thought listen if we give the Jews an independent territory in Eastern Africa and will have a very nice colony that will be loyal to us and the Jews will be happy and Herzl was incredibly torn by this he believed that his vision of Zionism his vision of the Jews coming back was to the Land of Israel but he was also incredibly he felt pragmatic and he felt that who knows we see already the increased hatred and terrorism and violence that's happened to the Jews and who knows this was 1903 who knows the horrific horrors that might lie ahead and so Herzl walked into the Zionist Congress in 1903 and he put up a map of Eastern Africa behind him at the podium and he addressed the delegates and he said I say this with a torn heart but I'm urging you and I'm urging us to consider the danger that the Jewish people face and to accept this offer of the British to create a Jewish colony in Uganda Wow I went to wanted to be him up on that podium because he but he received was what was a very difficult response the the the accounts that I've read was there was a almost immediately there was a young Russian Jewish woman who marked straight up unto the podium and ripped down the map of Africa that was behind Herzl it was mainly a secular socialist group of delegates led by haim Weitzman who had become the first president of the State of Israel but that delegation of of socialist secular Jews they walked out when Herzl was done speaking and they say this is unbelievable in the timing now that we're talking about this three weeks and Tish above the time of the destruction the temples where we cry they saved walked out of hurt CIL's speech and they went into an adjacent room and they sat on the floor in mourning as Jews do on Tish above because they said this is not the dream we did not come this far this many centuries in millennia of exile and maybe yes we don't we're not observant to this in in the traditional way but it's in our hearts it's in our souls the Jewish people are meant to go back to the Land of Israel and that this is what them and this is what it's about you know there's an interesting debate in Jewish law about whether technically is there a mitzvah is there a commandment to live in the Land of Israel and there's a famous debate between two of the most famous medieval rabbis one was Nachman ADIZ and one was Maimonides nock modernise when he codified Jewish law the 613 mitzvot he says yes absolutely there's no question the Torah says it clearly it tells Abraham go to the Land of Israel and tells Isaac and Jacob and it tells the Jewish people you're gonna live in the land of Israel he says absolutely one of the 613 mitzvot is to live in the Land of Israel surprisingly Maimonides when he codifies Jewish law and he codifies the 613 mitzvot he does not include living in the Land of Israel as one of those laws and all the commentators are perplexed how could it be that Maimonides does not include it in the 613 and they're really perplexed because he spends ample time and ample space talking about how important it is to live in the Land of Israel just a few things he quotes a few things from the Talmud he quotes the idea the Talmud says that a person who walks the language is four emotes which is a an Amman a Moute is a is a distance it's about let's say seven or eight feet someone who walks that distance seven or eight feet in the Land of Israel the Talmud says and the Rambam quotes it says that person is assured to go to the world to come that's how holy just to walk let alone live in the Land of Israel just a walk in the land of Israel a person is assured you go to the world to come Maimonides also quotes the talmud that says a person who dwells in the diaspora is like a person person who worships idols all right no that's that might put some people on the edge of their seat I'm not looking at anyone particular I'm sitting here in New Jersey that's where the Talmud says right a person who dwells in the Diaspora is like one who worships idols maybe a way to understand that is that the the Talmud is saying that it's so the environment we live in is so important and putting ourselves in the proper spiritual environment right is so important and if we don't we get impacted by that environment and so if we're not living in the Land of Israel which is supposed to be this place of holiness and spirituality it's as if we're worshipping idols because we are getting impacted by false ideas and flossed morals that are all around us but my manatees quotes these things which seem to say it's pretty important to live in the Land of Israel he actually codifies to other parts of Jewish law he says by the way that a pro is not allowed to leave the Land of Israel once you're there except for three reasons to make a living to get married or to study Torah those are the three reasons why a person can leave so again he's saying it's so important and finally you know he actually says this is I don't know if this is good marriage advice but Maimonides quote brings down is Jewish law that if a married couple if one of the spouses wants to make alia to move to the Land of Israel and the other one doesn't that is grounds for divorce that's what he says right he's not again he's not giving marriage advice he's not saying that's what you should do hopefully both want to go but that's how serious this is right that a person's connectional indivisible so how can Maimonides not codified as one of the 613 mitzvot so there's different answers that are given one of the answers is that that that Maimonides was really I'd say the main answer the main answer which I think is that is is is the is the best answer is that my MA days is saying that living in the land of Israel is so fundamental to so much else in the Torah if not everything else in the Torah that it's beyond one individual Mitzvah meaning it's not that he's arguing with knock my knees and saying now I don't count it he's saying it's a it's a meta Mitzvah it's a super Mitzvah it's worth even more than a mitzvah and that's why I'm not including it in the 613 you know we started this tonight by me talking about the why what is the why and so we talked a lot tonight about how we're connected to the land of Israel what we do to be connected Land of Israel how we dream and envision to go back to the Land of Israel but again the ultimate question is why why is that place so important and I think what it comes down to is understanding that the Jewish people have a mission in this world the Jewish people have a mission to be a godly people to be a people of spirituality to be a people of holiness a people of kindness a people of service a people to make the world a better place by bringing values and morals into the world that is the mission of the Jewish people to bring this holiness to the entire world now we can do that as individuals an individual can try to be holy can try to bring spirituality into this world we can do it as a community we can get together with other people other Jews other people are like-minded and try to have a bigger impact but ultimately if we want to really fulfill our mission and potential in this world we can't just do this mission as individuals and we can't do this mission just as a community we have to do it as a nation we have to do it as the nation of the Jewish people who has a shared common mission to bring godliness and holiness into the world and so Judaism is really meant to be lived communally it's really ultimately meant to live be lived nationally that there's a shared national ethics and behaviors to bring godliness into the world and so Israel the Land of Israel is the gift that God has given us where the Jewish people can come together as a nation and fulfill their collective mission of bringing spirituality and values and morals into the world the land itself has superpowers to help us accomplish that whether it's like the temple which I mentioned before where there's open miracles whether it's just you know you go to the the hills of spot or the the streets of Jerusalem and you just feel more connected you feel more connected to spirituality to holiness the Land of Israel is that place where we can come together as a nation to fulfill our purpose this is just the tip of the iceberg there's so much more we could talk about the Jewish connection Land of Israel but I hope tonight you just got a little bit of taste you know this as I said as we go into this three weeks as we go up to tisha Bob and we we think about and we mourn the destruction of the temples the question is why what are we missing what are we missing do we even realize we are missing something I hope after tonight we can a little bit realize we are missing the ability to connect and to fulfill our purpose in the ultimate way we can do it as individuals we can do it in the Diaspora a little bit we can do the best we can but ultimately to fulfill our mission as a people soon in our days we should all hopefully be inspired to go back the Land of Israel as a people as a nation and to fulfill our true purpose thank you very much tomorrow night will be the last class in the series talking about more the modern day issues the Trump planned annexation plan so please join us for that have a great night