The Mitzvah of Yishuv Eretz Yisrael - Living in the Land of Israel (#1) By Rabbi Yitzchak Breitowitz

good morning everyone I hope you're well apologize for being a little bit a little late uh so uh once again we're kind of discussing the various mitzvot that come are connected either to the paraa or the time of year uh today I'm going to discuss something that is peripherally connected to the para but it's really not from the para itself know we recently had uh celebrated Y and then y sh and um micop no I don't uh and uh there's no microphone today uh and uh for whatever reason uh I didn't talk about those well I talked about I did not talk about uh because we were doing something else we were Mish in the middle of it but I want to talk a little bit about the Mitzvah of and this is important this is obviously connected to par because after all what happens in the para there are 12 Spies that are sent to check out Eric Israel and they come back with the conclusion 10 of them 10 out of the 12 come back with a very negative report we can't do it we can't do it we can't make it uh they not only lost their faith in Hashem but they also unfortunately caused many of the Jewish people to lose their faith in aades baru and the only holdouts were the righteous spies yahushua and K W and as a result of theim it was Nar on our forefathers that they would wander in the desert for a total of 40 years they would die out and only those who were born in the desert or those who were less than 20 at the time of The Exodus were permitted to enter Aris so one of the major lessons not the only lesson of theim is uh that one should not be negative one should not be Moy that one living in Israel certainly has many many many challenges uh some of the challenges simply involve you know getting a job Aliah adjusting to a new culture sometimes uh one puts themselves into even a lifethreatening situation um I got a letter this morning I I I I I do get hate mail maybe I should not uh maybe I shouldn't use my classes as a way to event but more or less I was kind of I was kind of accused of being a murderer somebody sent me a picture of a young American Boy uh who made Al the with his family and joined the army and was killed in Gaza I mean and again Yin and uh he will certainly have a big share inabah but the letter he sent me pictures and then he sent me something like uh he lost his life because some fanatic told him he was supposed to come to Israel he says do you know any such people which is a pretty clear which is a pretty clear reference I think to me and uh okay my basic response was that it is always a tragedy and we pray for Shalom and certainly this young man will have a Sharon Haba but it's frankly stupid to send me a letter of a person getting I mean last year somebody moved from Scranton Pennsylvania to Baltimore and they got killed you know in a street robbery so what someone going to say oh some fanatic told him to move to Baltimore you know and that caused his life I mean unfortunately tragedies do happen so life in erel can be very very difficult but you know uh we have enough problems with the we don't need modern Orthodox character there apparently is a little bit of a development in the modern Orthodox World which had always been very Zionist uh and I've gotten I guess I and I received Communications about this that it's totally wrong to encourage Aliah it's totally wrong to talk about people moving to AR Isel because it's irresponsible on the part of rabbis and teachers to even encourage this uh because they ruin lives so uh this is the I call this the modern Orthodox Nur car it's a relatively new newer development uh within the modern Orthodox World in which uh the whole idea of mentioning Aliah is considered to be irr responsible and the like so I think it's appropriate in the par of the morim theim to talk a little bit just about the Mitzvah and I'm not here to be political in any way uh my political venting is finished so I finished that and I'm just want I just want to give what here just like as I say it's a little hard when you're indirectly accused of being a murderer uh not to uh not to respond did you know this person no it's Anonymous letter of course I maybe I do know him I don't know but you know Anonymous letter right right right right so the great courage of of anonymous attack the funny thing is whenever I respond with a little bit of bite they get real real offended it's an amazing thing uh you know people can dump on you they can say whatever they want and the slightest little response that's a little bit non- defferential to you know how dare you know you attack me type of thing and just just an amazing amazing thing okay anyway I shouldn't I shouldn't bother you with all of this but okay but but it does happen uh and I call it hate mail and I I often talk about it at least I allude to anyway okay let's talk about the Mitzvah so as you know the rambam my manes wrote a very good book it's a short book and this is before the mishna Torah and that short book is called saz and uh in which the rambam enumerates the 613 mitzvos of the Torah now I need to explain why this is a bit of a pathbreaking book it's pathbreaking because we do have a Rabin tradition in the gamar in makos the gamar in makos tells us that Hashem gave 613 mitzvos to Moshe at har uh and it even breaks it down into 248 positive Commandments Rak and that corresponds to your bones you have 248 bones and every Mitzvah revives a bone and then there are 365 negative Commandments Thou shalt not do and uh they correspond thear gives two interpretations either to the 365 Senus or ligaments in the body or the 365 days in a solar year it's interesting that we use a solar year in this calculation and uh each Mitzvah belongs to a certain day so the idea of was very very makal among because it has its source in the gar now indeed the ramban actually suggests as a speculation that perhaps it's not an article of faith maybe it's the only individual opinion of a certain tana and if you didn't come up with 613 maybe you don't have a problem and the ramban actually debates this but even the Ran's Mas is that we go with the number tag and there's a from theu M gave us a Torah the gatria of Torah is 611 so the gamar says that's not 63 the answer is ah Moshe communicated to us 611 but two Commandments we heard directly from Hashem and what are the two Commandments of the two the first two of the I am the Lord your God you out of M and number one and number two thou shalt not have any other gods now as a little aside although it's not my topic an interesting question is you see from the gar that I am the Lord your God that took you out of MIT is counted as one of the mitv that's how you get to 613 question is what is it commanding you know a Mitzvah is either to do something if it's a Mitzvah say or not to do something if it's a so so the second one Thou shalt not have any other gods okay that's a Commandments uh not to engage in idol worship or polytheism but the first statement I am the Lord your God who took you out of MIM is simply a declaration what is it commanding so it's interesting that the rambam explains that an is a Mitzvah called amuna there is a MIT to believe in God now ramban asks that that's not that's an incoherence Mitzvah because either way you look at it if I believe in God for whatever the reason then I don't need to be commanded to believe in God if I don't believe in God what is the source of the commander that will obligate me to do so it's like an athe an atheist says I don't believe in God so I tell the atheist you must believe in God the atheist says why must I believe in Gods because God says so right makes no sense so Raman actually asks how can there be a Mitzvah ofuna all Commandments flow once you're a m once I believe there is a God then I am obligated to keep his Commandments but how can there be a commandment to believe in God but the truth of the matter is the rambam himself explains that the Mitzvah of belief in God is not directed to The Atheist because it would be a meaningless statement to him it's directed to the believer but a person who believes through tradition through upbringing uh through childhood Etc is commanded to investigate the philosophical foundations of the existence of God and therefore to turn it from Blind Faith according to the rambam faith actually means rational Faith take you who believe in God As a matter of Blind Faith investigate the rationality of this position so it becomes as Vivid to you as a firm intellectual truth now this is an amazing thing because the very thing that the rambam considers to be a Mitzvah others consider to be an AA as the rambam basically says a Jew is obligated to investigate the philosophical foundations of monotheism now as you know there were many in Claus in fact one might even say this is the prevailing Trend today that we don't want to open up the Pandora's Box because after all when you command a person to philosophically investigate the truth of a proposition you don't really know where they're going to come out and therefore most have said better not to open the Pandora's Box so it's interesting what the rambam considered to be a Mitzvah many would condemn as an AA I'm just to give you a very simple example the ramban wrote the mishna Torah which is his great compendium of Jewish law and the ramban wrote the guy to the perplex now just a few weeks ago I had a person from the outside wander into the OR Med and he asked me um he was looking at the bookshelves where can I find a copy of the morim here well it's kind of an inside joke but if you're familiar with Yesa Bas medes the answer is you're not going to find it the rambam's work of mishor is in every Bas medish in the world in a prominent place it is constantly used and referred to the mor may be hidden away in a back room somewhere yeah even in our we have our Mor put in various places but it's not on the Shelf in other words that type of philosophical uh Exposition is actually discouraged in many many ways so it's very interesting that according to the rambam that is actually the essence of Amun bashem to convert the Blind Faith into a rationally philosophically coherent type of amuna the same thing befell in some ways theas which is earlier than the Raba the Great Book of Pak dealing with ethics morality one of the great great mus for him duty of the heart so it's divided into chapters and the chapters are called shim sh so the very first chapter is called sh the book of the unity which philosophically demonstrates the existence of a Creator and a typical statement is that of the Von who says all of is but you should only start from chapter two uh which talks about and the like do not do chapter one uh and indeed even in modern translations of the they'll prce chapter one they won't censor the book but they will not even translate it sometimes so this issue which is not really my topic I I I I don't want to address it today but this issue of philosophical Foundation versus traditional faith is actually a very very burning issue it's uh been an issue that goes back hundreds and hundreds of years in the time of the rambam as you know there were communities that banned the study of the morim even communities that might have burned the mor we're not entirely clear uh and this does exist to the present day now I just say a Yesa like or uh where I my other job uh is a little bit of a different situation because when you're dealing with cha they have been actively exposed to Richard do Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens and they're aware of the atheistic ideas out there so as a result the Yeshiva has more of an obligation to address it but if you're talking about people who are ffbs so to speak so there's a live debate do we expose our children to these arguments and try to refute them or do we basically say don't open up the Pandora's Box now you understand that I'm not here to be M on this at all but you understand that either path is fraught with a lot of danger because if the ideas will simply say well let's not open up the Pandora's Box let's not address these issues let's just go with M what's going to happen in a world of internet and you know in a in a world that's pretty open in which eventually they will come across whether it's Evolution or or whatever whatever the challenge will be and they were not given any type of response within the misgar of their so they may very well conclude that Judaism has no answer to all of these arguments so it might be better to engage in what you might call preemptive strike in which we bring up the issues and then we try to address them of course you need teachers who are capable of doing that that's another issue not every teacher is is capable of doing that uh on the other hand the problem is if you expose kids to certain ideas perhaps they have gone there and who knows where it's going to take them so this is one of those things in which either decision you make is going to have risks and one has to assume what is the better course but I do want to point out though that according to the rambam this gets raised to a whole different level because it's not simply a question of pedagogical decision making according to the ramban that is the essence of amuna bashem is to establish the rational and philosophically Justified basis for Faith okay now as I say these are interesting digressions this is actually not my topic but I just want to introduce this yeah when does it count yeah when does it count in other words I believed in God the first uh 20 years of my life then I became a heretic do I get 20 years of of of faith in God um it's hard to know I I would say that every second you believe in God is is a Mitzvah so you don't so you don't necessarily lose lose although it is interesting the gar has a concept in that we might call negative CH the same way Chua erases sin when I regret my sins the sins are erased fascinatingly and very troubling there is a concept that if I did mitzvos and then I do sins I don't lose my but if I regret the mitzvos that I've done I say this was stupid I wish I didn't do it the talud says you actually lose your mitzah I call that negative chuba because the same way you can do Chua on bad and get it erased God forbid you can do chuva on good in fact this is actually very no by the way because if we assume there's a Mitzvah of living in erel let's assume I come to erel and I did a Mitzvah and then I regret I feel I wish I never came here that's different than simply saying I have to go back you know that that's one thing but I wish I never came here you know what that means according to kadan you've lost all of the Mitzvah of so in that sense if I became an atheist I might lose my amuna in that in that way okay this was a a long digression just to talk about the idea of tag okay now here's the problem even though the gamar does give us the statement that there are 613 and indicates two of the 613 there is no statement in Kaz listing what the 613 Commandments are there is no Mitzvah list in K uh and the problem is if you went through the Torah and you went through every time God said to do something you would get a lot more than in fact um if I could draw an analogy to the Christian Bibles you know the Christian Bibles have a shtick which is actually an interesting stick a little bit that both in the Old Testament and in the Christian Bible they're called the New Testament whenever God speaks they put it in red I don't know if you ever ever saw this um the text is black but when the Lord speaks they put it in Red so it gets highlighted so you know that's actually not not such a bad idea in theory so you see the words of Hashem so the thing is if you look at every time in the Torah God says to do something you will get something like 5,000 statements I mean what are you going to say and God said let there be light is there a Mitzvah Thou shalt have light so the problem is how do you identify the 6113 from a much larger grouping of imperative Commandments that are in or imperative statements that are in the Kum so the rambam was not the first one who attempted a list of the 613 and fact the ramam refers to his predecessors and often criticizes them that's why he wrote the sa Mitzvah uh the earliest is in a safare called hilos gdos uh and this is one of the earliest Works after the gamarra itself uh it's an anonymous work although there are at least two people that are credited as possible author one is R Shimon kayara the other is R but whoever it is the author is referred to as the B hilot the author of hilot and that's abbreviated bah so when people say bahag they are referring to the saer hos and he is the first one who attempted a listing of the 613 mitzvos of the Torah but his list is is a bit odd and the rambam attacks it quite a lot for example the bahag counts lighting nroa that's one of the 613 Mitzvah of the Torah and obviously you would imagine that the ramban has a bit of a field day on those particular things now uh later person who wrote A sa mitzvot is raon the great Ron also wrote a sa mitzvot that moves in different directions and the like but the rambam and also there were many many poems that were recited on sh recite these poems to this very day there's a whole genre called thear and these are poetic Renditions of the 6113 mitzvos that you know akot which is our the ashkenazic poem now that's what we recite don't have akot uh they have other things and some of the other things they have in I'm talking about uh are what are called the uh one of the most important tarat was written by also a very famous person before the rambam r schomo i gab and you may know him as the author of Adon but he was also a very very great philosopher he was considered to be a great thinker he wrote very deep philosophical works and one of the things he did was he also wrote a poetic rendition of the 613 mitv and the rambam is critical of all three the rambam is critical of bahag Ron R schob IB gabal he even has statement there that he doesn't blame poets because they're trying to write poetry and they're not necessarily going to be Hally accurate and the rambam therefore wanted to compile a definitive list of the 613 and the saer mitzvot is in three parts it's a small book but it's three parts I'll I'll first mention part two and three then I'll go back to one part two is a listing of the 248 positive Commandments part three is a listing of the 365 negative Commandments each MIT he identifies the pasuk and he gives you a brief description so he says I'm not going to give you all of the of these mitv that's in my Mish Torah but you'll have a listing that it's not just it's a listing with a brief explanation of what the Mitzvah is so part two are the mitv part three are the mitz now before I get to part one you already see that there may be some problems in the rambam's organization because keep in mind that often in the text of the Torah itself the Torah has both the negative and the positive let's take Shabbat as an example in the fourth Commandment of the aser Adas so so it says let's say in remember the day of shabas to be holy and then it says they're right next to each other but in the ramban Z will be in part two somewhere and Sh or sham as well will be later in other words because the rambam decided to First give you all the positives and then give you all the negatives by definition mitzvot that are talking about the same subject may be very very separated another issue with the rambam and this is still a mystery that has not been totally addressed is the order of presentation when the rambam lists the positives and the rambam lists the negatives he is not following the order of the Torah anyway the problem is what order is he following uh the brisar said that that's a bit of a mystery apparently the ramban looked at the saer mitv as his outline for the mishna Torah so more or less but not completely the order of presentation will follow the order of the in his massive Mish Torah but not exactly and one would just have to assume that as the rambam wrote the mishna Torah he deviated from his outline without going back to the outline but the most plausible explanation is that before the rambam wrote his massive halakic work that deals with every detail of Jewish law his outline was a listing of the mitzvot and he wrote it based on his conceptual structure which itself you can talk about of the mishna Torah okay now part two once again is MIT part three are mitv what is part one part one is by far the most Innovative unique part of the rambam's book and that is he tried to set out 14 fundamental principles to explain how he got to his count because he addresses head on the idea that there are many many more Commandments in the Torah than 63 so how do we determine what makes the list what doesn't make the list and therefore he basically says before I give you my listings I'm going to give you the principles which determined how we make these decisions that is very unique no other safer had ever done that uh whether it's the bahag he just gives you a listing rone he just gives you a listing the ramban wanted to make this a scientific study so to speak now I'm not going to go over all of them just mentioned a few uh some of them are very obvious you don't count Rabin laws draan as the 613 like Hanukah and Milla that's one thing I say you don't count the oral laws that are derived from the 13 principles of interpretation because they're not explicit in the Torah and then he says you don't count laws that were temporary and not meant to be permanent for example the rambam says there's a Prohibition in the Torah not to leave the man overnight and this is written as a negative commandment Thou shalt not leave man overnight well it's a is it a commandment of God it absolutely is a commandment of God it's a is it a d you say yeah it's a Torah commandment so why don't I find on my Mitzvah list Thou shalt not leave the on overnight the answer is because this was by definition a temporary Commandment that was only designed to be in existence as long as the Mana was falling so therefore the 613 the rambam says refers only to what you might call permanent legislation it does not refer to Temporary Commandments that were given in the desert for example the book of amidor is filled with these temporary Commandments for example when the Jewish people travel uh M Yehuda should be in front of the line now that's a Divine commandment but we don't count that mitah because that was knowing in the midw now here you can understand that it will be different m in whether something is temporary or permanent but this is the idea and then the rambam goes further and says that steps that are part of a longer process we don't count each step as a mitzvah for example when you bring a corbon a sin offering so the Torah says you it the Coen skins it the Coen sprinkles the blood if you count each statement as a Mitzvah you're going to get 25 mitzvos in the Sin offering itself the rambam says no this is part of a process there is a Mitzvah called bringing a sin offering and bringing a sin offering happens have 25 steps but we don't count each step as a separate Miss now there's R is trying to explain to you how you classify things in terms of the 613 Shabbat there are 39 types of M but we don't say oh there's an is to harvest and to write that would give you 39 you'd run out of your 613 pretty quickly if you want with that the answer is there's only one Mitzvah Low T do not do on shabas one it happens to be there are 39 different ways you can violate it so this first part of the rambam is very pathbreaking because he turned the counting of mitzvot into a real scientific Endeavor in terms of rules and and the like and the ramban who argues with the rambam most of his arguments around the formulation of those rules which will obviously have practical implications later right so this is part one 2 and three part one are what are called theim the roots of how mitzvas are counted part two is the Mitzvah part three is the Mitzvah now there are later works on the Mitzvah that are very very popular and in fact the most popular work going through the Mitzvah of the Torah is the saer H beautiful beautiful work uh the author of The saer for many years was thought to be RAV Aron Hali from Barcelona a reown after the rambam and the ramban uh but I think uh most modern identifiers uh think that that's not true and we really don't know who who who wrote it but is education and uh the M does write in the introduction that he wrote the in order to for his own child in order to train his child in the mitv of the Torah uh what is unique about the is that in addition to describing the Mitzvah and largely the SE bases his description on ramban and he brings in ramban a lot as well so the is based on the ramban but the also adds an extra dimension of trying to give you the reason and the Phil opy of the Mitzvah now the r himself does that in the but in thez the r does not give you reasons for Mitzvah at all and therefore the tries to give you primarily the moral spiritual philosophical basis of a Mitzvah and what is unique about the as well is he departed from the organizational structure of the rambam that instead of listing all the mitv and the mitzvot the follows the order of so inid he will give you all of the MIT ofid whether it's Ora that's why in there's only three and not eating the so the is based on the ran although he does add insights from ramban uh but he changed the organization now there is a makus actually if the change of organization is from the himself or a later person we don't really know and some have suggested that the originally wrote the saer in the order of the and somebody later had the idea of but be as it may the as we have it is a par has based Li so some par you have very few mitv other par like he say say you may have 72 mitzvot and the like uh but it's something to think about uh if you're looking for something to learn um I see now that Arts scoll came out uh with a with both in Hebrew with commentary and in uh and in English so it might be a very beautiful LOD certainly if one were to take on a project that I I'd like to learn the 613 mitv that would be a wonderful wonderful project although that's pretty big now uh let me point out that the itself became a foundation for later which go far far far far a field the is an example but the which is 19th century cannot be it is not a commentary in the's point is not to explain the the point is to use the as an excuse to go into beautiful about whatever the Mitzvah is so just uses the and then goes into gazillions of very very interesting questions but in no way could you call the a commentary let me mention one more book again this is a long segue to I'm not sure we'll totally get to it but we'll if we don't if we don't finish it this week we're will be M so we will very definitely cover the topic but you need to have a little bit of bibliographical understanding of the of the sources The Who 20th century uh died in 1933 wrote a safer that's called the abbreviated saer mitv which is available in English as well and these are the mitv that apply today when you don't have a b Mikes so many many MIT are connected to the bik to Theos so the understood that not everybody would be able to learn all of the 613 they may be a little difficult or a little intricate but at least they should be familiar with the mitv that apply today so he wrote an abbreviated say mitzvot which is together both the negatives and the positives is around 250 or so so out of the 63 There are 250 that apply today so again if you're looking for a project uh you might consider the saer okay so this is a book called saer mitzvos It's a very very interesting a book particularly the clim the shim the roots of the r enumerated and as I've indicated a few times ran ra mosha benman who was in The Generation after the ramban wrote critiques of the sa Mitzvah at various points the ramban argued and one should know by the way that one of the meta Tendencies of ramban is ramban was a great great great defender and protector of earlier authorities that whenever a commentary attacks earlier authorities the ramban tries to come to their defense now since the rambam shim are primarily attacks on the bahag andon the ramban tries to answer those attacks and justify the earlier positions sometimes he justifies the earlier positions by saying that they're right you know proving it and sometimes he admits that the rambam is correct but he at least wants you to understand that there was some basis uh for what the earlier Authority said that it wasn't as foolish God forbid as you might assume even though he's not actually endorsing that position and these are called hot ranot are the ramban's criticisms of the sa MIT just like the rid didot on the mishna Torah that's a separate thing the ramban wrote length a much more lengthy on the sa mitz the brisar used to say that what made him he felt was intensively analyzing the MIM between R and ran they're so analytically precise and interesting that you really develop an understanding of how we derive mitv from various PIM in the Torah and he said that that was something that sharpens him a much earlier Authority ra Shimon Ben who's known as the Tet wrote that uh one who learns the sa mitv with the ramban's uh commentary will find that the Torah knowledge he possessed before as compared to the Torah knowledge he possesses after is like Kip it is like the skin of garlic in other words it was so thin in terms of the before and after so this is a Lima that's very very again it's an advanced l i I wouldn't say unlike the or the which is more accessible the actual rambam and ramban is a bit of an in-depth study but it is something on an advanced level that's a very very rewarding thing okay so here's the thing so the rambam writes the sa mitv with three parts part one part two part three and the ramban is commenting and arguing all along throughout the entire book but at the end of the rambam's book The ramban adds an appendix he says there are some MIT say that the rambam left out and therefore the following mitv should be added and there are some mitv that the rambam left out and they should be added so in addition to all of his comment AR the ramban says we have to add Commandments to the rambam's list now you understand that this immediately creates a certain problem of counting because if you are wedded to the 613 and the r rambam has given you 613 he gives you 613 and ramban is then saying you have to add this and you have to add that and you have to add that you got a problem you're going to get more than 613 and we're wedded to the number 613 so trust the ran he knows what he's doing uh one has to know every it's a zero some game every one that he added he took something else away now the way he takes it away though is not just by deleting you don't delete a Mitzvah but by subsuming it under other mean you take a certain thing that's counted separately and you consider it to be a detail of a larger Mitzvah and the ramban did this engineering so to speak in which he felt that certain Mitzvah would have to be add it and therefore you have to collapse and join MIT that the rambam treated as separate so it's a whole it's like you got to cover your bases in that way okay so a number of the ramban's additions now now the truth of the matter is in a way they're just covering different bases meaning to say the rambam joins certain things that the ramban said should be separated and therefore the ramban had to join other things that the ramban felt were separated right so we kind of separate this separate that classify this classify that okay but in substance one of the most important additions that the Raman makes to the rambam's list is the ramban adds as a mitv called and the ramban adds it in the middle of a list remember this is not the only thing the ran is not simply writing his eye in this book The ramban has a long list of mitv that have to be added but in the middle there one of the things that he adds is yes so first of all where does the Torah say that where does the Torah say according to the ramban that there's a commandment to live in a Israel so the ramban deres it from a PK again it's not in this week's para but the p in at the end of the book of Aid V you shall inherit the land and you shall dwell in the land now I'll discuss how the rambam understands that ping but let's put that aside today we're just looking at ramban ramban understands this as not a temporary Mitzvah to the generation of yua n because that you wouldn't you wouldn't count that as a MIT right Commandments given just to yua would not count but rather this is a mitvah a mitvah for all generations and the ran underscores even when there's no B mikdash called Isel a Mitzvah called living in Israel a mitzvah Ora that is no for both men and women men and women and it's no all generations even when there is no B mikash even without a mashia all of those things now he then proceeds to explain something very interesting that we don't always talk about the Mitzvah of yes Isel comprises four subcomponents there are four different aspects of yesel so it's not just living in Israel although that's included aspect number one which is very fascinating there's a Mitzvah on CL Israel that all land that is within the biblical boundaries of AR Israel be conquered and placed under Jewish sovereignty now as you know the boundaries of er Israel as described in the Torah are actually much large greater is are much larger than the boundaries of the state of Israel putting aside even Gaza and the like but but even in terms of north parts of Syria parts of Jordan would be included uh now it is true the other the other the other way is also true there are parts of the state of Israel that may Hally not be ER Israel a lot is a well I don't want to say for sure but a lot is a possible example of territory that is within the state of Israel but it's not necessarily within the boundaries of AR Israel and that's why many people in lot keep two days of Y of course most people in lot don't don't even keep one day of Y but that's but that's a separate issue but the religious Jews who live in a lot uh many of them will keep two days because technically a lot may have the status of but by and large K is is larger than Med Israel so according to ramban ramban is saying that part of yes Isel is to conquer assimilate within Jewish sovereignty all territory that is within the H know the Torah boundaries the boundaries of er Israel now if this can be done without War do it without War but but but if that would require War you do so so this people don't don't realize that according to ramban um Not only would territorial giveaways be prohibited like ramban again this is only one half of the coin but we would actually have to go out and Conquer in fact the ramban says that conquering ER Isel even aggressively would be called a Mitzvah meaning Mitzvah according to ran is not only a war of Defense such as we're fighting now against an aggressor it would actually justify what international law would call a war of aggression if it is to conquer the territory now again I'll discuss why according to ramban we still would not advise this there there are reasons but we're just doing you know theoretical I don't want to get arrested or called in for questioning uh or whatever what whatever it is so that's component number one now that also means the following that also means according to ramban you know the idea of NRI which we will talk about extensively that you're not allowed to have a Medina until the coming of mashia and I I will discuss that that Source extensively we're not going to get to it today but it would seem that ramban definitionally must reject that idea because according to the ramban it would appear that is not only permitted but it is part of the Mitzvah of yes is to establish je I'm not even talking Messianic I'm talking about that the mitvah of is not just living in Palestine but it's the establishment of Jewish sovereignty that's exactly what he's saying that all of the land has to be under Jewish rule so that's an interesting point that the ramban finds in the Mitzvah an obligation to establish a m now we can debate and again maybe we'll touch upon this you know is Israel a Jewish State there's Arab participation okay we we'll leave that for later but but to Simply say is against is absolutely contradicted by the ramban's assertion that Jewish Mah is part of is so that's component number one of four component number two is interesting even when the land is under Jewish sovereignty there is a Mitzvah that it should be m m means it should be settled meaning do not leave the land sh do not leave the land desolate or empty use it for residential use agricultural use industrial use even aesthetic use in other words if it's Parks or whatever it would be that's not Shama but don't simply abandon it meaning there's actually a Mitzvah to build up the land that I don't necessarily mean by building but but to you know make the land productive and useful in various ways now this Mitzvah by the way can be fulfilled even without living here so when you give when you plant a tree in Israel you give to Jewish National Funds whatever it is that's a when you pick up garbage when you walk by and you pick up a gum wrapper whatever it would be you are fulfilling a certain aspect of yes by making the land more beautiful more that is the second component that do not let the land become sh but try to make it meev now the third component this is all the ramban is a psychological component and you wouldn't even know what the ramban is talking about unless you know much later history in which the ramban is seem to be a prophet he says that no matter where a Jew lives a Jew is not allowed to regard any other country in the world as the Jewish National home other than ER Israel meaning even if I don't live in Israel I live in America and I'm an American citizen and you know I contribute to American society which I properly should do indeed but I have to in my heart at least believe understand that Eric is is the homeland of the Jewish people and anyone whose attitude is that we don't need ER is is violating the Mitzvah of uh now this is interesting the Shah Kadesh sh Hertz lived in the 1500s he was the r of Frankfurt and he came toim in the 1500s and he became the ashkanazi Rev he wrote a huge huge magnificent work called brid which combines so he's called the sh so obviously when he came to arel in the 1500s it wasn't like today it was a very very very very difficult fact somebody sent me you know just to show you how the Crim thing somebody sent me a uh comment of the pelites it's a great great mus saer written in like the the 1400s in which he said uh people shouldn't move to AR Israel because of the poverty because they will not have a pinasa because their children will starve uh because so so he's right he's sending me the Pates to say why a person shouldn't go to Israel today now I have total respect for the pelo he was a very great man but what what what you're bringing me Ras from from what somebody wrote in the 1400s about not coming I mean you know the world changes a little bit different world different society different conditions so I said you know I have full respect for the proof for the text you're sending me but this is an ID this is an idiotic Riot you see I'm kind of in a bad mood today uh I said what are you proving to me it's like saying you know uh one shouldn't move to New York because the Horseman you're in the street is so over is so overwhelming and I'll show you this that Benjamin Franklin complained about it you know uh when he visit you know does what does one have to do with anything you know said different no there are issues I'm not saying there aren't issues but don't bring the issues that that were hundreds of years ago but but the Shah Kadesh was MOS neish and he came to erra and he writes in the Shah that those people who build Big Stone houses in the diaspora that are going to last for hundreds and hundreds of years they're doing a big AA because they're basically making the statements my stay in the galut is permanent a Jew should be again a Jew should be productive fact find right the Jew should even be patriotic Visa the United States in many many ways you know if you're living living there but you still have to understand the ran says that ER Israel is your home Rabbi wine he should be well tells the story had the Yeshiva in M the Yeshiva still going on and when he was building the Yeshiva so somebody offered him Timber wood from Finland special Finnish wood that has a life a non-warping life of 300 years I guess most wood is 50 to 70 years then it begins to warp and you got to repair it this is wood that's non warpable for 300 years J wies said he refused to accept it because he was not going to build an institution in the galot intending to last for 300 years that would have been now my Kasha and rabi wine is I a r lne myha is ah but that shouldn't apply to Yesa R because the gar Milla says that all theot and the shs of are going to be uprooted and come to so you can build the Yesa that's permanent because it's going to come here anyway okay from yeah well uh the ramban would basically say this uh he says that obviously uh because of our sins uh we are exiled and this is this is a punishment uh but that doesn't mean that that has to be our permanent State he says like anything else uh if it's be U to do something and Hashem is not stopping us in a sense that means Hashem is giving us a green light that that's what he's he's actually saying it's a punishment and indeed the punishment can happen again God forbid the punishment can happen again but that doesn't stop us from from engaging in the Endeavor we'll we'll talk about that so I mentioned three components now if you think about this uh this goes back to Theodore Herzel if you remember um in the uh the various Zionist congresses at some point Herzel was toying with the idea of Uganda now again I'm not going to knock Herzel because once again Herzel was gen and he was not a religious man obviously but Herzel was deeply deeply concerned for the European anti-Semitism that was very poisonous he had experienced it as a journalist in the drive trial so you know herz's motives were good motives and and they were you know sh in or at least the shame am Israel in a sense so when he saw all the difficulties in trying to negotiate with the Ottoman Empire and Uganda was there he thought it might be a safe haven uh for the Jewish people so he was willing to consider Uganda as a possible home uh there was also a brief project in the United States uh Galvis Island Galviston Texas at at that point was an island it was not connected to the mainland I don't know how many Jews you could fit on Galviston Island but there was a Galvis then resettlement project uh Stalin in his great uh generosity offered the province of Georgia as a Jewish State instead we got Siberia kind of to the a little bit uh to the to the to the east of of Georgia and the like but the ramban is basically saying that Jews are not allowed to look at any other place as the Jewish National home except for ER Israel so that's the third one now the fourth component the fourth component is the one that everybody knows live here meaning it's not enough to support the conquest of the land and giving to jnf is good and picking up garbage is good but it's not enough and it's not enough to emotionally identify with Eric although you have to do that too but ultimately God wants your body and not only your soul God wants you to physically live here this is called the Mitzvah of yesel and the ramban brings many many Ras that there is such a thing as a Mitzvah I'll just mention two Ras now again we'll see now please please be sure as I'm talking please be sure you understand I today I'm only painting one half of a picture because we're then going to discuss what is the rambam's view okay so be sure you have to keep in mind that all of the AR here is focusing on theas har then I'll move later to the she of the ramban and how we Pas it but just a few of the RAS of the ran the ran makes a point that the mishna says in that if husband and wife are in disagreement where to live whichever party wants to live in ER Israel has the right to Force the other party to come now I'm not I'm not saying these rights should be exercised there is a Shalom bias issue but Al if the man wants to go and the woman doesn't the woman is obligated but the other way too if the woman wants to go and the man doesn't the man is obligated so ramban argues if there wouldn't be a Mitzvah to live here what would give either party the right to make such a demand another example normally you know you're not allowed to tell a non-jew to do work on Shabbat any work I'm not allowed to do but I can't tell the go turn on a light again the whole thing of shabas is unfortunately very very misunderstood and uh it's often people are often doing things that are not proper but as a general rule without getting into all of the ins and outs you don't tell a to do M Shas but there are some exception a few exceptions and one of the exceptions is if you want to buy property in arus that's in the hands of a non-jew and the non-jew is only willing to sell it to you today and if you I say chabas and if you wait till tomorrow you're not going to be able to redeem that property uh the gamor says you are allowed to sign a deed even on chabas in order to redeem the property in Eric Israel from the hands of a non-jew which again highlights the notion of Jewish sovereignty over the property of erel that's called the Mitzvah so this is the Ran's opinion that is MIT now even in the ran there are some questions which I'll discuss next week and that is well how absolute is that Mitzvah is the ramban saying no matter what I got to come the first question that you it's going to occur to you is hey wait a second here where did ramban live most of his life the ramban lived in Spain most of his life he spent the last five years of his life in erell and that's only because he was kicked out of Spain so we're going to discuss it so next week we we'll try we'll try to do two things we'll try to flesh out how absolute is Ran's position and then we'll also want to look at what is the rambam's position about this okay so that emission will be next week you have a good that good week everybody