MYTHBUSTER
BOBBA MAASEH OR GENUINE JUDAISM
Are we all going to end up
LIVING IN ISRAEL?
ISRAEL IS CENTRAL TO JUDAISM. ABRAHAM STARTED HIS JOURNEY BY
moving to Israel. Moses told the fledgling Jewish nation at the
Exodus that their ultimate destination was Israel. G-d instructed
us to build His Temple in the country He had designated as the
holiest of all lands, Israel. Even today, Jews living wherever pray
facing Israel, as they pray daily for the welfare of Israel. And,
when Moshiach comes, we’ll all live in Israel.
A fundamental Jewish belief is that a divinely-inspired human
king, Moshiach, will lead the world into a new reality of goodness and spiritual awareness. He will also lead us all back to the
Holy Land. Maimonides – the only Halachic authority to define
Moshiach’s credentials and job description – writes that
Moshiach has to gather Jews from around the world and bring
us all back to Israel. Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel all
prophesied that G-d would ensure no Jew would be left behind
and one day we would all be going ‘home’.
Today, Israel is home to just under half of the world’s Jews. If
the other half were to join them, there probably would not be
enough space for everyone. The promise of bringing every Jew
into that sliver of land sounds less than exciting.
One possible solution would be to define Israel by its Biblical
borders. What we have today is considerably smaller than what
G-d had originally earmarked for Joshua to conquer. In Messianic times, the world will acknowledge those Divinely chosen borders, which would leave Israel large enough to accommodate the
millions more Jews. In fact, the future land area of Israel will be
even larger than it was at the time of King Solomon’s empire.
G-d had originally promised the lands of 10 nations to Abraham
as the inheritance of his descendants. When the Jews entered
the Promised Land, they were only allowed to take the lands of
seven of those nations, which means there is even more to the
Biblical borders than we have ever owned. The extra space
should be able to handle the influx. If that still seems too small,
Israel is called a “land like a deer”. The Talmud explains that the
20 JEWISH LIFE
ISSUE 72
same hide that snugly fits the deer shrivels up when removed
from the animal. Like the skin without the animal, the Holy
Land without its people is small. As you add people, so it miraculously grows.
The Midrash takes this further, predicting that Israel will stretch
over the whole world in the Messianic age. That would mean that
we don’t all have to migrate to Israel, but that Israel will extend to
wherever it is that we live. Jerusalem, the Talmud continues, will
stretch over the whole of Israel. This doesn’t mean that the local
Spar will start selling falafel or that drivers around the world will
start using the ‘savlanut’ (patience) hand-sign in the traffic. What
makes Israel special is the extra holiness that it has. Israel is the
place of the Divine Presence, the land where miracles happen
wholesale, where “G-d’s eyes are upon the Land from the start of
the year until its end”, where the gateway to Heaven is located. Gd’s purpose for the world is that, one day, the whole of Earth will
become as special as Israel is today. To achieve His goal, G-d scattered Jews everywhere, so that we could bring holiness to every
town in every country. Once we succeed, Moshiach will come and
the whole world will turn into ‘Israel’, a
place of Divine closeness. And that automatically means we all come ‘home’. JL
Rabbi Ari Shishler is the ra