Tuesday, May 02, 2006
5/02/2006 02:05:00 PM | 
Posted by
JoeSettler
As Israel Independence Day is about to come upon us, I was discussing a question with Jameel, though we still haven’t come up with a satisfactory answer.
The question is, why aren’t religious Jews moving back to Israel en masse?
Reading blogs by religious people in the Galus, the most common answer by the ‘more frum’ seems to be that it isn’t a mitzvah that one is ‘required’ to fulfill, and famous Rabbis are brought in to back up that statement.
I often ask, what exactly do they mouth in Birkat Hamazon, in Musaf, and in their t’fillot in general? Do they not understand what they are reading? Do they read the words and ignore them? Do they read them, and think it is talking about someone else? Are they waiting for a miracle?
These are people that are so incredibly makpid on even the slightest possible halacha or potential minutiae of the law, that you won’t even go into a restaurant without seeing the ‘our water is filtered’ signs everywhere.
The switchover from Judaism from a nationalistic state to a religious state was a deliberate and calculated temporary decision by the Rabbis to help preserve us during the exile until we returned to our land. Judaism was put into a suitcase while we were temporarily locked out of our home with everything still inside.
And the Rabbis purposely kept pumping the message into us about the return to Eretz Yisrael, and Eretz Yisrael being central to Judaism – in our t’filla, our Haggada, everywhere. Yet this message seems to have gotten lost despite it being right in front of our face.
For everyone that spends hours looking for the perfect Etrog, or won’t eat matza after the first day of Pesach because there is a chashash that their might be chometz, don’t you think they would want the opportunity to perform even more mitzvot (not to mention to perform them properly)?
I originally thought this might be a new phenomena. But Jameel pointed out something - Ezra & Nechemia.
When Ezra & Nechemia called for the people to return, what happened? The established Jews refused to come back!
They had the opportunity to rebuild the Temple, to bring the Karban Pesach, to fulfill a proper Simchat Beit Hashoeva. Nevuah! Yet they turned it all down!
Because they questioned if there is a specific mitzvah to do so?
That would perhaps be the answer given by the frum world. They would point to some Galus leader and say, he didn’t go, yet no one today would consider denying Ezra his authority as the then Gadol HaDor.
Yet, more so, why would frum Jews need an explicit mitzvah to return to the land and properly fulfill more (and all) the mitzvoth?
They daven 3 times a day to return to Israel.
They are makpid on some of the stupidest (and non-halachic) things, and have taken the concept of ‘minhag yisroel c’halacha’ to extremes that I’m sure the Rabbis never imagined could happen.
Yet when it actually comes to returning Judaism to its original and preferred state, to performing the mitzvot where they were meant to be (and in many cases, can only be) performed, not this transitional existence it is in now – silence, rejection, rebuttal.
If they are so careful about taking on more and more mitzvoth (and I still don't think a black hat counts), what about Trumah and Maaser and Karban Pesach? There is even an important deiyah that says performing mitzvoth in Galus is only practice, only to keep us from forgetting how to keep them, so we can perform them properly when we return to Israel.
When I speak about Aliyah in shuls in Galus, I get the polite responses, but no one is engraving it in their hearts or brains.
As Israel enters another year as an independent (if imperfect) state where a Jew can fulfill many more mitzvoth as they were meant to be performed, can anyone explain this to me?
The question is, why aren’t religious Jews moving back to Israel en masse?
Reading blogs by religious people in the Galus, the most common answer by the ‘more frum’ seems to be that it isn’t a mitzvah that one is ‘required’ to fulfill, and famous Rabbis are brought in to back up that statement.
I often ask, what exactly do they mouth in Birkat Hamazon, in Musaf, and in their t’fillot in general? Do they not understand what they are reading? Do they read the words and ignore them? Do they read them, and think it is talking about someone else? Are they waiting for a miracle?
These are people that are so incredibly makpid on even the slightest possible halacha or potential minutiae of the law, that you won’t even go into a restaurant without seeing the ‘our water is filtered’ signs everywhere.
The switchover from Judaism from a nationalistic state to a religious state was a deliberate and calculated temporary decision by the Rabbis to help preserve us during the exile until we returned to our land. Judaism was put into a suitcase while we were temporarily locked out of our home with everything still inside.
And the Rabbis purposely kept pumping the message into us about the return to Eretz Yisrael, and Eretz Yisrael being central to Judaism – in our t’filla, our Haggada, everywhere. Yet this message seems to have gotten lost despite it being right in front of our face.
For everyone that spends hours looking for the perfect Etrog, or won’t eat matza after the first day of Pesach because there is a chashash that their might be chometz, don’t you think they would want the opportunity to perform even more mitzvot (not to mention to perform them properly)?
I originally thought this might be a new phenomena. But Jameel pointed out something - Ezra & Nechemia.
When Ezra & Nechemia called for the people to return, what happened? The established Jews refused to come back!
They had the opportunity to rebuild the Temple, to bring the Karban Pesach, to fulfill a proper Simchat Beit Hashoeva. Nevuah! Yet they turned it all down!
Because they questioned if there is a specific mitzvah to do so?
That would perhaps be the answer given by the frum world. They would point to some Galus leader and say, he didn’t go, yet no one today would consider denying Ezra his authority as the then Gadol HaDor.
Yet, more so, why would frum Jews need an explicit mitzvah to return to the land and properly fulfill more (and all) the mitzvoth?
They daven 3 times a day to return to Israel.
They are makpid on some of the stupidest (and non-halachic) things, and have taken the concept of ‘minhag yisroel c’halacha’ to extremes that I’m sure the Rabbis never imagined could happen.
Yet when it actually comes to returning Judaism to its original and preferred state, to performing the mitzvot where they were meant to be (and in many cases, can only be) performed, not this transitional existence it is in now – silence, rejection, rebuttal.
If they are so careful about taking on more and more mitzvoth (and I still don't think a black hat counts), what about Trumah and Maaser and Karban Pesach? There is even an important deiyah that says performing mitzvoth in Galus is only practice, only to keep us from forgetting how to keep them, so we can perform them properly when we return to Israel.
When I speak about Aliyah in shuls in Galus, I get the polite responses, but no one is engraving it in their hearts or brains.
As Israel enters another year as an independent (if imperfect) state where a Jew can fulfill many more mitzvoth as they were meant to be performed, can anyone explain this to me?
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