5 weeks to aliyah – D’var Torah

I could not pass up the opportunity of sharing a few thoughts on the parsha this week since it has such profound ramifications with respect to aliyah. The sin perpetrated by the spies who went out to explore Eretz Yisroel has reverberations that we continue to feel to this day.

As we all know, the spies who were sent out were leaders of the nation, but they were overwhelmed by how difficult they thought it would be to enter Eretz Yisroel. And we see that when Calev answered them, he did not disagree and tell them that it would not be hard. Whether or not he agreed that it is hard, he answered them by saying “But we can surely do it”.

All my life, I have heard from many people about how hard it would be for them to move to Israel. Well, at this point I can tell you that, at least for me, it is truly very hard. It is not an easy thing to move away from family and change so many things about the way you live your life. But at the same time, I keep reminding myself that whatever challenges I meet, I will have to find a way to overcome them. “We can surely do it”.

The desire and need to live in Israel is such an essential part of our neshama. I have found that the feeling that I have when I have to leave Israel after a trip there is much like the feeling that I have after Shabbat when I lose that neshama yeseira. It is where we belong. We are out of place anywhere else.

It may be hard to move to Israel, but you have to still want to do it from the very depths of your soul. You can never give up the hope that you will someday move there nor can you stop making efforts to fulfill this essential mitzva.

Rabbi Moshe Lichtman, in his book “Eretz Yisroel in the Parsha” points out that galut – our exile from Israel – is a punishment. Nowadays when there is nobody stopping us from moving there, Hashem is no longer punishing us so why should we continue to punish ourselves?

Throughout history, the nations that defeated us and expelled us from our land made it so hard for us to all come back to where we belong. We should never resign ourselves to living in galut, thereby allowing them to win.