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B"sd
Sharon Has Sparked the Cure to the Sin of the Ten Spies
Gary Cooperberg
April 28, 2004
The concept of Jews willfully seeking to trade parts of their homeland for peace is clearly a sin. For a Jewish leader and a Jewish government to make such an effort brings with it national punishment. It is for the sin of trying to negate the miracle of Jewish return to our homeland that we suffer from terrorism today. What is worse, the solution our leaders are choosing, to willingly reject parts of our heritage in the hope that this will stop terror, is in fact a sure guarantee that terror will continue and even get worse, G-d forbid!
The Chief Rabbi of Hebron, Rabbi Dov Lior, has consistently told us that Jews who seek peace by giving away Jewish Land are repeating the sin of the ten spies who were sent to scout out the land and report on its bounty, and instead returned with evil reports and suggestions that it is impossible for us to enter the Land of Israel! G-d declared that on this day, when Jews cried for no reason, in the future they will cry for good reason. The day this happened was the ninth of Av, a day of tragedy for the Jewish people. It was on this very day, later in history that the Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed, and again, on the same day about two hundred years later, the second Temple was also destroyed.
My son, Avi, a hesder yeshiva student, told me a story related to him by his Rosh Yeshiva, MK Rabbi Chaim Druckman. Avi, together with many other students, has volunteered to participate in a nationwide campaign to go from door to door in a personal appeal to Likud voters to vote against the plan to surrender Gaza to our enemies. I was surprised and delighted to find that same story related in an Arutz Sheva special report:
"Our teacher and former Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi Avraham Shapira has pointed out that the famous work Eim HaBanim Semeichah by Rabbi Yisachar Teichtal writes some very timely things about this point.
House-to-House With the Spies
The book in question was written by a learned rabbi in Europe during the Holocaust years. Though he was brought up and schooled in the anti-Zionist yeshivot and ideology of early-20th century Europe, he came independently - but with the help of many traditional Jewish sources - to the realization that as many religious Jews as possible must return immediately to the Land of Israel, despite the irreligious nature of the Zionist movement.
In the passage beginning on page 256 of Eim HaBanim Semeichah (p. 396-403 in the English edition, translated by Moshe Lichtman, published by Kol Mevaser Publications, 2000), Rabbi Teichtal quotes the Medrash describing the methodology used by the ten spies. The spies had been sent by Moses to scout out the Land, but instead acted to weaken the nations resolve to enter the Land. Each of the ten - leaders of their respective tribes - went from house to house, acting faint and falling down and crying, explaining that they were sick with worry over the terrible things that would happen to their sons and daughters when they entered the Land - and they would then start crying again, and the household members would cry along with them. And thus they would do in each and every house," Rabbi Teichtal writes, "sparing no effort until every house in the tribe was crying over the entry to the Land of Israel, and all were one unit against the Land. This is what is referred to in the verse, 'Our brothers melted our hearts,' and when Moshe said, 'You murmured in your tents.'"
Rabbi Teichtal continues and writes that the way to repair this terrible Sin of the Spies is to do the same type of thing that they did - i.e., to go from house to house, without being lazy and without calculating the time or trouble it will cost, and to speak to every Jew on behalf of the Land of Israel. If we take this course of action, he writes, then with G-d's help we will be able to turn all of Israel into one pro-Land of Israel sector - and this will be the correction of the Sin of the Spies, and we will thus pay up our debt regarding this bad loan of the this terrible sin.
So writes Rabbi Teichtal in Eim HaBanim Semeichah, 60 years ago. And today we see his words coming true, with the Yesha residents' Face-to-Face campaign gaining momentum and piling up good will and positive feedback.
Thousands of good Jews are reaching out to their brothers with the personal message that it is wrong to give away the miracle of G-d returning us to our homeland. This very effort, to turn the hearts of our people to hope in place of despair, regardless of how it affects the meaningless vote, will, in and of itself, redeem us from our sins and rescue us from our foolish leaders, with G-d's help.
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