Gush Katif and Jerusalem
by HaRav Shlomo Aviner, Head of Yeshivat Ateret Yerushalaim.
We will be Back in Gush Katif
Gush Katif is an important way-station in the course of our Redemption. It started as a place full of light and joy and building and creation. Then it was one of breakdown and destruction, darkness and betrayal. Yet it was still a way-station. By the same token, our Rabbi, Ha-Rav Tzvi Yehudah Kook counted even the heinous episode of the Altalena, of brother killing brother, amongst the way-stations of the Redemption. The cure is to open up the emergency store houses of love for our fellow Jew in order to melt the hatred (Mi-Maamakim, Li-Netivot Yisrael vol. 1 p. 128). And that’s what happened at the Altalena: Those who were hurt and wounded maintained their restraint and prevented a civil war.
And at Gush Katif, as well, a large population behaved with restraint, and by such means a terrible war between Jews was prevented. This great merit is connected to the other sources of goodness: Self-sacrifice for the rebuilding of the Land as emissaries of the entire Nation under difficult economic, agricultural and security conditions. Thanks to G-d’s mercy, the Land responded and generously provided its bounty; and its people lived lives of Torah and labor, lives of kind deeds – to those around us and to others, and there was great unity between different sorts of people and great faith.
Indeed, the test of faith comes in times of crises, as is explained in Mesilat Yesharim (Chapter 19) regarding love of G-d. Here, the righteous of Gush Katif are passing their test. They don’t spend their time heaping calumny on those who didn’t join them in their struggle. They don’t recite, day and night: “We won’t forget.” They are not stuck in the past. Rather, they look ahead to the future. As Rambam wrote in one of his letters: A person should look inward at himself and not outward at others.
Yes, the most important thing is not what was but what will be: How can we return to Gush Katif? How can another, similar destruction be prevented from occurring in Judea and Samaria? And yes! From then until today a debate has raged among lovers of Eretz Yisrael. Some say that only the language of force works, and that had we exerted enough force, as, for example, the Charedim do, or – not to be compared – the Arabs, we could have saved our beloved Gush Katif. Others say that force only works with minor matters, but not with such politically and militarily crucial issues as this. Rather, there is only one way for Judea, Samaria and Gaza to remain ours: For the Nation to want it!
The reality proves that the second approach is the right one. Whoever looks at Jewish history with open eyes, starting with the awakening of the return to Zion during the past 150 years, will see that nothing happened through the use of threats or force, but because people wanted it. Our wonderful Land was rebuilt – because they wanted it. In the return to Zion, whoever wanted to come, came. In the War of Independence, only volunteers enlisted. In all of Israel’s wars, only those who believed in it fought devotedly. In the whole settlement program in Judea and Samaria and Gaza, only those who wanted to settle, came and settled. Also with all the Torah learning which has so increased in our Land, nobody learns Torah unless he wants to. Quite the contrary, using force pushes people away. As we said, the largest issues depend on will, since they are bound up with suffering. Rabbi Shimon Bar Yochai said, “G-d gave three gifts to His Nation, and they come about only through suffering, and they are, Torah, the World-to-Come and Eretz Yisrael” (Berachot 5a). They all require self-sacrifice, and one cannot force self-sacrifice. Such was the approach of the righteous of Gush Katif, that it is impossible to coerce. Marriage, as well, cannot be coerced. You cannot command love, and Eretz Yisrael is likened to marriage (see Yeshayahu 62:4-5). According to the Sefat Emet at the beginning of Parashat Shelach, Eretz Yisrael is likened to Talmud study. That, too, is hard, therefore it depends on desire and will: “Eretz Yisrael contains the aspect of the Oral Torah, that a person must attain it by way of his own toil. Hence, conquering Eretz Yisrael depends on the will of the Jews themselves… Therefore, when the Jews refused the Land, they could no longer enter it.” Likewise, Rabbi Yosef Karo in his book, “Maggid Mesharim,” explained that the goal of sending out the spies, who were Torah scholars, was to arouse their desire for Eretz Yisrael (Parashat Shelach). Rabbi Yehoshua of Kutna wrote the same thing: “Now that we have seen the great repentance [for Eretz Yisrael], among the people of lesser worth, amongst the medium level people and amongst the upright of heart, it is almost certain that the spirit of Redemption is shining forth” (Shut Yeshuot Malko, Yoreh Deah #66). And Rabbi Yehuda Ha-Levi similarly wrote that the redemption will come when the Jews long for Jerusalem with the very greatest desire (from the end of “the Kuzari”).
True, there is a theory in history called “Historic Materialism,” that what determines history is political or economic facts on the ground, as in the writings of Marx or Engels. Yet the main approach is “Historic Idealism,” that what determines history are beliefs and opinions and ideas, as in Hegel, and as in Maran Ha-Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook’s famous article, “The Course of Ideas in Israel” (Orot). Therefore, we have to multiply the number of Jews who want the full extent of the Land. The more they increase, the better off our Nation will be. Indeed, in Gush Katif, as I said, there were a lot of righteous people of different stripes, but the entire Jewish People were not AT Gush Katif, nor were they WITH Gush Katif. The cure is the knowledge and awareness that this is our Land, as our Rabbi, Ha-Rav Tzvi Yehudah, wrote in his famous placard “Lema’an Da’at” [In order that they should know]: “This entire Land is ours… hence once and for all, these matters are clear and absolute, that there are no ‘territories’ or ‘[Palestinian] Arabs’ or ‘Arab Lands’. Rather, it is all Jewish lands, our eternal, ancestral inheritance” (quoted in Le-Hilchot Tzibbur).
And then, even to Gush Katif, we will return. For a long time, already, Gush Katif has been destroyed and gone, but that same faith of Gush Katif is hovering over the world, flittering around among people, causing sorrow and sadness, joy and hope. It is penetrating the hearts and minds of the simple people, of profound thinkers, of men and of women, of young boys and girls, without people noticing it. That faith is beating in their hearts, without their knowing where that fortitude, that sweetness, is coming from. It is that faith which will save all of Judea and Samaria and Gaza, and it is that which will bring us home to Gush Katif.
Jerusalem, if I forget you…
Down through the generations we swore, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you; if I do not set Jerusalem above my chief joy” (Tehillim 137:5-6). In the Exile, this vow was the focus of all our yearnings and emotions. It was what kept us going there. We withstood all the terrible suffering because we knew and we believed: Next year in Jerusalem.
Now the time has come for action. Through Hashem’s kindness, we have returned to Jerusalem. It is all ours, and we must settle the entire walled city with Jews and Jewishness. Obviously, we must not do this at the expense of all the rest of the Land of Israel, G-d forbid, as though Jerusalem were part of the consensus and none of the rest of it is. All of Judea and Samaria is part of the consensus – the consensus of Hashem. One time, the students of our Rabbi, Rav Tzvi Yehudah Kook, informed him that there was thought of transferring the Old City of Jerusalem to a foreign power. He responded, “And what about the Golan Heights?” They thought that they had been misheard, and they repeated themselves: “Master! We said ‘Jerusalem’!” Yet he insisted, “And what about the Golan Heights?” The same thing happened a third time. They were disappointed. Yet Rav Tzvi Yehudah saw everything as one unit, and he taught us that the Mishnah (Keilim, chapter 1) which states that “Jerusalem is HOLIER THAN all the rest of Land of Israel” should really be translated as “Jerusalem DERIVES ITS HOLINESS FROM all the rest of the Land of Israel.” Through the rebuilding of all Israel, Jerusalem shall be rebuilt.
We need go no further than our Sages’ words that Avraham’s covenant with Avimelech [in which he conceded part of the Holy Land to a non-Jewish king] stood as an obstacle to King David’s entrance into Jerusalem. In other words, the “Disengagement” of those days hurt Jerusalem, our holy city (Shmuel 2 5:6-9. See Rashi and Ralbag there and Pirkei D-Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 36). Indeed, already back then, liberating Jerusalem was a complicated, involved matter. This is not surprising, because the greater something is, the more complicated it is. In our own times as well, during the War of Independence, the enormous efforts to liberate our holy city failed. Finally in the Six-Day War, we returned home. Yet that is not enough. It cannot be that the vast majority of the heart of our country will be populated by non-Jews. We have to renew the Jewish presence in Walled Jerusalem. Were we fortunate enough, our government would have taken this task upon itself from start to finish. Yet we were not quite so fortunate, so the task falls not just on the community but also on the individual.
When our Rabbi, Rav Tzvi Yehudah, was asked about the well-known complaint that the “Nachem” prayer of Tisha Be-Av [which is recited in the Shemoneh Esri in the prayer for rebuilding Jerusalem] is not suited to the reality of our times, he would answer that the Old City is still “despised and desolate through the loss of her inhabitants.” It is impossible to go to the Old City and to see the rubble covering the synagogue ruins without bursting out in tears. When they told him that the Jewish presence in the heart of Jerusalem was being renewed, an enormous smile lit up his face. When they enumerated for him the names of the streets in the Old City, he said that they needn’t bother – all of those places, where he had studied in his youth, were etched in his memory. Indeed, our Rabbi, Rav Tzvi Yehudah, studied in the Yeshivat Torat Chaim where Yeshivat Ateret Yerushalayim is presently located. A miracle happened to that building when the Old City fell into the enemy’s hands during the War of Independence. The Arabs broke into all the Jewish homes and destroyed, pillaged and looted all the synagogues. Only this yeshiva survived because the non-Jew who lived below, one of the righteous gentiles of the world, protected it for twenty years. When we returned, he handed the keys over to the Old City’s governor, Chaim Herzog, who later became President of Israel. Chaim Herzog asked him, “How did you guard over this place for so many long years?” and he answered, “I didn’t guard it. It guarded me!” In one of his first visits to the liberated city, Rav Tzvi Yehudah entered the yeshiva. Everything was as it had been – it was only covered over with a thick layer of gray dust.
Thank G-d, the Torah is coming home. Once more, the voice of Torah is heard in the yeshiva. Once more young and old are walking around – with an armed guard – in the streets of Jerusalem. Yet Jerusalem was never partitioned amongst the tribes (Megillah 26a). Rather, it was built through the merit of all the tribes (Midrash Tehillim 122). It is the city that is “joins all together” (Tehillim 122:3); the city that makes all of Israel friends (Jerusalem Talmud Chagigah 3:6). Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish People. Jews from all over Israel and from all over the world, from all parties, all streams and all opinions are partners in the rebuilding of the heart of the universe. Indeed, Jerusalem is the heart of Israel (Tikunei Zohar 21 and Biur Ha-Gra 56).
