When the Going Gets Tough, the Tough Get Going
By Tzvi Fishman
Among the many mitzvot of the Torah, the mitzvah of settling the Land of Israel is undoubtedly the most difficult. When this is coupled with the need to make Aliyah, the mitzvah becomes a gigantic endeavor. Hashem makes things this way in order to strengthen the oleh, cleanse him or her from the polluted influences of the Exile, and make the person worthy of living in the Holy Land. Throughout the generations, all new immigrants to Eretz Yisrael encountered hardships, from the days of Rabbis Yehuda HaLevi and the Ramban when the Land was absolutely barren, to the waves of Aliyah at the beginning of the Zionist Movement, and the arrivals of Jews from Morocco, Yemen, and the Holocaust. Similarly, the pioneer founders of the State had to overcome violent Arab resistance, pogroms and highway murders. Along with the opposition of the British. And the Aliyah of Jews from the Soviet Union and Ethiopia each had their own share of travail. Furthermore, Jews who make Aliyah today from materialistic countries of the West have many figurative mountains to climb.
Complaining and crying about the difficulties doesn’t help. Inner strength is demanded, enduring faith, and a passionate love of Hashem. Every new oleh is tested by God and has to prove that he loves the Land of Israel and Jerusalem more than his highest joy (Psalm 137).
A little over two-hundred years ago, the Geula (Redemption) of the Israelite Nation was set in motion with the Aliyah of the students of the Gaon of Vilna to the Holy Land. Zionism did not begin with the First Aliyah between 1881 and 1903, nor with the “Lovers of Zion” movement, nor with Theodore Herzl and the First Zionist Congress in Basel in 1897, but with the Aliyah of the students of the Gaon of Vilna, beginning in 1808.
In Israel, on the fourth day of Chol HaMoed Sukkot, which is also the yahrtzeit of the Gaon, students from Religious Zionist yeshivot all of over Israel flock to the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in Jerusalem for the annual festive Simchat Bet HaShoevah celebration. What is the connection between the universally acclaimed Torah Giant from Vilna (also known as the Gra) and the yeshiva founded by Rav Kook in Jerusalem? One of the Gra’s most outstanding students, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, founded the Yeshiva of Volozhin where Rav Kook learned as young man under the then Rosh Yeshiva, the Netziv, who said that if the yeshiva had been founded just to educate Rav Kook it would have been worthwhile. Much of Rav Kook’s approach to Torah study, especially his emphasis, like the Gra’s, on learning the secrets of Torah at the time of Redemption, (“Even HaShelama,” 11:3), and his emphasis on the centrality of Eretz Yisrael to the life of the Jewish Nation, was influenced by the teachings of the Gra who taught that living in Israel was a supreme commandment of the Torah (Yoreh Deah, 267:161). The Gra himself endeavored to make Aliyah, saying that living in the Holy Land was like the mitzvah of Sukkah, a commandment one fulfills with all of one’s body. Setting out on the journey, he wrote a letter to his mother and wife:
“I am writing the both of you to urge you not be feel sorrowful in any way, as you promised me, and also not to worry. For, behold, there are people who must travel for several years to secure their livelihood, leaving their wives behind, and wandering to and fro with little means, while I, thank G-d, am journeying to the Holy Land, which everyone longs to see, the delight of all the Jewish People, the delight of Hashem, and all of the angels. You know I have left behind my children, the love of my heart, and all of my cherished books, and made myself like a wandering stranger on earth, abandoning everything to embark on this journey….”
Ultimately, the Gra was prevented from reaching his goal by the red tape of foreign governments and the lack of transportation, but even though the city of Vilna was filled with thriving yeshivot he urged his students to go, warning that that if the Jews didn’t return to Eretz Yisrael on their own accord, then Hashem would bring about their return through horrible persecutions and the severe decrees of the Gentiles:
“Our teacher, the holy Gaon of Vilna, with words carved in flames, urged his students to go on aliyah, and to further the ingathering of the exiles. Furthermore, he encouraged his students to hasten the Revealed End of the Exile, and to actualize the Redemption through the active settlement of Eretz Yisrael. Almost every day, he spoke to us with trembling and emotion, saying that in Zion and Jerusalem there would be a refuge, and that we shouldn’t delay the opportunity to go. Who can articulate and describe the magnitude of our teacher’s worry when he spoke these words to us, with his Divine Inspiration, and with tears in his eyes?” (“Kol HaTor,” end of Ch.5).
In answer to the question why other Rabbis of the time did not call for the Jews to make aliyah, the Gaon taught:
“The sin of the Spies hovers over the Jewish Nation in every generation… How strong is the power of the force of darkness (Sitra Achra) that it succeeds in hiding from the eyes of our holy sages the dangers of the impure shells (kelipot), and in the time of Mashiach, the force of darkness attacks the guardians of the Torah with blinders…. Many of the sinners in this great sin of ‘They despised the cherished Land’ including many great guardians of the Torah, will not know or understand that they are caught in the sin of the Spies, that they have been sucked into the sin of the Spies in many false ideas and empty claims, and they cover their ideas with the already proven fallacy that the mitzvah of the settlement of Israel no longer applies in our day, and opinion which has already been disproven by the giants of the world, the Rishonim and Achronim – the Early and Later Torah Authorities (“Kol HaTor, Ch.5).
The miserut nefesh (self-sacrifice) of the students of the Gra in settling the Land of Israel at a time of great poverty and disease paved the way for the large Aliyot which followed. One of the students, Rabbi Yisrael M’Shklov, was the leader of the small but determined group. Inspired by the teachings of the Gaon of Vilna, he was impassioned with the holy mission to rebuild the desolate Land and fill it with Torah. At first they settled in Tsfat, where forty Jewish families lived in abject poverty, constantly threatened by Arab attacks. To keep the small community from perishing, Rabbi Yisrael, a respected Talmid Chacham, was chosen to travel back to Lita to raise desperately needed funds. During his almost three-year visit, Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin helped him organize monthly stipends for the beleaguered Tsfat community. Upon his return to the Holy Land, a plague broke out in the Galilee, and many families decided to relocate to Jerusalem. On the way, the virus claimed the life of Rabbi Yisrael’s wife. To their chagrin, the disease had broken out in the Holy City as well. In the course of a year, the epidemic took the lives of his son-in-law, two daughters and two sons. Then news arrived from Tsfat that his parents had died in the plague. In the introduction to his book, “Paat HaShulchan” – a compilation of the agricultural laws pertaining to the Land of Israel, laws which were not recorded in the “Shulchan Aruch” – he recounts the trials he underwent. “After what I had been through, I recalled the halachah that a person is duty bound to recount the doings of Hashem, and all of the troubles and sufferings, and wonders which he brings on a person for his benefit, and thus it rests upon me to relate the tribulations I underwent as part as the sufferings meted out in order to be worthy of living in Eretz Yisrael, as the verse says, “Hashem has certainly brought sufferings upon me, but He has not brought me to death.” After describing the deaths of his loved ones, he writes from the roof of his home, ill himself and left alone with a young daughter and grandchild: “I was like a drowning man in a sea filled with fire, my loved ones gone, and I would bow down on the roof of my lodging and plead before our Father in Heaven, with my sweet and modest, young daughter, Sheindel, lying sick at my side, as tears poured from my eyes, a flaming sea of tears over all that had swept over me.” He continues, “After collapsing into sleep on that rooftop in old Jerusalem, someone approached and touched me, arousing me like one awaking from sleep. Then he said to me, ‘Afflicted and tortured one, be healed!’” Inspired by the event, Rabbi Yisrael made a vow to Hashem: “If You will grant me kindness, and heal me from my illness, then I will write a compendium based on the Seder of Zeraim in the Jerusalem Talmud, laws of the Land which were not recorded by the holy Rabbis of the past.”
Rabbi Yisrael goes on to write that he recovered from the plague in a wondrous manner and felt that a force of Divine Assistance propelled him to continue on his mission to settle the Land and promote the study of Torah. Returning to Tsfat with his young daughter, he remarried and worked to rebuild the devastated community. He describes how another epidemic ravished the town once again, killing his second wife and two new children. Then Rabbi Yisrael was arrested by the goyim and imprisoned, in the hope that his incarceration would motivate the Jews to move elsewhere. After he was freed, heavy rains in 1825 caused mudslides which destroyed most of the Jewish homes in Tsfat, including the home of Rabbi Yisrael. He took it as a reminder that in performing his day-to-day duties to help the community, he had procrastinated in fulfilling his vow to write a book detailing the Laws dependent upon the Land of Israel. Nine years later, he delivered the finished manuscript to the printing shop of Yisrael Beck, but a pogrom caused the remaining Jews in Tsfat to flee into the surrounding forests. When they returned, they discovered that their homes had been ransacked and burned, including the printing shop of Yisrael Beck, where his manuscript had turned into ashes. Rewriting the book from beginning to end, he finally published it in 1836 before moving to Jerusalem. In the severe earthquake of 1837, the remaining Jewish community in Tsfat was destroyed. Rabbi Yisrael continued leading the remnant of the Gra’s students until his death two years later. After his death, one of his students found his personal manuscript copy of the “Paat HaShulchan” with this inscription: “This book which is inspired by the holiness of the air of the Holy Land of Israel, which is connected to, and scented by, the air of the Holy Garden of Eden… covers the breadth of the laws pertaining to the Holy Land of Israel, which is beloved to me exceedingly since through tremendous suffering I merited to attach myself to Hashem’s inheritance and to become exalted in splendor through its very soil during these past 27 years.”
May his love of the Land and the Torah be an inspiration for all olim who are blessed to perform the mitzvah of Yishuv HaAretz, considered to be equal in weight to all of the mitzvot of the Torah (Tosefta Avodah Zara 4:3; Sifri, Re’eh 53).
