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GLOBAL RELIGIOUS LEADERS

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ל“צז

No Land Like Israel

o religion in history has been twice, the land to which our ancestors The Balfour Declaration in 1917, sub-
as closely tied to a Land as journeyed whenever they could and sequently ratified by the League of
Nhas Judaism. That connection which they never voluntarily left, never Nations, long before the Holocaust,
goes back almost 4,000 years, from the relinquished. Jewish history is the story was an attempt to rectify the lingering
first words of G-d to Avraham: “Leave of the longing for a Land. denial of a nation’s right to its land and
your country, your birthplace and your the subsequent persecution of Jews in
father’s house and go to the Land I will The holy Land remains the place where country after country, century after
show you.” No sooner had he arrived Jews were summoned to create a society century, in a history of suffering that
than G-d said: “To your offspring I will of justice and compassion under the has no parallel.
give this Land.” Seven times G-d prom- sovereignty of G-d. And though it was The Jews who returned were not strang-
ised the Land to Avraham, and prom- subsequently held holy by Christianity ers, outsiders, an imperial presence, a
ised it again to Yitzchak and Yaakov. and Islam, the centres of these other colonial force. They were the Land’s
The word teshuva, often translated as faiths were elsewhere: for Western original inhabitants: the only people in
“repentance,” literally means “home- Christians, Rome, for Eastern Chris- 4,000 years who created an indepen-
coming” in a double sense: spiritually to tians, Constantinople, and for Mus- dent nation there. All other occupiers
G-d, and physically to the Land of Israel. lims, Mecca and Medinah. There are of the Land – from the Assyrians and
For Israel is the Jewish people’s place of 56 Islamic states today, 82 Christian Babylonians to the Ottomans and the
destiny: a tiny land for a tiny people, yet ones, but only one Jewish State. It is British – were imperial powers, who
one whose role in religious history is the only place on earth where Jews are ruled the Land as a district of their vast
vast. It is the land to which Moshe and a majority, where they enjoy self-rule, realms. The Egyptians did not offer the
the Israelites travelled across the desert, where they are able to build a society Palestinians a state when they ruled
the land from which they were exiled and shape a culture as Jews. Gaza between 1948 and 1967; neither
did the Jordanians when they ruled the
West Bank during those years. The only
nation to have offered Palestinians a
state is the State of Israel. And every
day, we pray for its peace.

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks ל“צז was a
global religious leader, philosopher, and
award-winning author who served as
Chief Rabbi of the United Hebrew Congre-
gations of the Commonwealth.

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