Page 15 - HaMizrachi Pesach 5783 USA

A Call to Return Home

Should we leave the great work of building the Land of One can only exert influence on the Land of Israel
Israel, with all of its historical complications and par- through building, creativity, labor, and practical
adoxes and with the immensely significant influence accomplishments in the plain sense of those words
it will exert on the lives of Jews in the Diaspora, in (without exegesis) – not through wearying, unhelpful
the hands of non-religious youth? At a harat olam hour, pronouncements. “Carve for yourself two tablets of
in the most critical period of our history, should we stone” (Shemot 34:1). Moses! If you want Jews to follow
hide in caves and shadows? And later groan about the you and to accept the tablets for all time, so that they
desecration of Shabbat in the Land of Israel? not break once again, then “carve for yourself ”: hew
them on your own, hack the mountains, plant vine-
(“And a Man Wrestled with Him until the Break of Dawn”, yards and orchards, pave roads, build colonies, go to
May 1946)
the Negev, protect the Judean hills, stand with your
rifle and guard the land. Then “I will inscribe upon the
The Torah will not find its actualization in the Land tablets the words that were on the first tablets, which
of Israel through rabbinical assemblies, nor through you shattered”: I will chisel the Aseret haDibrot on the
advice given by privileged New Yorkers to the fighters stones that you have carved. Without the “Carve for
on the barricades in Jerusalem, nor by writing flowery yourself,” the Jewish people would not have received
articles. Rather, it will be achieved only through par- the completed tablets, even if the giver were joined by
ticipating in the building of the land, by hewing stones the Union of Orthodox Rabbis, the Rabbinical Council
and draining swamps, defending cities and colonies, of America, and the preacher Rabbi Soloveitchik.
through work and self-sacrifice. Neither Zionist political
leaders nor plain intellectuals will impart their seal (Zionism and the Mizrachi from the Perspective of a Raven
upon the Land of Israel. Head and a Dove Head, April 1954)
(Jewish Sovereignty and the Redemption of the Shekhinah,
June 1948)

Rabbi Soloveitchik's class at Yeshiva University, 1960. (PHOTO: YESHIVA UNIVERSITY)

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