LECH-LECHA 1994

In the Torah portion Lech Lecha we find how G-d promises to the Jewish people the land of Israel three times unquivocably, one time in conjunction with bris milah, with the commandment of circumcision. We learn how G-d commands Abraham, "Leave your land and your birthplace and the house of your father and go to the land which I will show you." After Abraham goes to the land that G-d had showed him, the land of Canaan, he then builds an altar to G-d, and then it says G-d appeared to Abraham and He said, “To your seed, I will give this land." Then we learn, too, how after Abraham comes to the land of Israel he immediately has to leave because there is a famine in the land and then when he is in Egypt he is forced to ask his wife to say that she is his sister and then Pharaoh takes her but G-d prevents Pharaoh from doing anything to Sarah, and when he finds out the truth he expels Abraham but he expels him with great wealth. When he comes back to the land he then has a quarrel with his nephew, Lot, because Lot wants to act dishonestly and to use the land of Canaan as if G-d had already given it to them, not just promised it to them. He allows his shepherds to~ graze on other peoples' lands. After Lot separate from Abraham G-d once again comes to him and says to him, "All the land that you see, to you I give it and your children forever and I will make your children like the dust of the land." We also learn how Lot then is in the land of Sodom and Gomorrah on the Dead Sea and how the rulers of Sodom refused to pay tribute to the Babylonian kings and how they come and there is a great battle and the king of Sodom is defeated and the king of Kolardeomer takes all the possessions of the people of Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham finds out about it and he pursues them and defeats them and rescues Lot and the possessions. Afterwards G-d appears to him once again in a vision and this time seals with a treaty the fact that the land of Israel will be given to Abraham, "And the covenant between the pieces where they divide an animal in half and walk between the animal and then the animal, itself, is eaten in a special meal." This is to show that this is a covenant which cannot be broken. At this time G-d tells Abraham that He is going to give his children the land. He says, "And that day G-d cut with Abraham a treaty saying, fTo your children I will give this land1." Earlier He had also told Abraham that his children will be as numerous as the stars in the heavens.
Finally in this Torah portion we learn how at the time of the giving of the commandment of circumcision that G-d once again tells Abraham, "And I am erecting My covenant between you and Me and between your seed after you for your generations as a covenant forever.  I will give to you and to your children after you the land of your sojourning, all the land of Canaan as a possession forever." We see that 3 times G-d unequivocally has promised the land to the Jewish people and the fourth time this promise is given in conjunction with circumcision.
The story is told about Rabbi Herzog, that Rabbi Herzog was in America in 1942 right before the battle of El Alamein. Rommel was streaking across North Africa and it looked as if he would capture all of North Africa and, swing into Israel and go up into Turkey and spread south into Mesopotamia. There was great concern that Israel would fall, too, into the hands of the Nazis. We all believe that if people would have been more foresighted we could have saved millions of Jews. We could have transferred them from Europe to Israel, but the truth of the matter is that it was not clear that if the Jews lived in Israel that they would be saved, too. After all, Jews from all around Israel were taken by train to Auschwitz. They were taken from Turkey and Greece and Libya and Algeria and Morocco. The reason why many Jews in Libya, Algeria, and Morocco were spared was because by the time that operation started Rommel had been in full flight, and, therefore, Germany lost control of these countries before they could enact their plan, but if the battle of El Alamein would have been lost Jews from Israel would have been sent on trains to concentration camps no matter the fact that they belonged to the Haganah or Irgun or that they were valiant fighters. The German army might would have completely subdued us and caused us to be loaded on those cattle cars, too, but when they told Rav Herzog, who was the Ashkenazie Chief Rabbi of Israel,that it was very dangerous to go back to Israel, that Rommel was streaking across
North Africa he told them, MI have read in the Torah in the Torah portion Lech Lecha
that G-d has promised the Jewish people the land of Israel three times unequivocally,
that He has promised that we will live in this land, and there will only be two destructions.
We went into the land in the time of Joshua, we came back at the time of Babylonia,
and we are coming back now. The third Temple will not be destroyed. There will
not be a third destruction of the Jewish people." Of course, they asked him about
the fourth promise and he said that the only way the Jewish people could lose the
land of Israel is if they did not want it anymore, if they decided they did not want
to be Jews. Then they could lose the land, and he went back and Montgomery defeated
Rommel at the battle of El Alamein. One of the reasons he defeated him so badly,
too, was because Hitler intervened and did not allow Rommel to make strategic retreats.
We know that today there is much talk of peace in the Middle East and the tragic
events of the past week have cast a pall upon all this talk. People were gunned
down in Jerusalem in the main street of Jerusalem, in west Jerusalem, where a soldier
was kidnapped in the middle of Tel Aviv and taken hostage. There is a great problem
here with this peace because it looks as if we have a good cop bad cop routine.
The Arab cop is the good cop and Hamas is the bad cop.  The whole problem here is,
have the Arabs given up their dream? Their dream means that all the land of Israel
is theirs and the Jews either must be expelled or killed. Have they given up on
that dream? If they have not given up on that dream then everything that we are
doing now is in a sense destructive. Arafat has not clamped down on Hamas. Arafat
arrests them one day and releases them the. next day. Whether he is going to keep
this same pattern up we do not know, but we know that Hamas is dedicated to the destruction of the Jewish people, not just to gaining the West Bank and Gaza but to destroying the whole Jewish people making sure that there are no Jews left at all in the land of Israel. This is the problem. Have the Arabs given up on their dream or not? That's why it was so important that they change their covenant. As of now they have not changed their covenant. They have not even changed their covenant to delude us, to deceive us, because their dream is so precious to them that they do not want to even falsify their dream in public. Unless they are willing, to change their covenant, then it is very doubtful whether there can ever be peace between us and whether all the concessions of the Rabin/Perez government are making is going to lead a more horrible and terrible and costly war. Perez and Rabin and "Arafat have been awarded the Nobel Prize and Perez when he heard about it congratulated Arafat by saying he was the first Arab leader in 100 years who was willing to compromise, who did not want everything, who was willing to compromise for part of the land of Israel. We Jews have always been willing to compromise a part of the land of Israel. Even Joshua, when he entered into the land of Israel, did not conquer all the land, that G-d had promised. We Jews have always been willing to compromise^ but the problem is the other side has not been willing to compromise, and that is a very difficult problem. If Arafat is just going to say that Hamas can do anything they want and they are not responsible, as has been often mentioned.  In fact, one reporter mentioned that the Arabs in Gaza do not understand why they should be concerned about Jewish blood, that it does not make any different to them what Hamas does, then why should we be concerned about giving the Arabs any semblance of independence? There are some Jews, especially on the left, who feel that it is such a cardinal sin to rule over another people that they are willing to put in jeopardy the lives of all the people in the land of Israel.  It is true we do not want to rule over another people, but if this people wants to kill us and wipe us out, what choice do we have? Let us hope and pray that Arafat really is the person that Perez says he. is, that he really does want to compromise, but looking at the Arab people as a whole in Israel, it is hard to see it.  I was told a true story, how recently one of the Arabs in the Gaza Strip came to a village in Ein Chorim, which is part of Jerusalem near the Hadassah Hospital, and he knocked on the door and he asked the couple who was living there, a man and wife who had lived there since 1948, to see the house. The couple asked why and he said he used to live there before 1948. Of course, the house was not in exactly the same condition as it was when he left it.  It had been expanded and improved and they said, "Sure, we will show it to you," and they were very nice and entertained him and gave him coffee and cookies and they talked for a while. Afterwards, as the Arab was leaving he said, "You know, you people are so nice that we take this land back over I am going to make sure they don't kill you." This, of course, is the attitude of a great proportion of the Arab population and it is foolish to disregard it. In our effort to delude ourselves into thinking that the Arabs are ready for peace now we should instead prepare and wait until they really are ready for peace with us.  I hope that things will go well. We all hope and pray for that. In this week's Torah portion we learn that G-d has promised us unequivocally that we will keep the land of Israel when we go in the third time, and that the only way we can lose it is if we do not want to keep it anymore, if we do not want to be Jews anymore. Let us hope that the Jews of Israel want to be Jews so that we can stay in the land of Israel forever. In this week's Torah portion, too, we learn how the Jewish people are compared to the stars and to the sand. Now the stars are seen even on the darkest night, and the stars are a world all unto themselves. They are the exact opposite of sand. A little grain of sand is not noticeable at all, but when the sand sticks together from sand you can make bricks and from bricks you can make buildings and you can make glorious structures and a wonderful economy and a great civilization. This, of course, is the two qualities of the Jew which we have always had. We have been able to combine individualism with great genius figures who were able to light the way even on the darkest night and show us wonderful things about ourselves and nature and G-d and the future. On the other hand, we have also had the capacity to stick together so that we could survive. It is my hope and prayer that in Israel today the Jewish people will be able to stick together and one Jew will not turn against another and that the bright lights that are there, the great geniuses and great figures who understand problems and can see the future and can see things clearly, will each be allowed to glimmer, that their descent will never be squashed but that Jews will work together and still tolerate each other's different opinions.  In this way, hopefully, we will be able to overcome this bad time and truly peace will come to the Middle East and truly the Arabs will understand that it is better to compromise than to perpetually fight. I just hope and pray that Arafat really who Perez thinks he is and that he will control Hamas and do what is: necessary to control the fanatical element in the Arab world, just like the Israeli government cramps down hard on anybody who even says anything bad against Arabs, much less harm the Arabs. We all know that when Baruch Goldstein killed the 21 Arabs every single Jewish organization condemned it and every rabbinical organization condemned it and every rabbi condemned it, but you know in Argentina when they killed 105 Jews they asked the Moslem clergy in Israel to condemn it. They asked the Moslem clergy in this country to condemn it and they would not do it. Let us hope and pray that things will get good and if things do not get better that at least the Jewish people will be united and recognize the danger and will not delude themselves anymore.  I know that perhaps those on the far left will continue to delude themselves. They were shocked when the SCUDS flew over Israel and the Palestinian Arabs who they counted as their friends danced on the rooftops, but they quickly got over it.  I am sure, too, that they will quickly get over their disgust at the fact that Arafat is not doing anything serious about Hamas. Let us hope and pray, though, that the overwhelming majority of Israel will recognize that in order for there to be. lasting peace Arafat has to deal with Hamas, and if Arafat does deal with Hamas then perhaps we are entering a new world, a new era.  If he does not, then we should be very careful and make sure that we know and he knows that the Jewish people have this stick-to-itiveness and the determination and the patience to wait until an Arab leader will arise who will make sure that the fanatics among them will be willing to compromise and not demand everything. Let us hope that day will come soon. Amen.