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In "The Mitzvah of Eretz Yisrael," Rav Shlomo Katz takes us deep into the heart and soul of one of Judaism's most profound and debated mitzvot. What does it really mean to conquer, dwell, and truly live in the land of Israel today? Is it merely about physical settlement, or is there a deeper spiritual conquest at play? Drawing on Torah sources, Chassidic insights, and practical halacha, we’ll explore questions like: How central is living in Eretz Yisrael to fulfilling our Jewish destiny? Can the mitzvah be achieved spiritually outside the land? What is our role in actively building and nurturing the land given to us by Hashem? Join us as we journey to reveal the extraordinary dimensions of this holy mitzvah.
Good morning everyone, בוקר נפלא. אחד מה, one of the, one of the דמויות, one of the characters, the most the amazing, incredible צדיקים from the last generation that we're going to be learning a lot from and about while we're learning the מצוה of ישוב הארץ is none other than Rav Kook's son, רב צבי יהודה הכהן קוק, זכר צדיק קדוש לברכה.Now, anyone that's immersed themselves at any stage in life in the תורה of Rav Kook his father, and then goes into the תורה of his son, sees that it seems to be משהו אחר. It seems on the outside, there's like a, you know, they say about Rav Kook, from his mother's side they were straight from the צמח צדק in Lubavitch, the lineage, and from his father's side you couldn't get more Volozhin, you couldn't get more, you know, non-Lubavitch. And that רב צבי יהודה seems to have taken more, it seems, על השטח, he went more from, he took from that other school of thought, not so much the חסידי school of thought.
But we have to remember something vital when it comes to trying to understand רב צבי יהודה הכהן קוק. It had so much to do with the times we were living in. Rav Kook dies in 1935. That's three years before, it's four years before the beginning of World War II.
And it's 13 years before the establishment of the state of Israel. Who knows what Rav Kook's תורה would have been like had Rav Kook been the chief rabbi as they established the state? We don't know. It's also irrelevant because that's not the way השם wanted it to be. But רב צבי יהודה הכהן קוק was there at that time.
And in fact, we see, we see a tremendous amount of הלכה response from רב צבי יהודה הכהן קוק regarding how do we deal with all these new, this new world of תורה that we have of מצות ישוב הארץ. So a lot of the תורה from רב צבי יהודה, of course, there's a lot of מאמרים, there's מחשבה, פירושים על חומש וכולי. But his תורה really is is helping us understand how to implement the הלכות of a new מציאות that wasn't שייך for 2,000 years.So, we're going to keep on coming back to רב צבי יהודה הכהן, and one of the things that I want to, I want to just start off by saying, and it has to do with everything that we've been learning until now, is that רב צבי יהודה points us to something very interesting. You know, the חז"ל established when it comes to הלכות שבת, something called שבות.
שבוס. You've heard of שבות, right? שבות is like a גזירה על גזירה, בוא נגיד ככה, it's like a fence on a fence. זאת אומרת, there are certain things that חז"ל, a lot of things in הלכה are fences, then there's a fence on the fence. What's a fence on a fence or שבות when it comes to שבת? One of the things that you can't do, for instance, anything that would פוגע in the כבוד of שבת.
Not even lead you to go over a הלכה, that's regular הלכות, but even פוגע in the כבוד of שבת. For instance, can you, you can't, if you have a flight מוצאי שבת, right? Can you pack on שבת? Can you pack on שבת? It came up even better. תשעה באב comes out מוצאי שבת, right? חס ושלום, on a fast day, right? Can you take a צום קל pill? That came up, that question came out a lot in recent years. Can you take one of these pills over שבת that usually you take before תשעה באב, right? Why? Because you're preparing for something that's not on שבת.
לא פשוט, it's not, it's not such an easy thing. ובעזרת השם we shouldn't have to deal with that because תשעה באב will be a day of ששון ושמחה. But רב צבי יהודה says like this, an amazing thing. As much as שבות is, and also business, there's no talking commerce on שבת.
You're not doing anything. You can't even talk in commerce because it takes you away from שבת and it may lead you then to other places as well. But רב צבי יהודה הכהן says something amazing. The only time חז"ל were מתיר to be דוחה שבות had to do with גאולת קרקעות.
It had to do with buying property from a non-Jew on שבת in ארץ ישראל. Ah, רב צבי יהודה הכהן says, so listen, that must mean, יש לנו פה משהו, we got something here crazy. Why? When it comes to other הלכות that are דאורייתא that we know, for instance, שופר and לולב that come out on שבת, רב צבי יהודה הכהן says look at the גמרות. What, what ends up happening? They're, then they're נדחים.
We don't blow שופר on שבת and we don't carry לולב ואתרוג on שבת. And those are מצוות עשה דאורייתא. When it comes to the מצוה of ישוב הארץ, of buying, of buying a home in ארץ ישראל that you could take, reclaim land that's yours, is דוחה that even. So he says there, צריכים לחשוב, you have to realize that that's the מציאות, open your heart and eyes to the גודל of this מצוה.
And he says it's not סתם that we say that שקולה מצות ישוב הארץ כנגד כל המצוות. You can't just say this is like an optional מצוה. If we say that the dwelling of the land, the conquering of the land, and the settling of the land, like we've been learning, is שקול כנגד כל המצוות, it's, it's, it's in comparison to all the מצוות in the תורה.From that angle, רב צבי יהודה is directing all of his תלמידים in the fifties, in the forties, in the fifties, in the sixties, and especially in this, in the seventies and the eighties, especially with the establishment of גוש אמונים and that whole movement, which we are sitting here, I mean, we're talking here today learning תורה because of the visions of the students of רב צבי יהודה הכהן קוק. In fact, there was a, this came למעשה, that there was a whole neighborhood that was established, that basically was paved and established on שבת in אלון מורה.
One of the neighborhoods in אלון מורה, because that was the only time that it was going to be happening would be to claim this land on שבת. So when we look at it like that, we say, okay. Huh? בטח. By by יהודים you're saying? No, from non-Jews.
Not from a Jew. The the placing of the, the placing of the land, yeah. It is, it's, it's crazy stuff. No, but אמירה לעכו"ם, we have a problem with that on שבת also.
He said, no, זה גם, that was מותר in that situation as well. So we have to be very sensitive. If this is how we hold with the מצוה of ישוב הארץ, it's got to conquer a bigger place in our hearts, and with the consciousness of what, of, of the זכות we have to live in, and we should בעזרת השם have a lot of הצלחה as we continue plowing through this tremendous זכות that we have to reconquer the land every single day and settle it more and more and more בשמחה. יום נפלא everyone.