The Land is a Sacred Trust

Rabbi Lea Mühlstein explores how the opening verses of Genesis and Rashi's early commentary frame the land of Israel as a sacred trust rather than an absolute claim. She challenges the reduction of Zionism to a single political label, arguing that true Zionism can coexist with Palestinian self‑determination and a responsibility to justice. Listeners will leave with a nuanced view of identity, ownership, and how theological ideas shape contemporary political discourse.

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Welcome to Kolot, the podcast of The Ark Synagogue, a bold, experiential and caring Progressive Jewish community in Northwood, London.

Through sermons, reflections and conversations from across our community, Kolot explores Jewish life, learning and values in the world we live in today. Rooted in tradition and open to new perspectives, these episodes bring together voices that inspire thought, connection and belonging.

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When I was at university, a favourite past-time among students was to take silly online quizzes – you had to answer a bunch of questions and then the program told you whether, for example, you are a man or a woman. Rather hilariously, we discovered that the main decisive factor that made you a man, is, wait for it, actually carrying things in your pockets.

These silly quizzes had emerged following the launch of the implicit-association test (IAT) developed by social scientists at Harvard and Washington University. This test is still used today to assess implicit stereotypes held by test subjects. When I took the test more than twenty years back, I scored the lowest of all my friends on the racial stereotypes suggesting that I was not prone to holding implicit or explicit racist views.

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Well, this week the Green Party decided that there was no need for a sophisticated test. Rather, it declared that I am a racist because I am a Zionist.

Of course, the party was quick to dismiss that this would have a negative impact on actual Jews but just three days after the vote, the disgraced former academic David Miller, who has a long track record of anti-Jewish rhetoric, put me in position four of his Top 10 Zionists for whom arrest warrants should be issued.

While we are not taking this rhetoric lightly and are closely working with the CST and the police to ensure both my personal safety and the safety of the synagogue, there is actually something quite funny about this. In many ways, declaring the deciding factor for whether you are or aren’t a racist to be Zionism is just as absurd as suggesting that you are a man because you routinely carry your keys in your pocket.

The fact that, for instance, Miller claimed not to have space for the Chief Rabbi on this list, despite the fact that Rabbi Mirvis publicly voiced opposition to the recognition of Palestine as a State and has been rather shy in voicing criticism of the Government of Israel, shows clearly that Miller didn’t bother reading anything I had ever said about Israel or Zionism. Because for Miller, like for those in the Green Party that pushed the motion at party conference, there is no nuance when it comes to Zionism. It’s as simple as checking if you’ve got your keys in your pocket.

But just because those who hate us don’t look for nuance, doesn’t mean that we should fall into the same trap.

It is auspicious that the Torah reading coinciding with all these happenings is the very beginning of the book of Genesis – as we read on Simchat Torah and this morning: B’reishit bara Elohim et ha-shamayim v’et ha-aretz – in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.

The most eminent of Torah commentators, Rashi chooses to share a teaching from the Talmudic period as his very first commentary (excuse the masculine God-language, which is Rashi’s):

Rabbi Isaac said: The Torah which is the Law book of Israel should have commenced with the verse (Exodus 12:2) “This month shall be unto you the first of the months” which is the first commandment given to Israel. What is the reason, then, that it commences with the account of the Creation? Because of the thought expressed in the text (Psalms 111:6) “He declared to His people the strength of His works (i.e. He gave an account of the work of Creation), in order that He might give them the heritage of the nations.” For should the peoples of the world say to Israel, “You are robbers, because you took by force the lands of the seven nations of Canaan”, Israel may reply to them, “All the earth belongs to the Holy One, blessed be He; He created it and gave it to whom He pleased. When He willed He gave it to them, and when He willed He took it from them and gave it to us”

Our commentary asks a simple question: Why does the Torah begin with the story of creation? Wouldn’t it have been more appropriate to start with the passage (Exodus 12:1-20), which describes the festival of Pesach, the first “mitzvah” we are commanded to observe as a people?

Or put differently: Where does our story really begin, with Creation or with Exodus? The question might be simple but the answer is more controversial, especially when we read it today: it is that we begin with Creation, and since God created the whole universe then God can give the Land of Israel to the Children of Israel.

As my teacher Rabbi Na’amah Kelman observes: “What is so startling about this commentary, no matter what one’s politics, is that second century rabbis, and later, Rashi in the eleventh century, wanted to reaffirm our claim to the Land of Israel.”[1]

Until 7 October, I felt that the concern of the Jews of the exilic period was no longer relevant to us following the establishment of the State of Israel. Yet, in the past three years, we have seen a major shift in public discourse denying the Jewish right to even a part of the Land of Israel, as the Green Party has done, and suddenly Rashi’s commentary feels rather more urgent.

Yet, even as we are catapulted back to sharing the experience of the Jews of Antiquity and the Middle Ages, we must be cautious not to look for simple answer and fall into the same pattern of thinking as those who are denying our rights.

In her beautiful commentary in the Women’s Torah Commentary,[2] Lori H Lefkovitz asks: Who does the land belong to? Her interpretation is that divine ownership places limits on human control. The land has its own sacred existence, and human beings have responsibilities towards it, rather than unlimited rights over it.

She writes: “The land, our possessions, our bodies, our children, and we ourselves are a sacred trust”.

I find this idea of the land as a sacred trust particularly compelling because it challenges us to think about what it actually means to claim the Land of Israel as our homeland. If the land ultimately belongs to God, as Rashi insists, then neither the Jewish people nor any other people can claim absolute ownership over it. Our relationship with the land is not simply a matter of rights but also of responsibilities. And surely, one of those responsibilities must be to recognise that we are not the only people who call this land home.

This does not diminish our claim to the land. It does not diminish the significance of Jewish history, our millennia-old connection to the land or the importance of Jewish sovereignty after centuries in which we were denied the ability to determine our own destiny. I believe that the Jewish people, like other peoples, have the right to self-determination in our historic homeland.

But precisely because I believe in that right, I cannot deny the same right to the Palestinian people.

And this is where the reductionist understanding of Zionism, which has become so prevalent in public discourse, fails us so spectacularly. It assumes that there is only one possible way to understand Jewish sovereignty and asserts that we must choose between the rights of Jews and the rights of Palestinians, as if recognising one must mean denying the other.

Yet, if we take seriously the theological premise of Rashi’s commentary, we arrive at a very different conclusion. The land is not ours to possess without limits. It is entrusted to us, and with that trust comes an obligation to exercise power responsibly, to pursue justice and to recognise the dignity and rights of those with whom we share it.

Of course, recognising the right of Palestinians to a state does not resolve the extraordinarily difficult questions of how two peoples can exercise self-determination in the same small stretch of land. Nor does it absolve Palestinian leaders of their responsibilities or diminish Israel’s right and duty to protect its citizens. There are real questions of security, borders, leadership and mutual recognition, made immeasurably more difficult by the violence and suffering of recent years.

But these are questions about how we realise two legitimate aspirations, not about whether both aspirations are legitimate in the first place.

The Zionism to which I am committed does not ask me to choose between my love for Israel and my commitment to justice. It demands that I hold them together, even when doing so is profoundly uncomfortable.

And perhaps that is the most important lesson we can draw from Rashi’s very first commentary. He seeks to establish our right to the land by reminding us that the whole earth belongs to God. But in doing so, he also reminds us that our rights can never be absolute, because ultimately we are accountable to something greater than ourselves.

Which brings me back to those silly quizzes with which I began.

It might be convenient to reduce complicated questions of identity and morality to a single answer. To decide whether someone is a racist simply by asking whether they are a Zionist.

But neither Jewish identity nor Jewish sovereignty can be reduced to such simplistic tests. We should not allow those who seek to deny the Jewish people’s right to self-determination to define our Zionism. Nor shall we allow those who seek to deny Palestinian rights in the name of Zionism to define it for us.

I am a Zionist because I believe that our religion not only binds us together as a people, binds us to God but also binds us to a place where we have the right to self-determination. And I believe in the Palestinian people’s right to self-determination because I take seriously the very principles of justice, dignity and responsibility that inform my Zionism.

These are not contradictory commitments. They are expressions of the same moral conviction.

B’reishit bara Elohim et ha-shamayim v’et ha-aretz – in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth: the land is a sacred trust. Our task is not merely to claim our place within it, but to ensure that the way we exercise that claim honours the humanity of all who call it home.

Ken yehi ratzon.

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[1] https://reformjudaism.org/learning/torah-study/torah-commentary/mystery-birth-and-rebirth

[2] https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/who-does-the-land-belong-to/