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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.
שבוע טוב everybody, good morning. Happy birthday to Tovia Meir Gran. Happy birthday, יום הולדת שמח, and many, many happy returns בשמחה ובבריאות. And we should be זוכים to continue to flourish in ארץ הקודש with you and your whole family בעזרת השם יתברך.
אמן. Just a quick note also with a request, if the חבר'ה, before 4:51 מנחה, that's what it is this week, need a little bit of התחזקות over there. מעריב is fine, but for those that can make it, I know it's a little bit of a difficult time, but if you can do השתדלות to make sure we could start strong, that would be muchly, muchly appreciated. Okay.
So we have like this, very quickly. We have to go back to eastbound. I know we've been jumping around, east, north, and southwest, and מה לדבר בכלל, in terms of the גבולות. But when it comes to eastbound of ארץ ישראל, I'm going to go back to something that we that we learned before.
When we were talking about the סיחון and עוג, those areas on עבר הירדן המזרחי, on the eastern side of the Jordan River, and how they became part of ארץ ישראל, it's it was was by it wasn't לכתחילה, we were saying. That was בדיעבד because we had to conquer them and thus it became ours. But in terms of the גבול, the border of ארץ ישראל on the east, east side, the Torah doesn't really help us so much. I mean, I hate to say those words, but you know you understand what I'm saying, in order to define it.
Sorry? Was that the שבטים that were asking to stay in the home? The שבטים are more, they're further north, but but still it doesn't matter. It meaning how far do you go? Because when the פסוק says in the Torah like this in במדבר, ושתי את גבולך מים סוף ועד ים פלשתים, וממדבר עד הנהר. So, all it says to us really is, okay, eastbound, it's from the מדבר עד הנהר. What נהר? נהר פרת.
A lot of questions over there. What side of נהר פרת are we speaking about that forms the edge of the גבול, the eastern bound? Is it the northern part? Because it kind of goes, it kind of goes east, it's not exactly like, you know, one way. So it's very, very, it's it's very, very confusing. You have three different maps that I saw.
The truth is for these kind of mornings, I should just give out maps instead of trying to illustrate these things and kind of think that you can actually see what I'm talking about when I say like this, right? But there are, there are, we have, we have a little bit of help from one הלכה in רמב"ם, הלכות קידוש החודש to help us with this, actually. Because the רמב"ם says like this. He says, גבול הארץ כעין מרובע, that the גבול of the land is actually like a, like a rectangle. Like a rectangle, like a, like a square.
It has to be a square shape. Which helps us because he's talks about the exact distance from where עדים can come and the עדות, קידוש החודש, and he has his own calculation there וכו'. But the רמב"ם helps us like that, which helped many people define the ריבוע, and I'll try to show you according to the רמב"ם, like this, all right? You see this green line, this green line that I'm holding over here seems to be how the רמב"ם holds. The northern tip of it is way up there in northern Syria.
It goes down through Jordan, passes to some western point in Saudi Arabia, and then comes back down and meets by like, you know, the southern part of ארץ ישראל. So that would mean like the eastern part over here is the top of נהר פרת going down, cutting through two countries, countries, cutting through two self-claimed entities, and then coming down here, and then making a a left back in over here. למאי נפקא מינה, all these things. There's so many נפקא מינות over here.
And that's why it's important for us to get a little bit of a taste of what what these are things what this is going to be, because these will be the גבולות לימות המשיח. Again, עולי מצרים got their clear descriptions of it mainly during the time where יהושע came in, and those are less than what we what we ended up what we were told by אברהם אבינו. And that's why as much as we repeat these things, we have to remember what we did when we came here, the גבול עולי מצרים was a good beginning. It's a good beginning.
We're going to go ווייטער. And we're going to keep on, בעזרת השם, עד הנהר הגדול, נהר פרת, מדבר, ים, נהר. בעזרת השם we'll be זוכים to do our מצוות in all these places. And I just I noticed that Marilyn's here, בשם כל הקהילה, we all extend all our love, our נחמה on the פטירה of your precious, precious אמא who's so precious to so many of us.
And may you and the family only be swimming with the precious and good and sweet thoughts and memories that she'll continue to מלווה you כל ימי חייכם בעזרת השם. אמן.