7. Sovereignty vs. Presence: What Counts as Building the Land?

Rav Shlomo Katz explores one of the most misunderstood aspects of Yishuv Eretz Yisrael: the difference between Jews merely living in the Land, and actual sovereignty over it. Drawing on the halachic writings of the Beit Yosef and the Bach, we learn that the mitzvah klalit—national fulfillment—requires Jewish control, not just Jewish presence. Even a city that’s mostly Jewish, if ruled by foreign powers, is still in a state of churban. But when Jewish sovereignty exists, even over a minority, it’s considered built. This episode challenges us to reframe what redemption looks like and why the return of shilton Yehudi (Jewish governance) is a mitzvah in itself.

What is The Mitzvah of Eretz Yisrael?

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.

שכויח. בוקר טוב לכולם. Good morning everyone. We're back for the מצווה of ישוב הארץ.

I want to dedicate the הלכה of learning to be the עילוי נשמת נחמן יחמיאל בן יהודה אריה לייב. Okay.So in 1948, in ח' אייר תש"ח, yeah, today's his יארצייט, yeah. Today's his first יארצייט. So in ח' אייר תש"ח, we were introduced to a completely new מציאות in the world, to a new reality.

And this new reality brought upon us all this new reality of also of מצוות. Not just like, oh, we're here, we're, we have sovereignty over the land, but also like we have a whole new world of מצוות that we weren't, we didn't have any שייכות to before that. It's like a whole new מציאות that we're meeting over here. And many people had no idea how to even begin to relate to these מצוות מעשיות, how do you deal with certain things that were never even a מציאות.

Not just הלכות, this is important, not not just מצוות התלויות בארץ. But rather because that that you had to do whether there was a sovereignty over the land or not, if you were in ארץ ישראל. It's more a matter of how do I even relate to this מציאות of what מצווה comes before what מצווה now because I'm I'm I have a we have sovereignty over here. And it's not just and that's what's important to understand that it changes the framework as the way a Jew thought about Torah, changed.

It completely changed, it shifted.As we learned two days ago, we learned how the מצווה of מצוות ישוב הארץ is דורש מציאות חדש. That it, this is a מצווה that we we we saw based on specifically what the מנחת חינוך says what and what רב קוק said in one of the אגרות says, is that this is a מצווה that demands of us to go as as far as possible in order to make sure that we have. I, now, once we have it, then what's the מציאות? And that's what we have to begin to differentiate between. And some people are still, there's שאלות ותשובות coming out on this every year because even though yeah, it's 75 years, it's still nothing.

What's 75 years in the scheme of things, right? What's 75 years? It's nothing. So we're still understanding and developing the whole notion of what does it mean to have a מציאות of Torah in this world right now. That עדיין, it's it's still מתבשל. It's still happening, it's still taking place.

But one of the things we have to understand that changed is the following. As long as there was שילטון, and we have to see like the the ערך of שילטון. Some of the חבר'ה in our עם ישראל are still not holding by this, but as long as Jews were living in ארץ ישראל, נכון, they were מקיים the מצווה of ישוב הארץ. That's the מצווה פרטית.

But the מצווה כללית, which is to actually settle and dwell the land as a as a as an entity and having our own שילטון, that didn't happen for 2,000 years. So as long as, and he brings down the, he says it very, very clear like this.גם לפני הקמת המדינה כל יהודי שגר בארץ קיים בעצמו מצווה אישית של ישיבה בארץ, like we just said. אבל עיקר המצווה, שהיא מצווה כללית, שהארץ תהיה בידינו ולא ביד אומה אחרת, עדיין לא קיימנו. גם בזמן שגרו בארץ יהודים רבים, כל זמן שהארץ הייתה תחת שלטון זר, את המצווה הכללית לא זכינו לקיים.

Meaning, as long as there were, you could have here 90% Jewish people, or even 95% of people living in ארץ ישראל, ידן. If you're under a foreign sovereignty, then the מצווה כללית that we began speaking about in the beginning, where he brought down from ישעיה הנביא and he brings the פסוקים from the Torah as well, the הבטחת אברהם אבינו, we weren't מקיים it at all. So there's a הלכה that חז"ל say that when you see ערי יהודה בחורבנן, you say a certain פסוק. What do you say? ערי קדשך היו מדבר and you do קריעה.

That's what you're supposed to do. But the כלל is that even if most of the people that are living in those cities that you see are Jews, but again, the sovereignty is by non-Jews, that's considered חרב. And that's an important thing for us to understand. חרב doesn't necessarily mean or נבנה doesn't necessarily mean Jewish people have come back and they've begun to build.

If you're still under a non-Jewish sovereignty, that's still considered to be בחורבנן. And you do קריעה when you when you see a מציאות like this, which was the situation for, people love to say, oh before the, the non, the חבר'ה that aren't holding by this so much, they like to say, remember how much peace there was between us and the ישמעאלים before the whole בלאגן came? Yeah, it's true, maybe not that it's true, but let's say you're holding like that. But what מצווה, what מצווה do you are you not taking into account? That it was a foreign governor, it was a foreign sovereignty over עם ישראל.If it was תחת ריבונות ישראלית, if it was underneath Jewish sovereignty and you're a Jewish minority, that's considered a בנין. You understand? It's such a flip in the mind, the הלכתית mindset.

I want to repeat that last thing. אם רוב תושביהן גויים, אבל הם תחת ריבונות ישראל, הן אינן נחשבות חרבות ואין קורעים על ראייתן. And he quotes here the בית יוסף and the ב"ח in אורח חיים תקס"א. זאת אומרת, I can go to a city and I can see that it's that it's 95% ידן, and and and 95% non-Jewish people, 5% ידן.

But who's running the show? Who's who's under whose sovereignty is it? עם ישראל. Like New York. What did Rav Riskin call Teaneck? מאחז בלתי חוקי. An illegal settlement, an illegal outpost.

So this is the what happened, what was so, what's been such מבלבל and I know why what I'm saying right now, it's hard for us to figure out who's holding what because let's take חברון for example. 97% of the city of חברון is underneath, is basically settled by ישמעאלים. Approximately 3%, maybe even less, is settled by עם ישראל. Who, now who, this is the חאפ.

Who's the sovereignty? Who's the governor? המחט"ת של חברון, that's the chief. The truth is Binyamin for right now. That's the sergeant of like the one that's in charge of the whole region over there. What what what was the חשש is that really in what was called הסכמי וואי, if you remember, so our our Prime Minister gave over 97% of the שליטה to a שילטון זר, so to speak.

People started coming up with the thing, okay, do we have to start doing קריעה now? Because now, even though we used to be under Jewish sovereignty, now it's not. Do we start doing קריעה now because it's underneath someone else? So שאלה is no, because since we established the state in 1948 and it's still under ours, we have to keep on מחזקים and strengthening and strengthening our our governing over the land. You know why? Because there's a מצווה. That's why.

Because it's a מצווה כללית. And רב צבי יהודה would say, and even if it seems to you that there's 97% non-Jews and 3% Jews here, he said מצווה גוררת מצווה. That when there's a little bit of an establishment of governing of מצווה כללית of ישוב הארץ in one place, that trembles over, that spills over to another place and another place, and we begin to have dots everywhere and eventually it will connect the whole lines. We'll connect the line to make it one long thing.

What we're going to be seeing בעזרת השם tomorrow and the next day, is how this plays out with a lot of questions that were coming up post 1948, and I think they're still coming up today, this tension between what's considered a חורבן, what's not considered a חורבן, and how do we just make, how do we stretch these lines to make it much clearer, שלא יהיו שום בעיות, and we should be privileged to be שלוחי דארץ ישראל נאמנים. We should be great PR, holy PR spokesmen for עם ישראל, for ארץ ישראל specifically, for this, to understand deeper the importance of this מצווה כללית, that when you see, you come to a city and it could be thousands and thousands of Jews but someone else is calling the shots, you still do קריעה. To get that into our minds. That's a very deep and important concept to to understand.

That's what ההלכה says. And כן להיפך, and so too the other way as well, to take such שמחה when you go to a place and you see there's five houses here, five ידן here, 10 ידן here amongst the sea of not, but it's תחת שלטון יהודי and you don't do קריעה. These are important things that will help us understand the rest of the way that these הלכות are developed. Have an amazing גאולה דקדאי everyone.