Uniting with the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land

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“May His Great Name be glorified and sanctified in the world He will renew and revive the dead... and He will remove foreign worship from the Land, and return the service of Heaven to its place, and the Holy Blessed be He shall rule in His Majesty...” (Kaddish after Siyum Masechet) 

We have mentioned in the past the special sensitivity of the Holy Land to idolatry, as can be seen in one of the 613 commandments to ‘wage war’ on idolatry specifically in the Land of Israel. This sensitivity can be seen too in our title quote of this week’s parsha, which conveys Yakov’s command to his sons to remove all idolatry from among them before “coming full circle”, after Yakov’s wayfaring 20 years in the Diaspora, to Bet El, where HaShem appeared to him just before and in regard to going outside the Land. 

Heemek Davar explains that God forbid did Yakov’s sons have any idolatry with them, but rather Yakov’s command pertains to ascertaining that even the sons’ servants be cleansed of any idols whatsoever. 

Interestingly, these words of Yakov upon entering the Land reappear almost word for word in the book of Yehoshua when the People of Israel enter the Land many years later. The importance of cleansing idolatry specifically from the Land of Israel is seen also in context of a special bracha enacted upon seeing a place where idolatry has been removed from the Holy Land. 

While in the Diaspora one is to say a general bracha “Blessed are You HaShem... for removing idolatry from this place”. In the Land of Israel one is to end this bracha by saying “for removing idolatry from our Land”. This sensitivity to idolatry in the Holy Land can be explained by the parable that just as a King would be especially conscious of any matter that negates his majesty in his palace, so too, the Land of Israel, ‘Palace of the King of Kings’, is a place of special sensitivity that nothing negates HaShem’s indivisible majesty. 

In Kiryat Arba - Hebron, the final destination of Yakov in the Holy Land, this message takes extra meaning. ‘Kiryat Arba’ signifies how all four (‘arba’) directions (north, south, etc.) or elements (solid, liquid, gas, fire-ignition), which idolatry sees as separate god-entities, come together (‘kiryat’-meeting place-city) to pronounce through the four saintly couples who all knew the One God - “Hear O Israel, HaShem is our God, HaShem is One!”

Real Stories from the Holy Land #97: 

“While learning Torah, I suddenly had an urge for coffee, but I pushed away this thought and did not get up to prepare coffee, so I could continue learning without interruption. Just then, someone came to me and offered me a cup of coffee.”