Parshat Beshalach
By: Rabbi Moshe Goodman, Kollel Ohr Shlomo, Hebron
בס"ד
לשכנו תדרשו
Uniting with the Holy Presence in Our Holy Land
"אל יצא איש ממקומו ביום השביעי"
"Blessed are You HaShem our God King of the Universe who has sanctified us with his commandments and commanded us on the mitzvah of eruv."
Eruv literally means to connect, as by this eruv, a portion of food (or a place pre-walked to), one connects oneself with a further location, that would otherwise be off limits on Shabbat. This location rendered 'off limits' is referred to in our title quote which states that 'one must not leave his place on the Seventh Day', which our Sages interpret to mean that one is limited from travelling a certain distance on Shabbat even without carrying. This type of eruv is called 'eruv tehumin' which allows one to travel 2000 cubits from the location that this food was put (or walked to) before Shabbos. Essentially, by placing this eruv before Shabbos in a certain location one declares that this location is 'his' location, and thereby traveling from that spot is not considered to be 'leaving his place' on Shabbat.
According to the Zohar, special sanctity rests in the designated place of a person, while all other locations are prone to negative spiritual power. Therefore, as befitting the especially high holiness of Shabbat we are bidden to stay in our designated 'holy' locations and not desecrate the Shabbat by going out of these locations to 'mundane' or 'negative' locations. Just as we see here the importance of designated space in regard to the sanctity of time, i.e the Shabbat, it seems we see a very similar concept in context of the sanctity of space, i.e the Land of Israel, in context of the bounds of space one is allowed to separate Truma, the 'holy' produce unique to the Land of Israel.
In this law, one is allowed to take Truma from one produce upon another (given they are of the same species, type, etc.) only if both products are in the same location, house, etc., a matter that is called 'mukaf'. Nevertheless, the laws of 'mukaf' in regard to truma are somewhat different than Shabbat, as an eruv is not considered sufficient to 'join' the two products in separate locations for truma. This difference can be explained perhaps as being due to the difference in the dominance of a person's location in Shabbat, in which a human induced 'eruv' is sufficient to bring other locations under his territory, versus the dominance of the object's location in regard to Truma, where this is not so. Interestingly, the term 'mukaf' literally means surrounded or 'walled in', a matter that reminds us of other laws in the Land of Israel concerning the 'walled-in cities' of the Land which have special sanctity (Mishna Kelim ch. 1), which again shows how 'walled-in' specified space has special sanctity over its counterpart.
In regard to Purim we noted before that Hebron is almost definitely one of the walled cities of the Land. Indeed, in Hebron this 'walled-in' nature, that unites together in the atmosphere of sanctity, is evermore befitting the inherent nature of Hebron as the uniting (Hebron means unity) force of our People in the midst of our saintly Patriarchs before the Holy Presence.
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Real Stories from the Holy Land #105:
"It was about 1 am and as I (a woman) was walking on the street, I noticed a monk that suspiciously started to walk my way. I started to run, and he began chasing after me. I said a prayer for protection: 'In the Name of HaShem... from my right is Michael and from left is Gavriel, etc." Suddenly the monk stopped, but when I continued my way, he started chasing me again, so again I said the prayer "from my right is Michael etc.", and the monk stopped once again. When he was caught by the police, he confessed his ill intentions. When asked why he stopped, he explained that he had suddenly saw two men by my side..."
Sources: Rambam Trumot 3, 17-20, Zohar Beshalah
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