The Jewish Indigenous Homeland

Sermon Shabbat Lech Lecha 5784 Downtown Shabbat

Rabbi Sam Cohon, Congregation Beit Simcha

Do you know what the oldest claim on any land in the world is?  That is, the longest-lasting deed of promise to the ownership of land in the entirety of history is?  Well, we will read it tomorrow morning in Torah Study at Beit Simcha, and chant it during services.  It is the promise given in the Torah to a wanderer from Ur of the Chaldees named Avram.  It is, according to the ancient text we possess, the divine commitment given by God to Abram that his descendants will inherit the land of Canaan, later, of course, to be called Israel.

I’ve often thought about and preached about Lech Lecha, this amazing call that comes to a man who has not made much of an impression prior to this in the Torah.  Lech lecha meiartzecha umimoladeticha umibeit avicha, go, leave everything you have ever known and go to the land I’ll show you.  When the portion begins all we really know about Avram is that he was born in the Babylonian city-state of Ur, and moved with his father, brother, nephew and wife to Haran.  Haran is still there, a very old city, located in southeastern Turkey about 20 kilometers from the Syrian border.  I’ve personally been in Haran, which is located between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, in the cradle of civilization, near Sanliurfa, Turkey.  It is on a crossroads of highways going both east and west and north and south.  When I was there, there were many refugees from ISIS, Islamists much like Hamas.  I hope they have been able to return safely to their homes in Syria by now.

I’ve often wondered about the human experience of this call that Avram hears.  God tells him to leave his homeland, his birthplace, his father’s house, and go the land that God will show him, asher areka.  It’s certainly life-changing, but also super-ambiguous.  I can just visualize him going home to Sarai, his wife, and telling her the plan.  That conversation could not have gone well.

Avram tells Sarai: “God told us to leave here, right now, pack up and take everything.”

Sarai asks, “God told you?  Which God?”  

And Avram says “A God you have never heard of and can’t see.” 

So, Sarai answers, “Uh huh.  And where are we going?”

And Avram says, “I don’t know.”

Fortunately for all of us, they do leave Haran and head for Canaan.  Once they arrive, God tells Avram, “I promise this land to you and your descendants.”     

Now, I don’t care how literally or metaphorically you take this tale, or how you evaluate the later promises to the land of Canaan that God makes to Isaac and Jacob.  But there is no doubt that whenever the Torah was created, and it is not less than 2500 years old in written form and parts of it are surely 3000 years old, we descendants of Avraham and Yitzhak and Ya’akov believed that the land of Israel was our homeland. 

And there is also no doubt that from about 1200 BCE, 3200 years ago, we had a nation-state—and much of that time two nation-states—in the land of Israel.  That is, we had a Jewish nation from about 1200 BCE to about 70 CE, roughly 1300 years, with only one interruption of about 50 years.  And while we were forced into exile twice, by the Babylonians in 586 BCE and by the Romans in 70 CE and again in 135 CE, we retained not only a powerful, permanent connection to that land of Israel but always had a Jewish community living, working, studying, and praying there. 

This phenomenal Torah portion includes the first promise God gives our people to eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel. Our land.  Our only homeland on the planet.  The only country where Jews are actually in control, no matter what the crazed conspiracy theorists say.

Let’s be clear: Israel is not some western nation’s colony planted in the Middle East.  It is, and has been for thousands of years, our Jewish indigenous homeland.  Israel is not just an insignificant part of the quite large Arab world, but the place that has been our Jewish ancestral country for over three thousand years.  A place of return.  The one tiny part of the planet that we Jews have for our own.

It is stunningly anti-historical to say that we Jews somehow are colonizing our own land, that territory purchased at a high price, legally and in cash payments, was somehow stolen; to say that land that earlier Arab terrorists sought to steal from its rightful Jewish owners by brutality and military conquest, land that was fought for and died for and protected from destruction somehow should belong to those who desire it simply because they say so and have the capacity to murder some of its citizens.  This is not historically true or in any other way honest.  It is not the way the world does things anywhere else on the globe.  Only Jews are told that we must disappear from our own homeland, that it is moral to destroy a modern, vibrant, vital, democratic nation so that vicious Palestinian terrorists can be accommodated and establish a brutal Islamist theocracy, as they have in Gaza.

You know, my favorite banners in the last two weeks were “Gays for Gaza” and “Lesbians for Palestinian liberation”.  Do you know where the largest Gay Pride events in the entire Middle East take place?  Israel.  I’ve been in Tel Aviv for two Gay Pride parades, totally by coincidence.  They were spectacular.  People from all over Europe, from all over the world come to Israel because it is a free society where people can own their own identities openly. 

Now, do you know how gays, lesbians, queer and transgender people are treated in Hamas-controlled Gaza, and in the Fatah-controlled West Bank?  They are harassed, attacked, tortured, and murdered.  They are brutalized for being who they are.  Yet people in America and Europe marched last week, just ten days after the horrific murders of children, women, and men all across Southern Israel, carrying signs that said, “Queers in solidarity with Palestine.”

I want to stress again: Israel is our indigenous Jewish homeland.  It is where our ancestors lived and died and our Jewish relatives created an extraordinary, amazing country.  There was no “Palestine” as a nation, or even a nationality, before Yasser Arafat invented that identity in blood in the early 1960s.  The true Palestinian desire is not for a two-state solution; it is “River to the Sea,” which is not very different from the old Arab vow to drive all the Jews into the Sea.  It is, simply put, genocidal. 

Make no mistake: those who march on college campuses in support of “Free Palestine” are marching in support of the genocide of Jews.  They are rallying to seek to destroy the only true democracy in the Middle East.  They are chanting in favor of Islamist murderers who would kill every Jew in Israel if they could, who shoot rockets regularly at civilian populations to kill and terrorize.  They are supporting vile terrorists who kidnapped 230 civilians to use them as hostages, who murdered families and recorded their crimes on video and posted them on the web.  These young people who rally for Palestine are thrilled that young people exactly like them at an all-night concert for peace were brutally gunned down and shot with rpgs and hand grenades.  That some of the murdered young people’s bodies still cannot be identified because of the brutal way they were slaughtered.

I’d like to talk about Israel’s response to October 7th, and the difficulty we should have in believing anything that Hamas and its spokesmen say.

There are certainly civilians in Gaza who are suffering, and more will suffer. This is deeply sad and a terrible and unavoidable outcome of war.  Now, we also know from the four hostages who were released that in the spiderweb of tunnels built by Hamas underneath the Gaza Strip that their terrorists are unaffected by the bombardment above, and that they seem to have plenty of food, water, and fuel.  Mind you, they do not share any of it with their Palestinian brothers and sisters in the terrorized population aboveground.  And if humanitarian aid is allowed to pour in, expect Hamas to commandeer most or all of it.  Three weeks ago, when Hamas began this long-planned and horrifically brutal pogrom, that same Gazan population was fine, had food and fuel and water and working sewer lines, all provided by Israel—that is, by the Jews.  The reason Gaza is in distress now is that its leadership determined that, once again, murdering, raping, wounding, and torturing Jews was more important that helping its own people.

I feel for the victims of all wars.  We must also realize that among the terrorists who poured into Southern Israel on that black October 7th were ordinary people, civilians who were not officially part of the Hamas terrorist army.  They came to murder babies and the elderly with axes and hoes, to burn the homes of families.  They were ordinary Gazans; civilians.  Some of them carried back Jewish hostages into Gaza.  Not all of these civilians are so innocent.

We also now know that a fairly high percentage of the rockets that Hamas and Islamic Jihad fire at Israel misfire, and hit Gazans.  The big lie that Israel bombed a hospital damaged diplomacy badly, and intentionally, when President Biden was in the Middle East.  It was later demonstrated, indeed proven, that the rocket that hit the parking structure next to the hospital was aimed at Israel’s civilians, and that it failed and killed Gazans.  It must be fairly terrible to be stuck in Gaza now.  That is deeply sad.  But to call a cease fire and allow the Hamas terrorists to survive is impossible.  Their sole goal is genocide of the Jews.  They cannot remain in power.

Just as clearly, there must be a plan for what happens after Hamas.  You cannot simply destroy the enemy; if you must live with them, and Israel must, based on geography, you must also have a way to eventually work out a solution that is more than “mowing the grass.”  I believe that ultimately there will be a two-state, or even three state solution: Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza.  But the time to determine that is not now.

I don’t know where this war will go.  Frankly, I’m surprised that it has taken the Israeli military this long to enter Gaza.  I believe they know far more than I or anyone here in America knows about the true situation of the hostages, the pressure they are receiving diplomatically, and the real dangers of attacking such a vicious enemy which is so well-supplied with armaments by Iran and trained by them as well.

But I do know one important fact: Israel is the Jewish homeland.  We are not surrendering it, ever again.  She needs our support and help now as much as she ever has.   

Let’s return to Avram, now in the later sections of Lech Lecha changed into Avraham, the father of nations.  That promise of a land also is the promise that we will be a blessing to all the peoples of the world.  In fact, we have been exactly that in the manifold contributions that Jewish people have made in every area of human endeavor. That, of course, is not the perception of Anti-Semites.  But that doesn’t change the fact that it is true.

This land of Israel is our homeland.  It belongs to all Jews.  It must be defended against enemies, and it must succeed.  The promise to Avraham remains, the indigenous connection to the land of Israel remains, the need to create security and safety for its people is acute.

And our duty as Jews is, in this time of crisis and pain, to provide support and to advocate for our only homeland on earth.  May we follow, ultimately, in Avraham’s footsteps… Ken Yehi Ratson