Respecting God, Man and Land

And the Lord said to Moses on Mount Sinai: “Speak to the Israelites and tell them: When you enter the Land I am giving you, the Land will observe a Sabbath to the Lord.”  Leviticus 25:1-2

            Tzror haMor (Rabbi Avraham Saba [among the Jews expelled from Spain in 1492]) explains that the juxtaposition of the law of the sabbatical year with the preceding parashot conveys the lesson that we are obligated to respect the Holy Land, as we are obligated to respect God and His creatures:

The law of the sabbatical year is presented after the previous matters to instruct us that as we are obligated to respect God and to respect His creatures, so too we are obligated to respect the Holy Land, the Land of Israel, which is constantly under God’s scrutiny and His eyes are on it at all times, from the beginning of the year until the end of the year, [Deuteronomy 11:12] for she is referred to as “the desired Land” [Malachi 3:12] and “the Land of the living.” [Psalms 116:9;142:6]  Therefore, we must consider these three categories of respect: respect for God, respect for the people of Israel and respect for the Land of Israel. And these are included within respect for God.

            In Parashat Emor, the Torah dealt, inter alia, with respect for God, and commanded Israel to sanctify His name and to avoid desecrating it, [22:31] as well as the severity of cursing God. [23:15-16] In Parashat Kedoshim the Torah presents a series of mitzvot between man and fellow man, including “Love your neighbor as yourself” [19:18] and love of proselytes [ibid. 34] which express love of God’s creatures.

            Thus, after presenting the mandate to respect God and to respect the creature that was created in His image, the Torah mandates respecting the Holy Land. As Tzror haMor notes, the mandate to respect man and the mandate to respect the Land flow from and are part of the mandate to respect God. Since man was created in God’s image, we are obligated to respect him as we are required to respect his Creator. Concerning the Land, since the Creator endowed it with His sanctity and chose it from among all the lands of the earth, we must respect her as well.

            There are practical Halachic implications of Tzror haMor’s comments. For example, Piskei Teshuvot [Oraḥ Ḥayyim 156:23:10] writes, as a practical Halacha:

It is forbidden denigrate the Land of Israel, even concerning its trees and stones, and it is forbidden to say of any other land that it is better than the Land of Israel.

            In his book Naḥalat haShem, Rabbi Binyamin haLevi Li’on has comments similar to that of Piskei Teshuvot:

It is a great sin to deprecate the Land of Israel, God’s estate, for example, to say that dwelling within her is bad, for whatever reason (since Moses’ spies were punished for speaking ill of the Land [Numbers 14:37], all the more so, to say that dwelling within the Land is bad on the spiritual level. Some say that one who speaks ill of the Land will not be privileged to greet Messiah.  (Based upon the Talmudic comment that Moses’ spies have no portion in the World to Come. [Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 109b]

             It is appropriate to add the impassioned words of Rabbi Yeruḥam of Mir concerning those who praise the Land for its physical aspects and not its spiritual ones:

Our view of and attitude towards the Land of Israel must be that she is Holy of Holies … the Land is the ultimate purpose (of existence) … virtually the entire Torah is deals with the Land and is full of her praise, and the Review of Torah (Deuteronomy) speaks only of the Land of Israel … the Land is the essence of wisdom, repentance and good deeds ... true completion can be achieved only within the Land … Our Sages taught “He who despises God’s word” [Numbers 15:31] refers to one who despised that which is holy and such person has no portion in the World to Come. [Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 99a] This includes one who praises the Land as flowing milk and honey, yet considers the Land to be as other lands, and acts in accordance. Such people are included, God forbid, among those who have no portion in the World to Come because they have despised that which is holy. [Da’at Torah, 211]

            It is not possible to truly respect the Land without understanding her spiritual dimension.

            Naḥalat haShema adds the positive implication of Tzror haMor’s words:

It is appropriate to speak in praise of the Land. (Based upon Yalkut Shimoni, II Kings, 238, which states, similarly to the Talmud, that Sennacherib was rewarded for not speaking ill of the Land, and adds: If this is true of one who merely refrained from speaking ill of the Land, all the more so of one who praises her.)