When
you shall beget children, and children’s children and you will have become
old in the Land, and will practice depravity, and make a graven image, the
presentation of anything at all, and shall do that which is evil in the sight
of the Lord your God, to provoke Him to anger. Deuteronomy 4:25
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Thus begins the Torah reading our
Sages chose for Tisha b’Av (which is taken from Parashat vaEtḥanan,
which is always the Torah portion read the Shabbat after Tisha b’Av).
Netziv explains the phrase “and you shall
have been long in the Land” (or “you will have become old in the Land”, as
translated in the English edition of Rabbi Shimshon Raphael Hirsch’s commentary
on Ḥumash): when the experience of entering the Land was still fresh,
the Israelites understood that it was through God’s intervention that they were
able to liberate their Land, as “all Israel” attested [Joshua 24:17-18]:
For
the Lord our God, He is the One who brought us and our fathers up out of the
land of Egypt, from the house of bondage, and did those great signs in our
sight, and preserved us in all the way wherein we went, and among all the
peoples through whose midst we passed; and the Lord drove out from before us
all the peoples, even the Amorites that dwelt in the Land; therefore we shall
serve the Lord, for He is our God.
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However, when the generations pass
and Israel will “became old in the Land”, they risk losing sight of the divine
element which is essential to their being in the Land, and just as the kings of
the nations believe that the sun is God’s agent for ruling the world [Babylonian
Talmud, Berachot 7a], Israel too may come to believe that the Land of
Israel is governed by the same natural laws as other lands.
According to Netziv’s
elucidation of the verse, believing that the Land is governed by natural laws,
and not by direct Divine Providence, is the equivalent of idolatry.
The first sin committed on Tisha
b’Av was the Sin of the Spies, which was the failure of the Children of
Israel to appreciate the unique Divine Providence which applies to the Land.
Ten of the twelve spies presented a negative report, concluding that the
Israelites could not capture the Land. Only Caleb and Joshua submitted a report
that the Children of Israel will be able to enter and capture the Land with
God’s help. On the face of it, the
People were right to accept the majority report, especially since it was an
overwhelming majority. However, accepting the majority report constituted
rejection of God's promise to bring the Children of Israel into the Land.
Therefore, accepting the majority report was indeed a grave sin.
Tisha b'Av became the darkest
date in Jewish history because it was the day on which the Children of Israel
rejected the Land in its spiritual aspect.
The Torah reading which our Sages
chose for Tisha b’Av constitutes a warning that, should Israel repeat
the sin of the spies, the nation will suffer for this, to the point of risking
destruction and exile. As well, the
Torah reading points to repentance from the sin of the spies as the guarantee
of Israel’s continued presence in its Land.
In the continuation of the Torah
reading [verses 33 – 34], the Torah asks us to reflect on two events, in order
to confirm God’s unique intervention on behalf of His people: the revelation at
Sinai and the exodus from Egypt. Malbim comments that by remembering the
exodus, whose purpose was to bring Israel into its Land, we will remind
ourselves that the condition for maintaining the Land is fulfillment of mitzvot.
Thus, repentance from the sin of the spies requires practical commitment to
observing the mitzvot within the Land.
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