Gift of a Permanent Land

You shall then make the following declaration before God your Lord: “My ancestor was a homeless Aramean. He went to Egypt with a small number of men and lived there as an immigrant, but it was there that he became a great, powerful, and populous nation. The Egyptians were cruel to us, making us suffer and imposing harsh slavery on us. We cried out to God, Lord of our ancestors, and God heard our voice, seeing our suffering, our harsh labor, and our distress. God then brought us out of Egypt with a strong hand and an outstretched arm with great visions and with signs and miracles. He brought us to this place, giving us this Land flowing with milk and honey. I am now bringing the first fruit of the land that God has given me.”                                        Deuteronomy 26:5-10

Our Sages taught that bringing bikurim (the first ripened fruit) became obligatory only after Israel entered the Land, conquered it, divided it among the tribes and settled it. [Babylonian Talmud, Kiddushin 37b]                                 

The late Lubavitcher Rebbi notes that our Sages’ teaching that the mitzva of bikurim commenced only after the Promised Land had been liberated from the Canaanites, apportioned to the tribes and settled by them indicates that the mitzva is not merely an expression of thanksgiving to God for the gift of the Land, but primarily for having settled there as a permanent home. “The fruit expressed gratitude for the ‘Land flowing with milk and honey’ and for the chance of inhabiting it permanently ‘to eat from its fruits and be satiated with its goodness’.”

            Thus the declaration which accompanies placing the bikurim on the altar presents two examples from Israel’s history in which our ancestors lived “in a place of permanent settlement and where – from that seeming security – enemies arose to destroy them and were defeated by God. These two cases point firmly to the gift of a permanent Land (“He brought us into this place”) from which there arises only goodness and sustenance.”

            This approach explains why the declaration of the Israelite farmer does not include reference to Jacob’s salvation from Esav nor to the miracles during Israel’s years of the wandering in the wilderness. Those miracles took place on Jacob and Israel’s journeys, and therefore “have no relation to that special feeling of gratitude that the Israelites expressed on coming to a settlement in a Land that was theirs that overflowed with goodness.”

            While the Rebbi does not mention it, his comments coincide with the comment of the first Lubavitcher Rebbi, that the Holy Land is the only place in the world where a Jew has the right to feel secure.