| Friday 10 November 2023 - 26 Cheshvan 5784
Sedra Chayei Sarah
ACQUIRING THE LAND
LAND IS OFTEN A CAUSE OF LITIGATION. THERE ARE RAW FEELINGS WHICH cannot be assuaged. It might be a question of who owns the pleasant little hill at the bottom of your garden. The neighbour claims it is part of his garden and the fence is built in the wrong place. The lawyers look at the plans of the property. Are they clear, or is there still room for an argument?
The Sedra1 describes Abraham's first formal acquisition of a piece of land in Israel. Earlier there had been repeated promises by G-d that the Land of Israel would be given to him and his descendants. He had moved to the Land and had lived there for more than fifty years. Yet now came a further step: buying a field, with a cave, an identifiable piece of property.
Abraham was buying this field in order to bury his beloved wife Sarah in the cave. Tradition tells us that Adam and Eve were also buried there. Later, Abraham himself, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah would also be buried in this sacred site, located in Hebron.
The original owner, Efron the Hittite, had wanted to give the burial site to Abraham as a present. Abraham refused, insisting on paying in full for this first formal acquisition of land in Israel for his descendants.
About nine centuries later there was another purchase of land by a Jewish leader. King David bought a hill from its Jebusite owner, who also initially wanted to give it as a present. David insisted on paying in full2. This was Mount Moriah, where Abraham had been ready to sacrifice Isaac. David's son King Solomon built the Temple on this hill, and it is till today the spiritual centre for world Jewry, the point towards which we turn whenever we pray. The Western Wall in Jerusalem is the last surviving wall of the Temple, but the holiness of that special site is still there.
The Midrash says that the nations of the world cannot claim that these two sites, the Graves of the Patriarchs in Hebron and the Temple site in Jerusalem, were stolen by the Jews3. They were bought at the full price by Abraham and David, respectively. The rest of the Land of Israel is also ours, as our ancestral land, given by G-d, conquered from the ancient Canaanites more than three thousand years ago. Someone might ask if this was fair, and Rashi responds to this claim at the beginning of his famous commentary on the Torah: the world belongs to G-d, and G-d gave the Land of Israel to the Jewish people, even though earlier the Canaanites lived there.
In the case of the property in Hebron bought by Abraham, and the Temple Mount in Jerusalem bought by David, there is not even a question. These sites were bought legally. This also relates to the fact that both these sites also have a special permanent level of holiness.
The Sages tell us that the Divine Presence never departed from the site of the Temple, even after its destruction4. Similarly the prayers of the Jewish people ascend to Heaven in some sense via the sacred site in Hebron, as well as via the Temple5.
Although the Jewish right to the Holy Land of Israel is under attack, by Hamas and their many supporters, the Torah is clear. The field and cave in Hebron bought by Abraham, and the Temple Mount bought by David, belong to the Jewish people. So too does the rest of the Land of Israel. It is bonded to the Jewish people, as the Land promised to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and their descendants, though which ultimately they bring blessing to the world6.
1. Genesis 23:1 – 25:18. 2. II Samuel 24: 18-25. 3. Midrash Bereishit Rabbah 79:10. The Midrash lists a third site, which was purchased by Jacob: the grave of Joseph in Shechem (Nablus). See Gen.33:18-20 and Joshua 24:22. 4. Rambam, Laws of the Temple, end of ch.6. 5. See Yalkut Reuveni on this Sedra. It is said the gate of Gan Eden is next to the Patriarchs' burial cave in Hebron. 6. Freely based on points from the Lubavitcher Rebbe's Likkutei Sichot vol.35, 85-88.
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