Parshat Shlach: Israel – Flowing with Milk, Honey… and Pain
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I walked across an empty land Israel is once again facing difficulty as it confronts Iran in its effort to destroy their nuclear and missile capabilities. Sirens are regularly going off, disrupting lives and forcing the populace to seek shelter. This is yet another of a string of challenges that the Talmud spoke about when it declared: רַבִּי שִׁמְעוֹן בֶּן יוֹחַאי אוֹמֵר: שָׁלֹשׁ מַתָּנוֹת טוֹבוֹת נָתַן הַקָּדוֹשׁ בָּרוּךְ הוּא לְיִשְׂרָאֵל, וְכוּלָּן לֹא נְתָנָן אֶלָּא עַל יְדֵי יִסּוּרִין, אֵלּוּ הֵן: תּוֹרָה וְאֶרֶץ יִשְׂרָאֵל וְהָעוֹלָם הַבָּא Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai said, God gave three precious gifts to Israel and all of them require pain and challenge to acquire: Torah, Eretz Yisrael, and Olam Haba – Eternity. The fight to acquire and live in the Land of Israel can be traced all the way back to an event in this week’s parsha. And although we talk of the difficulty of getting and holding onto Eretz Yisrael, the Torah emphasizes its sweetness as well. The parsha opens with the event of sending spies to investigate the Land of Israel before they were to enter and conquer it. Twelve spies, one from each tribe, had a straightforward mission: They were to check out the weak areas of the enemy, observe how fertile the land was and see if the cities were fortified and difficult to overcome. The Torah notes that they went during the grape-ripening season and that the land was indeed quite fertile as they came back bearing large fruits testifying to its richness. The iconic image of huge clusters of grapes borne on long poles on the shoulders of the spies adorn the label of Carmel Wines and the Ministry of Tourism in Israel today. Israel has always been associated with the beauty and richness of its natural resources. The spies confirmed that indeed it was a “land flowing with milk and honey”. According to Jewish tradition, the honey spoken about is from dates and not bee honey, which is an important distinction as we shall soon see. As long as the Jewish people dwelt in Israel, it was a very fruitful place. However, God warned us through many prophets that, in the event of exile, it would lose all its glory and become completely desolate. The Talmud testifies to this in the tractate Sotah 48a where the Mishna states that Rabbi Yehoshua, who lived during the destruction of the Temple, notes that “the dew did not descend in blessing and that flavour has been removed from fruits.” Through the subsequent generations Israel became a wasteland and in the 1800’s, in Mark Twain’s travel log, he penned as much on his visit to Israel: We traversed some miles of desolate country whose soil is rich enough but is given wholly to weeds – a silent, mournful expanse … desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action. We never saw a human being on the whole route. We pressed on toward Jerusalem. The further we went the hotter the sun got and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape become. Jerusalem is mournful, dreary and lifeless. But we always knew that this fate of desolation was not to be forever. Time and again we are told by those self-same prophets that Israel will return to her former glory when God brings us back from our exile. And indeed we live in a very special time where we have witnessed first-hand the rebuilding and the renewal of the natural beauty and glory of Israel. We are fortunate enough to live in an era where we can hop on a plane and, in a matter of hours, be part of the lovely and gorgeous land that millions of Jews for countless centuries could only dream of visiting or living in. (And hoping that we can do this again very soon.) Many years ago I came across an article that appropriately happened to appear on the very selfsame week of this week’s parsha which describes the prosperity and lushness of the land. It spoke of a small but miraculous and symbolic event of renewal of Eretz Yisrael. Scientists in Israel have confirmed that an ancient date palm seed retrieved from the rubble of Masada and successfully germinated is about 2,000 years old. That makes it the oldest seed ever to sprout, beating the previous well-documented record holder, a lotus found in a dry lakebed in China, by about 700 years. The date seed was among several obtained in the 1960s by archaeologists excavating Masada, the fortress in the Judean Desert built by Herod around 35 B.C. and destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 73. In 2005, three seeds were planted by Sarah Sallon of the Louis L. Borick Natural Medicine Research Center, part of the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem. One seed germinated, and three years later, Dr. Sallon and colleagues report in “Science” that the resulting plant is healthy and more than three feet tall. Radiocarbon testing of shell fragments of the seed obtained when the plant was repotted at 15 months show that it dates from the time of Masada. (For an updated report on these dates, click here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJhUzVc9C8M) The Judean Dead Sea region around the first century A.D. was well known for its date palms that produced fruit of high quality, but over the centuries this line of plants was lost. The researchers say more seeds are needed for a more thorough understanding of what made those old dates so good. What made these old dates so good? I’m not sure how much research is needed for we know the answer and have known it for thousands of years. God promised us a land flowing with milk and date honey. He also told us that it would be desolate when we were exiled but that it would regain its lush, beautiful and sweet fruit when we returned. How symbolic that these dates of Masada – the place of one of the last stands against foreign Roman rulers who sought to destroy our connection to Eretz Yisrael – are now replanted and growing in Israel today. The Romans attempted to uproot us from our land, and so too Iran wishes to do the same. But they and all our enemies will never succeed. For just like these small seeds germinated and grew to produce sweet and delicious dates, so too Am Yisrael has been resurrected to grow and thrive so beautifully once again in Eretz Yisrael. And no designs of backward Mullahs of Iran can ever prevent that from happening. I came across a fallen tree |
