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CHAPTER XX THE LAND OF ISRAEL The interpretation of Israel's destiny always in terms of Ere~ Yisrael-The unquenchable yearning for ErtJ~ Yisrael motivated by the Jews' will-to-live as a nation-The Jewish emancipation based on a misunderstanding-Jewish emancipation must include the right to land and nationhood-Right of the Jews to Ere~ Yisrael compatible with interests of natives--The meaning of the mandate for Palestine-The upbuilding of a Jewish national home an incentive to Jewish revival in diaspora. JUDAISM has always contemplated Israel's life and destiny in terms of a collective existence associated with a particular land. Nothing in traditional Judaism indicates that Israel is to function in the world as a landless people. The proposal that the Jews reconstitute themselves into a religious organization that would completely omit Palestine from its reckoning, except as an ancient memory , must ultimately lead to a complete severance with the Jewish past. Whatever the religious philosophy or program of action of such an organization, it would not be Judaism. "Nationality," says Alfred E. Zimmern,' "is a form of corporate sentiment." A nation is "a body of people united by a corporate sentiment of peculiar intensity, intimacy and dignity, related to a definite home-country." The Jewish people has always been highly conscious of its relationship to the land where it developed its national life. It did not accept that relationship casually, after the fashion of most nations. Unlike the other ancient peoples, it never considered itself autochthonous; it never forgot that it came to the land from elsewhere, and that only in the land did it begin to function as a nation. A true reading of the Pentateuch-the basic source of the sanctions, laws and folkways of the Jewish people-wouldindicate that the Jews have in it a perfectly recorded deed to the possession of Ere~ Yisrael. On the basis of a few Aggadic passages which reflect the religious -polemic interests of rabbinic times, the conception arose that Abraham was called by God because he had discovered the oneness and spirituality of God. The Torah knows nothing about Abraham 264 THE LAND OF ISRAEL as a religious philosopher or reformer. It is mainly interested in giving an account of the way God went about creating a people that would acknowledge him as its God and obey his laws. It informs us that God chose Abraham to be the founder of that people. To achieve that purpose, he commanded Abraham to leave his home and his kindred-among whom he would naturally have had to worship other gods-and directed him to the land of Canaan, promising to make his descendents into a great nation. Abraham no sooner arrived in the land, than God appeared and said to him: "To thy seed will I give this land.'" This promise is reiterated ten times in the course of the patriarchal epic. Why did not the Patriarchs enter into actual possession forthwith ? There were two conditions to be met. First, Abraham had to prove his worth as a faithful and obedient vassal of God. Second, the Amorites who held the land had to reach the full measure of sin before they could with justice be deprived of their land. This latter condition necessitated the sojourn of Jacob, his children and their descendants in Egypt. The achievement of God's purpose-the formation of Abraham's descendants into a nation-had to be suspended. When Joseph adjured the children of Israel to take his remains to Canaan, he said: "God will surely remember you, and bring you up out of this land unto the land which he swore to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob."· According to the biblical narrative , it was in the spirit of waiting to be called to their land that the Israelites lived in Egypt. When the time came for the exodus, God sent Moses to lead the Israelites out of Egypt into the promised land. And I am come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land into a good land and a large, unto a land flowing with milk and honey; unto the place of the Canaanite and the Hittite, and the Amorite, and the Perizzite, and the Hivite, and the Jebusite.· And I will take you to me for a people, and I will be to you a God; and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God...

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