Where Is Home?

25 Tamuz 5777

Klal Yisrael "married" HKB"H under a mountain chuppah in the wilderness. The Torah is our ketubah. Heaven and Earth were the witnesses and Eretz Yisrael is the home He provided for us. (Bamidbar 15:2) It was meant to be for all time. But, we were unfaithful to Him and He sent us away from Him and locked the door so we could not return home. After 70 years, he welcomed us back. We put the house in order and resumed our life together in the marital home.

After a time, strife and discord developed and became so bad that the home became a battlefield and once again, HKB"H sent us away and locked the door. Our plight was so miserable, that He sent messengers to tell us that, like the first time, when His anger had cooled and we had learned our lesson and done proper teshuvah, He would surely bring us back again. (Yeshayahu 14:1) But, no one knew how long that would take. Still, we had the promise, something to hold onto through the night of exile. This was our comfort. And this was our pain.

So many lost hope and memory that when the door was unbarred and thrown wide open, only a few entered through it. Our home had been abandoned for so long that we did not even recognize it. Strangers and sojourners had moved in and set up camps in our ruins.

HKB"H sent workers ahead to begin repairs and they set up temporary quarters and accommodations to serve their needs as work on the infrastructure progressed. Some family members volunteered to live in the squalid conditions which prevailed at first in order to oversee the workers and ensure that everything would go according to HKB"H's plans. As time went on, more and more family members arrived and moved in, making it possible for still others to join them. 

When all is in order and the physical structure has been completed, the workers will be dismissed and given their pay and the remaining family members will be brought back. When that day comes, we will renew our wedding vows with HKB"H, the Shechinah will return to a rebuilt Holy Temple and we will all live happily ever after.

This is no fairy tale. This is the unfailing promise of the Creator of the world. And what we have now, this place called The Jewish State, might better be called The Jewish Estate. It's where the home of the Jewish people is being renovated. The Land of Israel is not so much the Jewish Homeland since our first patriarch did not originate from here, but it is the Jewish Home. It is the home where our Beloved brought us as a new bride and where we were intended to live with Him in marital bliss for all time. HKB"H and Klal Yisrael are both so eager to be reunited in our home that we both put up with a lot of mess while the renovations continue, but always with an eye toward the final product, when everything has been restored.

It's not an accident that the National Religious party became the "Jewish Home" party. Despite the fact that it is completely not representative of the Jewish Home in any way, it was meant to be a message. Just like what happened so suddenly with Har Habayit this past week. Nothing has really changed, but it was meant to send a message to us, the faithful, the hopeful, the eager to be at home again in Eretz Yisrael.

That message is this: It's almost finished! Almost everything is in place and ready for the grand homecoming celebration! Make yourselves ready for it!!

Remember: It is in Eretz Yisrael where the tribal lines will be redrawn (Yechezkel 45). It is to Eretz Yisrael that Mashiach will come and from Yerushalayim that he will reign. And it is from Yerushalayim that the Torah goes forth to the whole world!