THE INVISIBLE WALLS OF YERUSHALAYIM

Dear Family,

I hope that everyone is well.

Refuah shleimah for Yechezkiel ben Ester

Mazal Tov to Aaron Glick whose birthday is this coming week. I hope that you and your Family are doing well Aaron, and wishing you a wonderful year with much success and happiness!

I saw an interesting Dvar Torah from Rabbi YY Jacobson from this week's Sedra, Behar.

One of the points of discussion in the Sedra is about the sale of land in Eretz Yisrael.

If a home in a city without a wall, is sold, it has to be returned to the seller in the Jubillee Year (the 50th year of each cycle).

If the home is in a walled city, it can stay in the possession of the purchaser eternally.

This latter point is mentioned in V 25:30, but it has a rare expression used. The term used for a city without a wall is 'lo choma', the lo being spelt with an aleph

But then we are instructed to read it as lo choma spelt with a vav, and this means that it does have a wall! Ie the 2 lo's contradict each other!?

The explanation is as follows:

With an unwalled city, the returning of land in the Jubillee is a reminder that nothing that we own is eternal. We are merely borrowing from Hashem

With walled cities, it seems like we can get eternal possession, and this is the general illusion of society. We believe that what we are doing is going to last forever.

But over time it can be seen that houses, buildings, businesses, empires etc which were all held as indestructible, all came crumbling down.

When Yehoshua brought our Jewish Nation to Eretz Yisrael, he halachically endowed the Land with holiness.

He introduced the "walls" of Mosheh, the "walls" of Torah, the "walls" of Faith.

These walls appear at best very fragile, and at worst, non existent, ie spelled and written as lo with an aleph.

But if we search , we will discover that these walls defy time and history, they transcend all chaos and crisis, and are eternal. They are engraved with the eternal vav of lo...ie it is a city with walls which provide real eternality.

When Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakai was given the option to preserve one part of Israel from the Romans, he did not choose Jerusalem, and not even the Temple. He chose the Yeshivah in Yavneh.

Because the only indestructible walls are those of Spirituality, those of Torah.

Gut Shabbos to all!