"This land is your land; this land is my land" - Whose land is it?
12/04/2021 09:08:06 AM
Dear Congregational Family,
In recent times, there has become a concern about "land acknowledgement." At face value, proponents are sensitive to the feelings of so called "original" landowners. In my lifetime, I grew up in Boston. I never make reference to the Boston Tea Party or other events which led to the city in which I was raised. Growing up in the United States of America, I do not apologetically get into the history of events surrounding Plymouth Rock or U.S. Thanksgiving. I call my spiritual homeland Israel. I do not make reference to Biblical Canaanite nations or others who have made claims over the centuries. In my twenty plus years living locally, I know to say Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Seemingly, any place in the world contains layers of different civilizations and definitions of ownership.
The fact of the matter is - our Torah makes it very clear that God is the owner of all land. People are mere tenants. Many portions of Torah make this very clear. The fact that Scripture begins with the book of Genesis clarifies that God is the creator and owner of the entire earth. On the very first verse of Bereishit, Rashi quotes an ancient teaching which explains why the Torah begins with Genesis and not the first Mitzvah given to the Children of Israel. Since God is the owner of all lands, God decided to apportion the land of Israel to the Jewish people.
In ancient Jewish teaching, the creation point of the world is the Foundation stone in the ancient Temple's holy of holies. From there, God created the world. In that sense, Jerusalem is the foundation of the entire earth.
With the commemorations of Yom Ha'Zikaron and Yom Ha'Atzmaut this week, I suggest that while we should be sensitive to the feelings of others, we must humbly refrain from the politics of land acknowledgement. God owns all land, and we are respectful tenants. God swore to Abraham that the land of Israel would be an essential part of the divine covenant with the Jewish people for all time.
Sincerely,
Rabbi Howard Morrison
