How Important Is Making Aliyah?

Our Sages teach us that a Jew who walks four cubits in Eretz Yisrael is rewarded with life in the World to Come. In contrast, you can walk 1,000 times around the deck of a cruise ship sailing through the straits of Norway and all you will get is sore feet.

But there’s walking in Israel and moving to Israel. How important is the latter? To address this question, The Jewish Press recently spoke with Rav Dov Lior, the former chief rabbi of Chevron and rosh yeshiva of the Nir Hesder Yeshiva in Kiryat Arba. He now resides in a tiny Jewish community on the peak of Har HaZeitim.

The Jewish Press: Must a Jew live in Eretz Yisrael?

Rav Lior: The Torah giant, the Ramban, clearly rules that dwelling in the Land of Israel is a Torah commandment in force at all times – even in galut. He explains that we are obligated to conquer the land, dwell in it, and keep it under Jewish sovereignty for all eternity.

Our true place is in Israel, not America or France. Did the Master of the World bring us out of Egypt to live in Honolulu or Brooklyn? The thought is absurd.

Not everyone is capable of moving to Israel for a variety of reasons.

If someone cannot make aliyah because he won’t be able to find parnassa, ill parents need him, or some other justified reason, then he is prevented against his will. But if circumstances allow – and I believe every industrious person can find a livelihood in Israel these days – the obligation to live in Israel is a Torah commandment.

Today, you won’t discover a new oleh who is starving in the streets. Look how many immigrants have come to this country and succeeded in building new lives and raising large families.

It is even more important to make aliyah now that anti-Semitism is increasing all over the world. Even in America, there is an upsurge of antagonism toward the Jews. So let them transplant their businesses and medical clinics to Israel and take part in the rebuilding of the Jewish nation in Zion instead of contributing their talents and strengths to foreign powers.

There are rabbis who maintain that aliyah is not obligatory today.

I don’t know any rabbis today who possess the same Torah stature as the Ramban. Once I had a student from Ohio who told me he was returning to America. When I asked him why he didn’t get married and stay in Israel, he answered that his rabbi in Cleveland said that living in Israel isn’t a Torah commandment today.

Without telling him what I thought of his rabbi, I sat him down and we learned Chapter 19 of Mesillat Yesharim on saintliness. In it, the Ramchal explains that the true chassid always chooses the most stringent legal opinion. All these excuses not to make aliyah fall into the same category of excuses promulgated by the Spies in the Wilderness. They weaken the nation.

Instead of spouting excuses, let all of the Jews in the Diaspora come to Israel to see the miracles Hashem has done for us, and witness the miracles He is still doing, every day. Look how we are surrounded by myriads of terrorists and Islamic enemies who seek our harm every moment with the backing of European countries. Yet, our country is thriving. Before our very eyes we see how “in every generation they rise up against us to destroy us, and the Holy One Blessed Be He saves us from their hands.”

Does the obligation to make aliyah apply to women, too? 

Women do not have the same obligation to conquer the land, but they are commanded to dwell here. Can a nation exist without women?

In fact, living in the Land of Israel is so vital to the Jewish nation that if a wife in the Diaspora wants to make aliyah and her husband does not, beit din can force the husband to grant her a divorce with her full ketubah payment so she can live in Israel.

I ask you: Whoever heard of such a thing? Is there anything more important than family unity? We do everything we can to maintain a marriage, not terminate it. Yet, when it comes to the mitzvah of aliyah and the desire of a Jew to live in Israel, beit din places the future of the Jewish nation above the individual family.

Every Jew who comes to live in Israel gives added strength to the nation. Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael is the foundation of the Torah. The future of our people is here in the promised land.

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Top 25 Excuses For Not Making Aliyah

As a resident of Jerusalem, I occasionally stop by hotel lobbies to chat with tourists from America. While Chabadniks encourage visitors to put on tefillin, I talk to them about aliyah.

Over the years, in answer to my question, “Why are you just visiting Israel and not moving here?” I have received a many answers, some funny and others based on fervent ideology. Here are the top 25 excuses/reasons I’ve heard over the years:

1. Israel is too hot.
2. Israel is too cold.
3. You can’t find a real bagel.
4. The cream cheese stinks.
5. The pastrami is lousy.
6. They don’t have real rye bread.
7. There’s no Major League baseball or football.
8. I’m afraid to drive in Israel.
9. I’m afraid of the Arabs.
10. I’m afraid of my mother.
11. I can’t learn Hebrew at my age.
12. There’s only one golf course.
13. It is too far away from the Caribbean.
14. My fiancé doesn’t want to leave her parents.
15. I don’t want to leave my psychiatrist.
16. I don’t want to leave my neurologist.
17. I don’t want to leave my hair dresser.
18. Falafel gives me a belly ache.
19. The bathrooms are too small.
20. There’s no central heating.
21. There’s no wall-to-wall carpeting and built-in closets.
22. The taxes are too high.
23. I won’t be able to find a job as a rabbi.
24. I won’t get The Jewish Press.
25. The move will be too traumatic for my dog.