WHAT IS ISRAEL WORTH? | Rabbi Stewart Weiss | Beit Midrash

Torah Portion and Tanach
Chayei Sara

קטגוריה משנית

Avraham has now finished his "10 Tests." After the traumas of being thrown into a fiery furnace, leaving his family & his homeland, fighting a war to free his nephew, circumcising himself (at age 99!), & almost sacrificing his beloved Yitzchak at the Akeida, Avraham certainly deserves a well-earned rest.

But hold on, the Torah tells us in this Parsha; there is still one more hurdle, one more challenge before Avraham can finally relax & recede into the background: he must secure a proper resting-place for his beloved wife, Sara. And so he gets up from Shiva & begins to negotiate with the Hittites for the burial site that would forever become known as "Ma’arat HaMachpela," the double-layer cave in which were interred four couples (the others being Adam/Chava, Yitzchak/Rivka & Yakov/Leah).

Ephron the Hittite is a sharp negotiator; he first tells Avraham that he can have the place for free. But when Avraham insists that it must be inviolable, eternal Jewish land, the price suddenly skyrockets to four hundred shekels. This, say the commentators (from the unusual term, "Ohver La’socher") indicates a form of internationally-recognized currency, & so the actual amount is in the millions of shekels, by today’s standards.

Why does Avraham feel the need to spend so much money? Jews, after all, are buried in cemeteries throughout the known world. Why davka here? Furthermore, this was land that was promised to be given to Avraham & his future descendants by Hashem (which is why Lot saw no problem with his animals grazing on the land), so eventually he would have the plot anyway. So why not be patient & save a whole lot of money?

And even if Avraham did legally buy it, who is to say that the inhabitants who lived there – then or in the future – would admit & acknowledge it? They might lie & say that it was always there’s, that the contract was forged, or some other excuse.

But the point here should be obvious to us: Avraham was sending a clear message to us, and to all the generations of Jews to come: "This Land is priceless, valuable beyond estimation, and so we must be prepared to pay a very high price to take it, & to keep it."

We have reclaimed the Land of Israel, but we have paid, & are still paying, a very high price to sustain it. We had to fight the Arabs even when this was "no-man’s land." We had to battle 7 nations that converged against us in 1948. We had to fight "official" wars in 1956, in 1967 & in 1973, & "unofficial" battles in the Gulf War, against Hezbollah in Lebanon, in Gaza & in Yehuda & Shomron.

And now we have a full-fledged war against the Hamas barbarians, not only in Gaza but wherever they spread their venomous tentacles. And a war in Iran is not far off. We pay dearly in these wars - even one precious soul lost outweighs all the terrorists we kill. But we have to know 1 essential thing: Israel costs a lot because Israel is the most valuable thing the Jewish People can ever own.