“When you come into the land …” — The transition from wandering in the wilderness to life in a settled land requires a change in lifestyle and in outlook. Moving from the life of a persecuted minority to that of an independent people on our own land requires a revolution in mentality. The “first fruits statement” (Deut. 26:5–10) in our parashah mentions “the fruit of the Land,” which God and human beings are partners in growing, and emphasizes the lesson of the Exodus from Egypt: the Promised Land is not necessarily a sure thing.
The early Zionist pioneers’ song, Anu Banu Artza — “We have come to the Land in order to build and to be built in it” — hints that reconstructing ourselves is as much of a challenge as building up the country. We are still in the process of building ourselves, liberating ourselves from fear of what the non-Jews may think of us and ridding ourselves of an exilic complex: thinking that the non-Jews are always evil and the “chosen people” is always right and always suffers … We have extracted the majority of our people from galut (exile), but we have not yet extracted galut from our collective soul. Not every criticism of us voiced by the nations of the world can be attributed to antisemitism. A free people in its own land (in the words of Hativkvah) heeds criticism and examines itself, especially in this pre-High Holiday period of reflection and self-examination.
