A common mistake made when teaching or studying the Land and State of Israel is misunderstanding its true role in the larger context of Judaism. All too often, people incorrectly accentuate Israel’s place in Jewish tradition. Zionists have a responsibility to understand Israel’s role in Judaism accurately.
Misunderstanding Israel’s role has had drastic consequences for the Jewish people. Overemphasizing its importance has led to a false sense of security and mistaken assumptions that the Jewish people wouldn’t lose the land. Underemphasizing the land’s importance has brought the Jewish people to harsh persecution outside of the land amid a refusal to move to the land.
The Jewish nation rests on three pillars: people, leadership, and land. Every nation in history has claimed the same three. Yet ours has always carried something more: a divine dimension, rooted in Torah, that transforms each element into something enduring. This is why we outlasted every empire that has tried to bury us.
Our people are bound not by blood alone, nor by culture in the ordinary sense, but by covenant. The mitzvot – circumcision, Shabbat, the dietary laws, the entire ordered rhythm of Jewish life – are not customs. They are the architecture of our identity. When Haman plotted our destruction, he understood this perfectly: “There is a certain people,” he told the king, “whose laws are different from those of any other people” (Esther 3:8).
Bonds that remain
That difference proved stronger than exile, stronger than pogroms, stronger than the furnaces. From Spain to Yemen, from the Pale of Settlement to the mellahs of Morocco, Jews kept the same calendar, recited the same prayers, and lived by the same moral code while kingdoms rose and crumbled around them. Torah was our portable homeland. No other nation has ever done this.
Leadership, too, bears a different stamp. Maimonides, in the Laws of Kings, paints a portrait of power that feels almost paradoxical: the king is to be honored, yet he must remain humble, “lowly and empty at heart.” He carries the nation’s burdens as a nurse carries an infant. He speaks gently to his people. He never lifts his heart above his brothers.
The ideal Jewish leader is a shepherd, not a master. This vision of authority, subordinate always to Torah, has guarded us against the worst excesses of power. It is governance infused with moral restraint and divine accountability.
But it is the land that reveals the deepest distinction.
Israel: Not just a piece of territory
The Land of Israel is not mere territory. It is not another piece of real estate to be measured by square kilometers, strategic value, or natural resources. This is the ground where Jewish consciousness was born. Here, on these hills and in these valleys, our language took form, our laws were given, and our story entered history. Every ridge, wadi, and ancient terrace carries the imprint of revelation and response.
The Torah itself insists on this uniqueness. Unlike Egypt, whose fields are watered by human effort from the Nile, the Land of Israel “drinks rain from heaven” (Deuteronomy 11:11). Its fertility, seasons, and very rhythm of blessing and curse are directly tied to the moral and spiritual state of its inhabitants.
“It is a land your God cares for,” says Moses in Deuteronomy, “The eyes of your God are always upon it, from the beginning of the year to the end of the year” (11:12). This is not poetic flourish. It is a statement of metaphysical reality. The land lives under constant divine attention.
Scripture goes further. The Torah declares that the land belongs to God; we are merely tenants in it (Leviticus 25:23). The prophets call it God’s own inheritance, His sacred portion (Zechariah 2:12). Its borders are not arbitrary lines drawn by conquest or diplomacy. They are part of the covenant itself. When we live in this land according to its laws, it responds. When we stray, it grows restless. This relationship is intimate, almost personal.
There is a sanctity to the land that cannot be replicated anywhere else. The land speaks to the Jewish people in a language older than memory. It is where our collective “I” was first formed, at Sinai, in the wilderness, and in the long struggle to settle and guard these hills. To be here is to stand inside the covenant in its most concrete form.
The early secular Zionists performed miracles of ingenuity, courage, and state-building. They drained swamps, built cities, and revived a language. Their achievements deserve deep respect. Yet their vision of “a nation like all others” was incomplete.
Raw nationalism, however heroic, eventually crumbles. What sustained us through 2,000 years of wandering was never mere peoplehood. It was Torah’s divine imprint upon our people, our leadership, and above all, this land.
The Torah’s divine imprint
Today, as the modern State of Israel faces renewed existential threats, Zionists cannot afford to forget this duality. Israel is not just another country fighting for survival. The Jewish people remain bound by covenant. Jewish leaders are called upon to shepherd with humility.
This idea must apply equally to secular and Torah-observant Jews. To the secular Jew, Israel can not be understood separately from Jewish tradition. To ignore Jewish history and attempt to recreate a “new Israel” is to invite the disaster that always comes from the arrogance borne of hubris.
For the Torah-observant Jew, the role of Israel within the larger context of the Torah is obvious, but understanding Israel properly is challenging.
The Jewish people couldn’t go up to the Land of Israel immediately after leaving Egypt. They had to stop at Mount Sinai to receive the Torah. Without the Torah putting Israel into the context of Jewish tradition, the role of the land would be misunderstood. Similarly, the
Torah couldn’t be given in Israel because the people wouldn’t have understood it as they entered the land.
This land remains under God’s constant gaze. To ignore any part of this reality is to invite the fate of every transient empire. To embrace it fully is to affirm the Jewish people’s place as the eternal nation, pillars resting not on human frailty, but on the rock of the covenant.
The writer is a Zionist educator at institutions around the world. He recently published the book Zionism Today.
