1.
In the Hebrew year 5499 (1739 CE) in the month of Iyar, Rabbi Chaim ben Atar left Morocco for Italy. He would ultimately reach the Land of Israel, where he established a glorious yeshiva in Jerusalem. His forefathers arrived in North Africa after they were expelled from Spain in 1492. Having a return of the exiles to the Land of Israel was a key tenet in his philosophical thought. He felt the pain of a nation that had reached rock bottom. "Wherever Jews are to be found they are looked down upon", he wrote. He considered the Jews of the world to be living on borrowed time and expected that if they don't make aliyah, they will be dealt a heavy blow of suffering.
Follow Israel Hayom on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram
2.
In his classical commentary "Or Hachaim" he wrote that the redemption of the nation will be first and foremost through an awakening of the consciousness of the Jews around the world to their unnatural state: "sitting outside their home," "children who were exiled from their father's table." He expected the leaders of the generation to prod the people to make aliyah. In Livorno, Italy, he published an open letter to the Jews to gather "from the east and from the west", "those by ship in the high seas" and those by foot "exalted from the desert" and ascend to Jerusalem so that we can say "enough to the sorrow of the separation".
But when he saw that "no one takes it to heart" and there is "no one to manage the Israelite nation and return it to its father" home, he added with emotion: "For this, all the masters of the land, the leaders of Israel will have to be held accountable; and from them, God will demand the insult of the wretched house."
3.
In the Hebrew year of 5680 (1920 CE) – exactly 182 years after he began his journey to the Land of Israel and not far from Livorno, the leaders of the winning Allied powers of World War I gathered in the Italian town of San Remo and entrusted the United Kingdom with the mandate of implementing the Balfour Declaration, which called for the establishment of a national home for the Jews in their ancestral homeland. There were only a handful of Jews in the Land of Israel at the time. The meaning of the San Remo Conference was that the nations of the world were announcing that there the Diaspora chapter had come to a close and we are now called upon to return to Zion.
This statement was made precisely at the time when the Jews of Jerusalem were still licking their wounds from the Passover pogrom they had endured that year. When the mourning and fasting Jews got word about the San Remo Resolution, they were overcome with Joy, saying "You turned my lament into dancing; You removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy" (Psalms 30:11). They said that "the fear of oaths had departed". They referred to the interpretation of certain verses, from which it supposedly emerged that the nations of the world swore to the Jewish people not to hasten the end and not to rebel in the decree of exile. This had prevented them from making aliyah. Those pledges had now been removed, giving hope that throngs would arrive.
4.
To our disgrace, only a handful of Jews appreciated the enormity of this historic moment by actually returning to Zion. Two decades after the San Remo Conference, on the eve of World War II, there were only some 450,000 Jews in the Land of Israel, about 3% of the world's Jewry. Even today, most of our people prefer to live outside their historical homeland. If previous generations saw the land as desolate and dangerous, today Israel is the greatest ingathering of Jews in the world, thank God. The Zionist revolution brought us unprecedented accomplishments in our history. There is room for everyone here.
5.
Some two hundred years after the start of the Rabbi ben Atar's trip from Morocco to the Land of Israel, Jews in Europe and North Africa were sent to their death in what was the culmination of 19 centuries of persecution and humiliation; a horrific note ending the period of Diaspora. This was a painful lesson in the long and treacherous path we took since the great destruction of the Temple. If we desire life, then the right place for every Jew to live in is Israel. This was the oldest yearning among the exiles in Babylon and Rome, and all the more after the Holocaust: To live a sovereign life in our land; not to be at the mercy of other nations where we sought temporary refuge for a short while or centuries.
This Holocaust Day we say "never again" to the antisemitism and hating Israel; "never again" to a situation where Jews would be helpless in the face of enemies seeking their annihilation. However, even as we say those things year after year, we must also repeat the other terrible lesson we learned: Never again a period of exile. Jews, make aliyah to this land. Come home.
Subscribe to Israel Hayom's daily newsletter and never miss our top stories!
