Saturday 21 January 2012

It is a negative commandment not to dwell in the land of Egypt

David Ben-Gurion (First Prime Minister of Isra...
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My Shabbes reading was The Concise Book of Mitzvoth, compiled by the Chafetz Chayim.

Concise explanations and interesting insights about the daily mitzvot. One of the explanations focused my attention for a longer time because concerns an issue with long range in our daily lives as Jews (p.271-272):

"It is a negative commandment not to dwell in the land of Egypt
as Scriptyure says, You shall henceforth return no more that way (D'varim 17:16). For business and trade, though, it is permitted, as there is no prohibition on anything but settling there.
Moreover, it is forbidden ever to go out of the Land of Israel to another land, except to study Torah or to take a wife, or to effect a rescue from the heathen; and so one may go abroad for commerce. But to leave in order to live abroad is forbidden, unless hunger has grown severe there. Whoever lives in the Land of Israel, his sins are forgiven. Even if a person has walked four cubits in it, he merits life in the world-to-come. So too, if one is buried there, all his sins are atoned for.
Let a man ever live in the Land of Israel, even in a city with a majority of hearthens, and let him not live in another land, even in a city with a majority of Jews. For whoever goes out to another country, it is as though he worhips in idolatry. And just as it is forbidden to go out from the Land of Israel to another country, so it is forbidden to leave Babylonia (the center of Talmudic learning) for othe rlands.
This is in effect at every time, for both man and woman".

Shavua Tov!
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