Houses, fields and vineyards will be bought in Israel |
In Parshat Behar (VaYikra 25:25-28)
we read: If your brother becomes impoverished
and sells some of his ancestral land, and a close relative comes and redeems
that which his brother had sold. Or if the man has no redeemer (close relative)
but has acquired sufficient means and finds it enough to redeem it himself, he
shall calculate the number of years for which he sold the land and return the
remainder (excess) to the man to whom he had sold it, and he shall return to
his ancestral land. Or if he does not have within his means enough to retrieve the
land, then that which he sold remains in the possession of the buyer until
Yovel (the jubilee year). It is then released by the Yovel and he (the seller)
returns to his ancestral land. The Land of Israel was divided into ancestral
tribes by tribe and by family and each plot was to remain within the family.
Even if a person had to sell his plot due to financial hardship, the land would
still revert back to him in the Yovel (fiftieth year). If he found enough money
to buy it back or if a relative could afford to buy it back then they were
encouraged to do so. This process is called “geula”, redemption of the
property. The Haftara from Yirmiyahu 32:6-27,
tells us God’s message of hope to Yirmiyahu, a year before the destruction of the
first Beit HaMikdash. Jerusalem was under Babylonian siege and Yirmiyahu was in
prison for his prophesies that told B’nai Yisrael to repent or else they would
end up losing the Beit HaMikdash and go to exile. Even though all hope seemed lost,
God tells Yishayahu to redeem a family property (Yirmiyahu 32:6-9): Yirmiyahu said: The word of God came
to me saying “Behold! Hanamel, son of Shulam your uncle is coming to you to
say: ‘Buy for yourself my field that is in Anatot, for the right of redemption
is yours.’” Hanamel, my cousin, came to me as
God had spoken, to the courtyard of the prison, and he said to me, “Buy for
yourself my field in Anatot that is in the territory of Binyamin, for yours is
the right of inheritance and yours is the redemption; buy it for yourself.” And
I knew that it was the word of God. So I bought the field… As the city of Jerusalem was about
to be destroyed, the market value for the field was pretty low. Hanamel didn’t
even have access to the property due to the siege. However, Yirmiyahu bought
the property to observe the mitzvah of “geula” (redeeming property) commanded
in Vayikra which was still being observed (we also see that the mitzvah
observed in Megillat Rut). Yirmiyahu also bought the field for
the symbolic reason of showing faith in the future, that B’nai Yisrael would
return to their homeland. As it says in sentence 15: “For so said God, Master
of Legions, God of Israel: ‘Houses, fields and vineyards will yet be bought in
the land.’” Indeed, B’nai Yisrael did return to
the Land of Israel after seventy years of exile and again built up the land and
built the second Beit HaMikdash. And even after they were exiled once again,
the Jewish people did not despair. They dreamed of returning to the land, to
rebuild it once again. And here we are, back in the Land of Israel with
vineyards and wineries, olive groves and factories, fields and houses. |