Parshat Lecha Lecha begins with the famous words (Breisheet
12:1) “God said to Avram, ‘Lech Lecha- Go for yourself- from your land, from
your birthplace and from your father’s house and go to the land that I will
show you.’”
Rabbi Shlomo Ephraim Luntschitz (1550-1619) who was best
known for his work the Kli Yakar wrote the following idea in his series Olelot
Ephraim :
Lech Lecha, go for yourself. Whoever makes aliya- goes up to
the Land of
goes up to his being and up to his roots. The Jewish soul can only fully be
restored to its original perfection in the
the Land that the eyes of God are watching from the beginning of the year to
the end of the year.
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov taught that there are people who
say to themselves that they love the
want to make aliya. However, they only want to come to
most comfortable way possible, without pressure or grief.
According to Rabbi Nachman, those people don’t really want
to make aliya. If someone really wants to make aliya, they will do whatever it
takes, even walk if they have to and arrive exhausted from their travels. God
said to Avram “Lech Lecha”, from the word “lalechet”, “to go”, “to walk”. God
told Avram to walk by foot wandering from place to place.
Even in our time we have seen people who wanted to make
aliya so badly that they literally walked.
In 1973, the Israeli Ministry of Absorption and Rabbi Shlomo
Goren, the Ashkenasic chief rabbi checked out the Beta Israel Ethiopians who
were yearning to return to
for thousands of years and decided that they were not Jewish and that there was
no reason to bring them to
Rabbi Ovadia Yosef z”l, the Sephardic chief rabbi disagreed and said that they
were a descendent tribe of
He said that it is a mitzvah to give them a proper Jewish education and bring
them to
Thanks to the ruling of Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Law of Return was applied to
the Beta Israel community.
Beginning in 1977, after Menachem Begin became the Prime
Minister, thousands of Beta
traveled by foot from
to the border of
waited in temporary camps to be flown to
between two weeks and a month. From 1977-1984, they were led to
and by plane. About 8000 people made this dangerous trip. Sadly, about 4000
died before reaching
During Operation Moses (November 1984 until January 1985), 30 flights brought
about 200 Beta
time to
In 1991, Operation Solomon brought 14,400 Beta Israel to Israel within 34 hours.
On August 27, 2013 the last mass aliya flight with hundreds of immigrants from
What we learn from the Beta Israel community is that if
someone wants to be in
badly enough, they will follow the path of Avraham and Sarah and find a way to
get here.
