Ksharim - Makom Israel

iv.that are destroyed because of their inhabitants’ immorality. Peoples live ontheir land on condition that they continue to deserve it. And if not, not.With respect to our relationship to land, the subplot of Lot’s wife here isinteresting: as the family is fleeing, they are ordered not to look back; butshe cannot resist, and is punished by being petrified on the spot, lookingback forever (19:17, 19:26). Questions to consider:1. Why didn’t Lot and family leave sooner, given the moral status of theneighborhood?2. Why did they resist even when destruction was imminent?3. Why were they commanded not to look back?4. Why was it the wife/mother who looked back?5. What can we learn here about emigration, about “reading thehandwriting on the wall,” about attachment to place at all costs, aboutroots, about home, about homeland, about our inclination to view ourattachment to place as unconditional and absolute – despite theevidence to the contrary?d. Exilei. Just nine verses after Abraham is ordered to immigrate to Canaan, he leavesfor Egypt due to famine (12:10).ii. Later, in the covenant of the pieces (15:13) God reveals to Abraham that hisdescendants will be enslaved, “strangers in a strange land,” for fourhundred years.iii. Interesting to consider: the land is holy, it is promised – but it does notseem to be the sine qua non of our existence – as we spend a good deal ofthe Bible coming and going (not to mention the post-biblical period…). Weare immigrants from the beginning, and exiles along the way; compare toSource 2 below. What is the point? Perhaps to reinforce conditionality, andGod’s role (or the Torah’s role) as a third party in the relationship betweenus and our land.e. Purchasei. In Chapter 23 Abraham purchases a burial cave for Sarah and the wholefamily. Here we have another basic claim on the land: we bought it, cash onthe barrelhead – and we bought it for a cemetery, which implies forever.ii. Continuing the motif from 12:6 – and 14:13 and 20:15 – here too we findAbraham’s clan living in the land together with various otherpeoples/tribes, in some kind of modus vivendi.iii.Note two additional claims on the land that are ascribed to Abraham andhis activities:1. 21:22-32: Abraham enters into a treaty, a legal contract, with alocal chieftain2. 21:33: Abraham plants a tree35 Ksharim