Vampire Weekend's Surprising Jewish Stories
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Shemot, 6:6-8: “Therefore, say to the Children of Israel, ‘I am God and I shall take you out from under the burdens of Egypt; I shall rescue you from their service; I shall redeem you with an outstretched arm and with great judgments. I shall take you to Me for a people and I shall be a God to you; and you shall know that I am Hashem your God, who takes you out from under the burdens of Egypt. I shall bring you to the Land about which I raised My hand to give it to Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yaakov, and I shall give it to you as a heritage – I am Hashem.”
Baal HaTurim, Shemot, 6:8: Dh: Inheritance: “There are two ‘morashot’ [inheritances]: [the one quoted here] “I will give you a morasha” and the other one is: “[the Torah that Moshe commanded is a] morasha for the congregation of Yaakov.1 This is because they will inherit the land in the merit of the Torah…It says morasha and not yerusha to allude to the fact that they will pass on but not inherit, since they [the people who left Egypt] did not enter the land.”
God instructs Moshe to tell the Jewish people that He will take them out of Egypt and bring them to the land of Israel, and give it them as a morasha. The Talmud2 uses this verse to answer a question as to whether the land of Israel was originally given to those who left Egypt, and divided up among their heirs, or it was given directly to those who entered the Land. The Talmud notes the use of the word ‘morasha’ instead of the related word, ‘yerusha’ in the verse. The Talmud understands that morasha is not a full inheritance, whereas yerusha implies full inheritance. From the fact that the Torah used the word morasha, teaches that the land was only fully given to those who actually entered the land. The people who left Egypt gave the inheritance to the next generation but they did not themselves own it.
Rabbi Yissachar Frand explains that a morasha is like an heirloom, as opposed to an inheritance. The connotation of morasha is that the person does not necessarily possess an object, rather it is only his in terms of being able to pass it on to the next generation. A yerusha has the connotation that the one who possesses it actually owns it.
The Baal HaTurim points out that word morasha appears in just one other place in the Torah. The other, more famous location, is the verse, “Moshe commanded us the Torah, a morasha for the congregation of Yisrael.” The Baal HaTurim writes that this comes to teach that the people would inherit the land in the merit of the Torah. The Shemen HaTov3 elaborates on the connection between the inheriting of the Land of Israel and the inheriting of Torah.
As we explained above, the connection between those who left Egypt and the Land of Israel was only at the level of morasha – they did not own the land fully, but the possessed it enough to be able to give it over to their children. In the words of Rabbi Frand:
“This is the same relationship with the Torah that exists in many families between parents, children, and grandchildren. Torah can sometimes be a “morasha” in the sense that one generation doesn’t really possess it. They do not possess Torah in the sense of full ownership or even understand it in any significant fashion. They possess it only in so much as to allow their children or their children’s children to acquire it and to become the proud possessors of Torah in the fullest sense of the word.” Thus, Torah is not something that is automatically ‘inherited’, rather it is a heritage that each Jew has a connection to, but he must work to make the Torah ‘his’.
This idea can help answer a seeming contradiction between the Torah verse about the Torah being a morasha, and a Mishna in Ethics of the Fathers. The Mishna teaches, “Prepare yourself to learn Torah, because it is not a yerusha for you…”4. Yet, the Torah explicitly tells us that the Torah is a morasha to the Jewish people. The answer is based on the different meanings of the words morasha and yerusha: The Torah is telling us that every Jew has an intrinsic connection to Torah because it is the heritage of the Jewish people. But this does not mean that he automatically ‘owns’ the Torah. Hence, the Mishna in Ethics of the Fathers comes to tell us that Torah is not a yerusha, meaning that it requires work and preparation to learn and acquire Torah, hence, the Mishna’s exhortation to prepare oneself to learn Torah.
We have seen that there is a difference between a morasha and a yerusha. While the Land of Israel is a yerusha to each Jew, the Torah is not, and must be earnt. Moreover, the fact that the Land of Israel is a yerusha for each Jew does not mean that it suffices just to live in Israel. Indeed, the Torah warns that if the Jewish people do not properly observe the Torah in the Land, the it will vomit them out, as happened in Jewish history. Thus, in order to truly ‘inherit’ the Land of Israel, each person must also strive to properly inherit Torah. When he does that, then he can fully enjoy the benefits of both the Land and the Torah.
