Building New Israeli Settlements – The Opinion of the Gaon – according to Kol Hator

B”H

To Build New Settlements in the Territories Liberated by Israel After the 6 Day War The Opinion of the Gaon – according to Kol Hator

Question: Perhaps
one should not build settlements right now because of the mitzvah to protect
Jewish lives from danger?

Answer: One of the Torah giants of our generation was
asked, on the basis of what did the disciples of the Gaon of Vilna, risk their
lives to make aliyah and to settle in Israel?

He answered that the Vilna Gaon
held the opinion of the Ramban that the mitzvah of settling the land of Israel
is to be observed in our time and in the manner spelled out in Kol Hator.

And thus wrote a disciple of the
Vilna Gaon, Rabbi Hillel Rivleeas (Rivlin) in the book Kol Hator (chapter
1,section 9) concerning the (Biblical) verse “And you shall drive them out
and dwell in it”. “Our Rabbi the Vilna Gaon says (Aderet Eliyahu,
Deut.11) ‘In merit of expelling those of the land you shall dwell in it and by
what means shall you expel, by Chzka, Chzka that is to say, building and
planting in accordance to the general procedure for property acquisition’….
‘And at a time of need with Chzka, (vocalized this time differently, by the
Hebrew vowel sign Kametz)’….

“And the second definition of
‘You shall expel by Chzka, in the words of our Rabbi (with the vowel sign
Kametz) is in accordance to the viewpoint of tractate Kiddushin 26, in
accordance to the (Biblical) verse ‘And you shall dwell in the cities that you
have seized’; and the ultimate goal of our work in the ingathering of the
exiles is the war of Hashem against Amalek , for this is the primary task of
Yehoshua in the spiritual level/role of Messiah son of Yosef . A war against
Amalek in all aspects against all the enemies of Israel and against Armilus
official (alternate translation, spiritual guardian) of the Erev Rav, to remove
the spirit of impurity from the land and to raise the assemblage of Israel and
the Divine presence below, from the ground and the opening of the battle
against the War of Gog and Magog in the first redemption at the front of the
coming of the Messiah that makes us righteous – Messiah son of Dovid , May he
speedily come”.

Regarding the war against Amalek it
is further explained in chapter 6 section 6, that the war against Amalek is of
3 types. A] Amalek in the heart, this is the evil inclination and the evil
character traits. B] The general spiritual force of Amalek, this is the
destructive force of accusation, adversary of Israel, this is S”M and his
host whose main strength is in the gates of Jerusalem, at the time that her
land is desolate. C] The physical Amalek,( not defined here as a particular
ethnic group, but rather) containing (elements of) Eisav, Yishmael, and Erev
Rav, as our Rabbi has explained in “you shall expel by Chzka”.

( See further within the chapter ,
regarding the pragmatic restraints on the use of military force, (for example,
by fighting in the manner mentioned in Isaiah 28:6) during the period of
“6 hours” of the sixth millennium [comment 53 on chapter 1.] )

( And in the fifth chapter)
“Assistance of Heaven in general, and in particular in a miraculous way,
comes measure for measure. In accordance to the measure that a man measures
out, it is correspondingly measured out to him by heaven. That is to say that
in accordance to the measure that the mitzvah was performed by man through
natural efforts, in the same manner comes assistance from heaven, the level in
correspondence to level, on the base of 499 and a half from the left and 499
and a half from the right (Kabbalistic terms, used to explain the Biblical
verse, “The least one shall become [or alternately translated reach] a
thousand”) in accordance to the explanation of our Rabbi the Vilna Gaon in
many places ( and in particular in his work Yahel Ohr, Sod Barak Hashachar ).
And if the questioner shall ask, ‘and how can we act at the outset and all the
more so endanger ourselves on the basis of half by natural means, half by
miracle, behold we do not at the outset rely on a miracle.’ Yet the calculation
is thus, that the miraculous side goes up by many percentage points from a
number of causes and in what is related to the activities of Ikva Demashicha,
the footsteps of the Messiah, and all the more so in activities performed by
the community. It turns out, that the accounting, in accordance to the Vilna
Gaon, is that the miraculous assistance of heaven is many times greater than
measure for measure, and at times the heavenly assistance goes up to a thousand
times (the naturalistic strivings)……”

Author’s comment: For a better background concerning the above mentioned mitzvah, see: 1]Mishna Brura comment 24 to chapter 304 2]Chazoan Ish on Shviit, siman 24 and 3]Rashbam to Gen 22:1

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Rabbi Chaim of Volozhin, a student of the Vilna Gaon also wrote about the conditions that bring Divine Assistance. See the article on this web site:* Divine Assistance 

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