The Land ISRAEL Belongs to the Jewish People

Shalom Aleichem Chevra, welcome back! Did you know the Land of Israel literally expands and contracts based on what the Jewish people are doing — and that a one-unit price change in a grain market two thousand years ago was traced back to exactly two sinners in the entire city? In this shiur we dig deep into some wild Gemara that opens up the whole question of why the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and what that relationship actually looks like in practice. We start with the staggering description of Tur Malka — a metropolis with 600,000 cities, each holding 600,000 people, and three cities with double that, 1.2 million inhabitants each. Those three cities — Kafar Bish, the city of evil that refused hospitality to travelers, a second city known for its grain trade, and Kafar Dikromia, the city of men — each had their own spiritual problems that the Gemara unpacks in detail. From there we get into one of the most beautiful concepts in all of Torah: the Land of Israel is called Eretz HaTzvi, the Land of the Deer. Just like the hide of a deer shrinks once the animal dies and can no longer stretch back over a living deer, the Land of Israel expands when the Jewish peopl