Parshas Bechukosai and Yom Yerushalayim—From Desolation to Defensible Borders In 5627 (1867), the well-known American writer Mark Twain toured the Land of Israel. Known for his sharp pen and sober perspective, he found little here to admire. In his travelogue The Innocents Abroad, he described a land under fading Ottoman rule in stark and unsettling terms. He called it the “prince of depressing scenery.” He saw barren hills, gray tones, and valleys that he described as “ugly deserts fringed with a thin vegetation that has an expression of sorrow and despair.” He concluded that it was a “boundless, silent desolation.” Yet what Twain saw as the tragedy of an abandoned land was, in truth, the precise fulfillment of a Torah statement found at the heart of Parshas Bechukosai. On the verse, “I will bring the land into desolation, and your enemies who dwell in it shall be astonished at it,” the Nachmanides reveals a remarkable dimension of consolation. The Ramban explains that this is “good news” for all the exiles—that our Land does not accept our enemies. It is not natural for a land that was once broad and fertile to remain........

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