Torah - One of the State of Israel's Greatest Accomplishments

I've decided to take part in Dan's initiative and write about Israel's accomplishments in honor of 60 years of independence. Dan requested that bloggers write about four accomplishments of the State of Israel that make them proud. In my humble opinion the four biggies are: Torah, agriculture, defense, and immigrant absorption.

Today I'll write about Torah. People do not usually associate the State of Israel with Torah. It is more likely that people envision an IDF soldier and not a rabbi when they think about the state. Yet the fact is that the Torah center of the world is here in Israel. We're number one. The verse "From Zion Torah will go out, and the word of God from Jerusalem" well describes our generation. I'm not saying that this was the vision of some of the state's founding fathers. However there are situations when the angel of death has to say Amen against his will, and this is one of them. Yeshivot, Kollelim, and Batei Midrash are all over the place, Baruch Hashem!

Being in the land of Israel facilitates the learning of Torah. "The air of the land of Israel makes one wise." Not only that, but the scope of Torah has widenned. "There is no Torah like the Torah of the land of Israel." In the exile the questions a rabbi was asked usually centered around the individual. Today in Israel old/new questions have arisen: How do we operate an army or a police force according to Jewish law? How should a Jewish government behave? These are questions that become important when there is a state. Happy are we that we live in the generation that has merited this. Happy are those that leave the impurity of Chutz La'aretz and come to live in the land of Torah.