The land of their sojourning – Vayyeshev
The sidra is Vayyeshev, “And he (Jacob) dwelt”. Where did he dwell? “In the land of his father’s sojournings, the land of Canaan” (Gen. 37:!).
And we, all those centuries later, for whom Israel is the focus of Jewish permanence, wonder why the Torah calls it the land of the patriarchs’ sojournings. Was it not an eternal possession?
One answer is that though Isaac and Jacob, but not Abraham, were born there, all the patriarchs lived there as gerim, strangers in their own country. Abraham, for instance, never acquired more of the land than a burial-place, Jacob spent many years away, with Laban and later in Egypt.
But the Divine promise is clear. There are two stages: “And I will give you, and your descendants after you, (1) the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, (2) for a possession for ever; and I will be their God” (Gen. 17:8)
For the patriarchs it was a land of promise: for their descendants a land of permanence.
There were periods in Diaspora history when events made it again largely the land of promise. But, thank God, for many years now it has been and will ever remain the land of permanence, reshit tzemichat ge’ulatenu, the beginning of the flowering of our redemption.
