I'd been engaged in dialogue for two years with an Imam from the Middle East,

a gentle and seemingly moderate man.

One day in the middle of our conversation, he turned to me and asked,

why do you Jews need a land?

After all, Judaism is a religion, not a country or a nation.

I decided at that point to discontinue the dialogue.

After all there are 56 Islamic states and more than a hundred nations in which the majority

of the population is Christian, there is only one Jewish state, one 25th of the size of France, roughly the same size as the Kruger National Park in South Africa.

With those who believe that Jews alone among the nations of the world are not entitled to a land of their own,

it's very difficult to hold a conversation. Yet the question is worth asking.

There is no doubt, as DJ Klein's explains in his book the theme of the Pentateuch, that the central

narrative of the Torah is the promise of and the journey toward the land of Israel.

Yet why is this so? Why did the people of the covenant need their own land? Why wasn't Judaism?

On the one hand, a religion that could be practiced by individuals wherever they happen to be,

or on the other, a religion like Christianity or Islam,

whose ultimate purpose is to convert or conquer the world so that everyone can practice the one true faith.

The best way of approaching an answer is through an important comment of the Rambun on this week's Parashar.

Chapter 18 of Vajikra contains a list of sexual practices that are forbidden.

And it ends with this solemn warning.

Do not defile yourselves in any of these ways,

because this is how the nations that I'm going to drive

out before you became defiled. The land was defiled, so I punished it for its sin, and the land

...