At a conference I recently attended, Rabbi Robinson of Lincoln Square Synagogue told a story about a secular Israeli Jew who was living in New York with his non-Jewish girlfriend before October 7. That day, he saw the news from Israel on TV. Immediately he ran to JFK, where he found crowds of Israelis frantically trying to get back to Israel. He made it there via Athens, and within hours of landing found himself on the Lebanese border.

And there it hit him: Why was he—unaffiliated, uncommitted, and living his life in New York—ready to die as a Jew for this piece of land?

It is a question that many of us have asked ourselves over the past years. What is it that draws a person back to Israel, even when that person is not religiously observant or connected to a Jewish institution? What is the nature of our bond with this Land? The answer may lie in our parsha.

Judaism is a religion of actions we perform with our own bodies. We express our Jewishness through what we do, where we go, and how we live. To fulfill God’s promise of giving him the Land, Avram must literally walk through it: “Get up, walk about the land, through its length and its breadth, for I give it to you” (Bereishit 13:17).

Although Avram did not fulfill this command immediately, the Ramban notes that he ultimately accomplished it during his lifetime, traveling from east to west. Our rabbis likewise teach in Bava Batra (115b-117a) that the Land of Israel is an inheritance to the Jewish people from their patriarchs.

Why does Avram need to walk the Land? Why is the promise not sufficient on its own?

Most mitzvot require not only spiritual preparation, kavanah, but physical expression. We leave the corners of our fields for the poor and the stranger. We visit the sick. We pray for the restoration of The Holy Jerusalem with our own lips. Again and again, Judaism calls upon us to align the spiritual with the physical.

The same is true of our relationship with the Land of Israel. It cannot remain merely an idea, a memory, or a theological principle. It must be embodied. As Rav Kook taught in Orot 1:1, Eretz Yisrael is not something apart from the soul of the Jewish people; it is part of the very essence of the nation.

This is why, after Avram separates from Lot, God tells him: “For I give all the land that you see to you and your offspring forever” (Bereishit 13:15).

The Or HaChaim, Moroccan sage of the 17th century, explains that God brought the borders of the Land closer to Avram so that he could see them all with his own eyes. Through seeing the Land, Avram took symbolic possession of it at that very moment.

The idea is even more explicit in Bamidbar Rabbah 16:3. The midrash compares God to a king and Avram to the king’s beloved. God says to Avram: “Come, go with Me—Go forth from your land, from your birthplace, and from your father’s house.” God then promises him a gift: “Arise, walk through the land,” and, “For all the land that you see, I will give to you.”

The land is not simply handed to Avram. He must walk through it, see it, touch it. His body must participate in the covenant.

Perhaps this is especially significant because Avram is the embodiment of middat ha-chesed, the quality of kindness. Chesed tends to overflow, filling the spaces around it. Maybe this is the reason that God tells Avram to walk through the Land “through its length and its breadth.” Avram must fill the Land with the presence of chesed. He must make the covenant visible through the way he lives.

Later, God promises the Land again, extending its borders from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates. And finally, after Avram becomes Avraham, alongside the promise of a son to be born to Sarah, we read the strongest declaration: “I assign the land you sojourn in to you and your offspring to come, all the land of Canaan, as an everlasting holding. I will be their God” (Bereishit 17:8).

Rashi, drawing on the Talmud in Ketubot, connects the promise that the Land will be an “everlasting holding” with God’s assurance, “I will be their God.” He therefore teaches that one who lives outside the Land of Israel is, in some sense, as though he has no God.

Sforno offers a different explanation. Citing Psalms: “He gave them the lands of nations… that they might keep His laws and observe His teachings” (Psalms 105:44-45), he points out that the promise of the Land and the fulfillment of the covenant are inseparable.

There is a tension here that seems to live within many Jews. Does our relationship with God and the Land of Israel depend on residing there? Can Jews in the Diaspora still hold on to the Land—and to God, who gifted it to us? What must we do to realize the promise that the Land will be an eternal possession?

The Torah itself offers an answer. The promise of the Land appears alongside the command: “Walk before Me and be blameless” (Bereishit 17:1). The Land is eternal, but our ability to live out its meaning depends on how we behave. Possession of the Land is not a license to abandon the covenant. It is a responsibility to embody it.

Avram was commanded to leave the place where familiar gods were thought to be responsible for one’s well-being and to trust that the God who called him would accompany him to a new land. That call echoes in every generation.

To be a Jew is to walk: to bring our beliefs into our bodies through our actions, to fill our communities with chesed, and to remain connected to the body of the Jewish people—Israel. Perhaps this helps explain what happened to that secular Israeli Jew at JFK. He may not have been able to articulate his connection to Israel in theological terms. He may not have been observant or affiliated with a Jewish institution. But when Israel was attacked, something within him told him to get up and go.

He was, in his own way, answering the call of Lech Lecha that is addressed to all of us—to those already living in the Land and to those who are still on their way. As Rav Soloveitchik taught—one of the great merits of Medinat Yisrael is that it is a product of Divine Providence.

May we be worthy to recognize that Providence, to walk in God’s ways, to fill our lives and communities with chesed, and to remain bound to the Land of Israel wherever we may be.