Strangers Resident
- Uriel ben Avraham
- May 23, 2025
- 4 min read
The first thing you see when you land at Ben Gurion is the sign. ברוכים הבאים — Welcome. I saw it two years ago with my husband, on our first trip, a birthday week in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. I saw it again this week. Same sign. Different person reading it.
Two years ago I was a tourist. A curious one — my husband grew up with Judaism (and Israel) in his bones, and I was there to explore what mattered to him, to walk the stones and eat the food and start to understand. I liked it. I loved parts of it. But I was visiting someone else's home.
This time I walked off the plane ten days after my conversion, carrying a siddur I've now prayed from every morning, and the sign hit differently. Not because Israel changed. Because I had.
The parsha this Shabbat is Behar-Bechukotai — a double portion, which happens several times a year when the calendar needs to catch up. Behar opens with God speaking to Moses on Mount Sinai, and the first instruction is about arrival:
דַּבֵּ֞ר אֶל־בְּנֵ֤י יִשְׂרָאֵל֙ וְאָמַרְתָּ֣ אֲלֵהֶ֔ם כִּ֤י תָבֹ֙אוּ֙ אֶל־הָאָ֔רֶץ אֲשֶׁ֥ר אֲנִ֖י נֹתֵ֣ן לָכֶ֑ם וְשָׁבְתָ֣ה הָאָ֔רֶץ שַׁבָּ֖ת לַיהֹוָֽה׃
Speak to the Israelite people and say to them: When you enter the land that I assign to you, the land shall observe a sabbath of GOD.
Ki tavo'u el ha'aretz — when you enter the land. Not "if." Not "should you happen to." When. The parsha gives the rules before the arrival, with a confidence that the arrival is coming.
The rest of Behar is a manual for living on that land. Shemitah — every seventh year, let the land rest. Yovel — the jubilee, every fiftieth year, debts forgiven and property returned. Laws about fair pricing and caring for the poor. And then, tucked into the property laws, the verse I keep turning over:
וְהָאָ֗רֶץ לֹ֤א תִמָּכֵר֙ לִצְמִתֻ֔ת כִּי־לִ֖י הָאָ֑רֶץ כִּֽי־גֵרִ֧ים וְתוֹשָׁבִ֛ים אַתֶּ֖ם עִמָּדִֽי׃
But the land must not be sold beyond reclaim, for the land is Mine; you are but strangers resident with Me.
Gerim v'toshavim atem imadi. Strangers and residents, you are, with Me. Last week's parsha mentioned the ger — the stranger — in the gleaning laws, a reminder to leave room at the edges.. This week the word comes back, and the scope widens. Everyone is a ger. The land belongs to God. You live on it, you work it, you build your home on it, but you don't own it. You are strangers resident.
For a convert standing in the arrivals hall at Ben Gurion, that is an extraordinary thing to ponder.
On Tuesday I took a bus to Bnei Brak to buy tefillin. If you haven't been — it's a Haredi enclave just east of Tel Aviv, one of the most densely populated places in Israel, and on a weekday afternoon the sidewalks are full of men in black hats and boys on bikes and women pushing strollers past storefronts selling religious books and ritual objects.
I went into one of these shops looking more than a little of place. The man behind the counter asked what I needed. I told him I was looking for a pair of teffilin — the small black leather boxes that hold verses of Torah. He went through a few options and showed me how they should sit. I paid. He wrapped them in a velvet bag. Twenty minutes, start to finish.
I'd watched my husband do it dozens of times before my conversion — learning the wrapping without being able to do it myself. You wind the strap around your arm seven times, place the shel rosh on your head, and wrap the strap around your hand and fingers in a pattern that spells one of God's names. The morning after Bnei Brak, I put mine on for the first time. At the Kotel.
I know how this sounds. New convert, ten days in, wrapping tefillin at the Western Wall — the swelling score practically writes itself. It's humorous and a bit dramatic. But the actual experience was not so cinematic. It was small and physical. The slight pressure of the knot against the back of my head. The shel rosh settling into place. You recite the brachot — the blessings. You pray. You take them off. You go on with your morning. Amidst hundreds of others doing the same thing. All of us probably wishing it wasn't quite so scorching hot.
The Old City was different this time in a way I'm still working out how to describe. Two years ago I walked through the quarters and it was beautiful and historical and interesting, in the way that very old places are interesting to people who don't belong to them. This time the stones in the Jewish Quarter weren't a museum. They were the ground under a life I'd chosen — or rather, the ground I'd been assigned as a stranger resident. Not a resident, but certainly strange.
Bechukotai, the second half of this week's double portion, opens with a promise:
אִם־בְּחֻקֹּתַ֖י תֵּלֵ֑כוּ וְאֶת־מִצְוֺתַ֣י תִּשְׁמְר֔וּ וַעֲשִׂיתֶ֖ם אֹתָֽם׃
If you follow My laws and faithfully observe My commandments,
Im bechukotai telechu — if you walk in My statutes. The Hebrew root of "walk" is the same root as halacha, the word for Jewish law. The whole system — what to eat, when to pray, how to mark time, when to let the land rest — comes from a word that means putting one foot in front of the other. You don't arrive at Jewish life. You walk in it. One morning, then the next.
I walked out of the Kotel plaza into the narrow streets of the Old City, past the soldiers and the shopkeepers and the tourists taking photos. Everyone there — every one of us — strangers resident on land that belongs to someone else.
Shabbat shalom.
— Uriel ben Avraham
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