If Living in Eretz Yisrael Is So Important, Why Do Many Gedolim Live in Chutz La’Aretz?

It is a fair and a sensitive question — one that thoughtful, sincere Jews genuinely ask. If Eretz Yisrael is so spiritually elevated, and the mitzvah of living there so precious, why have so many of our Gedolim not simply uprooted their lives and moved? The Charedi answer turns on two quiet words: shikul daas — careful, Torah-guided judgment. In short, a Gadol's address is not a question of personal idealism. It is a question of where Hashem needs him to serve. The longer answer is worth telling in full.

I. Eretz Yisrael's Importance Is Not in Doubt

Let it be said clearly at the outset that the premise of the question is entirely true. Eretz Yisrael is extraordinarily precious. The Ramban counts settling in it as a mitzvas aseh of the Torah itself (in his glosses to the Rambam's Sefer HaMitzvos), and Chazal speak of the Land in the very highest terms — one who dwells in Eretz Yisrael, the Gemara teaches, is as one who has a God, and the Land carries a kedushah that no other place on earth shares (Kesubos 110b). No Charedi disputes a word of this; the love of the Land runs deep in the bloodstream of the Torah world. So the question is a real one, and it deserves a real answer — not a quiet downgrading of the Land's holiness, but an honest account of how a Gadol weighs his own life against the needs of all of Klal Yisrael.

II. A Gadol Does Not Live for Himself

The first thing to understand is that a Gadol does not make this decision the way most of us would — by weighing his own spiritual comfort, or even his own purest ideals. His life is not, in a sense, his own; it has been given over entirely to Klal Yisrael. And so the question that governs him is never simply "where would my neshama soar highest?" but "where does the Torah of Klal Yisrael most need me to stand?" Sometimes the answer to both questions is the very same place. And sometimes it is not — and when it is not, the Gadol goes where the need is greatest, even at a real and lasting personal cost. Sometimes the greatest aliyah a person can make is not the one that lifts himself, but the one that lifts everyone around him.

III. The Story of Rav Aharon Kotler

There is no clearer illustration of this than Rav Aharon Kotler. Fleeing the inferno of Europe, he made his way out through Vilna, through Japan, and through Shanghai, and there faced an agonizing choice. Should he go to Eretz Yisrael, where Torah communities were already taking root — or to America, a land so barren of serious Torah learning that it was known in the yeshiva world simply as "the midbar," the spiritual desert? By his own personal inclination, Rav Aharon leaned toward Eretz Yisrael; he had in fact been deeply reluctant about Orthodox Jews settling in America at all.

To reach clarity, he turned to the Goral HaGra, the lottery attributed to the Vilna Gaon, opening the Chumash to a verse chosen, as it were, by Heaven itself. The pasuk that met his eyes was "Lech likras Moshe hamidbarah" — "Go out to meet Moshe in the desert" (Shemos 4:27). Those who recount the story have always read it as a directive almost too precise to be coincidence: Moshe — Rav Moshe Feinstein, already laboring to build Torah in America; the midbar — America itself, the spiritual desert; go out to meet him — go, and build. And so Rav Aharon went. He set aside the Land he personally yearned for, and poured the remainder of his life into raising Torah from the desert sand — and from that first handful of talmidim grew Beth Medrash Govoha in Lakewood, which would become one of the largest centers of Torah learning the world has ever known.

He never pretended it was his own preference. "For myself," he said plainly, "I would not have come." He came because Klal Yisrael needed him to come. That is shikul daas. And that is the sacrifice it sometimes demands.

IV. The Mitzvah Is Great — but Not an Absolute for Everyone

This points to a halachic truth that is easy to overlook. Yes, yishuv Eretz Yisrael is a real and weighty mitzvah — the Ramban counts it among the very mitzvos of the Torah. But even a great mitzvah is not, in every single case, an absolute that overrides every other consideration on the scale. The halacha itself recognizes that the obligation can be shaped by circumstance — by genuine danger, by the ability to support a family, by communal and educational needs, by whether a person can continue his Torah and his leadership without disruption. The poskim have long discussed that the mitzvah, for all its greatness, does not fall with equal force on every individual in every generation.

And for a Gadol who is marbitz Torah to thousands in chutz la'aretz, the cheshbon is genuinely complex. To pick up and move might mean abandoning talmidim, yeshivos, and entire kehillos who lean on him to stand — weakening the Torah in one place precisely in order to strengthen it in another. That is not a trade that every leader can justify before Heaven, and the Torah does not pretend for a moment that the calculation is a simple one.

V. The Model of Yavneh

There is an ancient precedent that frames the whole question. When the Beis HaMikdash itself stood on the brink of destruction, Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai did not give his life defending the walls of Yerushalayim. He asked Rome instead for "Yavneh and its sages" (Gittin 56b) — and rebuilt the future of Torah somewhere else entirely, so that when the center fell, the Torah of Israel would not fall along with it. Rav Aharon Kotler understood his own mission in exactly those terms, describing the transplanting of Europe's dying Torah to new American soil as the work of a Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai in his own day.

To build Torah where it does not yet stand is not a retreat from the ideal. Sometimes it is the single most important thing a Jew can do for Klal Yisrael. And a Gadol who does that work in chutz la'aretz is not fleeing from Eretz Yisrael — he is keeping a Torah nation alive and strong enough that it may one day return to it whole.

VI. And Many Did Move — and More Are Moving Now

Lest any of this be misheard as some argument against living in Eretz Yisrael, the record says the very opposite, plainly. Vast numbers of Gedolim made their lives in the Land and built Torah there from the ground up: the Chazon Ish, who raised Bnei Brak into an entire world of Torah from almost nothing; Rav Shach, the Steipler, Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach, Rav Elyashiv, Chacham Ovadia Yosef — much of the towering leadership of the Torah world, all of it in Eretz Yisrael. And in our own generation, the current is visibly flowing homeward: more and more Roshei Yeshiva, rabbanim, and dayanim are settling in the Land, and whole neighborhoods — Ramat Eshkol, Har Nof, Beit Shemesh, and others — have filled with American and European rabbanim who feel, more and more, that the makom haTorah is shifting back home. The love of the Land was never once in question. The only question was ever where each individual's particular avodah was meant to be carried out.

VII. In Summary

So the question was never truly "is Eretz Yisrael important?" — it is, beyond any dispute. The real question is the one a Gadol must ask of his own single life: what does Hashem want from me, specifically, with the gifts and the responsibilities I have been handed? For some Jews — and for many of the Gedolim — the answer is to come to Eretz Yisrael and sink roots into its holy soil. For others, the answer is to remain exactly where the Torah of Klal Yisrael most needs them: to teach, to lead, and to hold the Torah upright where it would otherwise have fallen.

The one who stays is not contradicting the love of the Land. He is sacrificing for it — and he is acting from the very same place the one who comes is acting from: a deep and consuming love of Hashem, of His Torah, and of His people. Both are answering the identical question. They have simply been given different answers.

May Hashem grant every Jew the clarity to know where his avodah lies, may His Torah flourish in every place His people are found, and may we all be gathered home to Eretz Yisrael in holiness — bimheirah b'yameinu, amen.

Sources

The preciousness of the Land

• The Ramban (glosses to the Rambam's Sefer HaMitzvos) — that settling Eretz Yisrael is a mitzvas aseh of the Torah; Kesubos 110b — that one who dwells in Eretz Yisrael is as one who has a God, and on the unique kedushah of the Land

Judgment and mission

• The halachic recognition that the mitzvah of yishuv Eretz Yisrael, for all its greatness, is weighed against circumstance — danger, livelihood, family, and the needs of Torah leadership — and does not fall equally on every individual in every generation
• Shemos 4:27 — "Go out to meet Moshe in the desert," the verse of the Goral HaGra in the account of Rav Aharon Kotler's decision; Gittin 56b — Rabban Yochanan ben Zakkai and "Yavneh and its sages," the rebuilding of Torah's future beyond the falling center

The structural relationship to other articles in this series

• "Do Charedim Value Living in Eretz Yisrael?" — the love of the Land this question takes for granted
• "Is It a Mitzvah to Live in Eretz Yisrael?" — the halachic obligation examined directly
• "Why Is Mesorah Integral to Judaism?" — the Torah that a Gadol's life is given over to preserving