Re-digging the Wells
by Sivan Rahav-Meir
June 6, 2018

Hundreds of fire kites have been sent out from Gaza. 
Thousands of green acres have been burned. Such a primitive 
kind of terror, yet so annoying and painful.

Already in the Book of B'reishit, the following verse appears, 
about Yitzchak Avinu:
"Now all the wells which his father's servants had dug in 
the days of Abraham his father, the Philistines had stopped them, 
and filled them with earth."

That is, someone had already bothered and dug wells, and wells 
of living water bring a blessing to the entire region - everyone 
can drink from them. So why block them and fill them with earth? 
Why burn fields that someone planted and irrigated? After all, 
those who destroy a well, a forest or a road - pollute the environment 
and hurt themselves and their own land too (only last week, 
Gaza residents fired mortar shells towards Israel, and hit the
power station that provides power to them in Gaza).

Rabbi David Kimchi, known as the RADAK, wrote some 
800 years ago about what the Philistines thought for themselves: 
"For they said: 'He won't have them, and we won't have them'." 
That is, we do not mind getting hurt, as long as we hurt you too. 
Unfortunately, this mindset of not wanting to
flourish together in this region lasts until today.

Our answer to it appears in this week's Portion: "The land is 
an exceedingly good land", the Portion states, and reminds us 
that this is "a land flowing with milk and honey". This is an 
optimistic, constructive answer, full of devotion and determination 
to build and develop the land out of the destruction. The verses 
tell how Yitzchak Avinu re-dug all of the blocked wells, so that 
water would be drawn from them once again. So too do Israeli
farmers of the Gaza periphery recently rise every morning and 
think how to turn that dark-black into green again.