The Greatest Gift  

One thing that Rabbi Yishai Kalfa, a talmid chacham who’s lived more than half his life in the Holy Land, couldn’t understand was the dearth of English-language works on the centrality of Eretz Yisrael. And so, he wrote one himself.

Rekindling a Forgotten Love

Every time Rabbi Yishai Kalfa walked into a seforim store catering to the yeshivah community, he found himself pondering the same question.

A kollel avreich who has been living in the Holy Land for more than half his life, Rabbi Kalfa’s love for Eretz Yisrael was as much a part of his existence as the oxygen he breathes. So why, wondered Rabbi Kalfa, were there no English seforim highlighting the chashivus of Eretz Yisrael?

“You can find ten English books on tefillah, fifteen on emunah, eight on Shabbos, and another six on shemiras halashon, but there is almost nothing for the mainstream chareidi community on the mitzvah of living in Eretz Yisrael,” says Rabbi Kalfa.

With mentions of Eretz Yisrael far outpacing those of any other mitzvah in the Torah, the omission was troubling to Rabbi Kalfa, who spends his days learning at Jerusalem’s Yeshivah Yechaveh Daat, a well-known Sephardi halachah kollel, where he also serves on the beis hora’ah.