In this week’s Parsha, G‑d promises that if the people of Israel will keep His commandments, they will enjoy material prosperity and dwell securely in the land of Israel. But He will also have to punish and exile us if we abandon our covenant with Him. The Parsha concludes with the rules on how to calculate the values of different types of pledges made to G‑d, and the mitzvah of tithing produce and livestock.

Jewish people have the miraculous ability to see hope in the most desperate of times. Our ability to hope has kept us alive as a people. This explains the amazing successes we have had in the State of Israel, while all the countries around it fall apart. In fact, the entire Torah is actually a description of the relationship of the Jewish people and the land of Israel.

This week’s parsha is telling us that we cannot take the land for granted. The torah tells us that if we keep and sanctify the mitzvot and the Torah we will have peace and prosperity. If we sin and turn away from Torah, Hashem will punish us. Being in exile, we have faced horrible persecution, wars and shrinking numbers in our people. But we have to realize that the exile we are in now has to be seen as temporary. We need to be able to remain a hopeful people because at the end of the day, it’s the hope that keeps us alive and assures us of a better tomorrow. Being in exile is blinding because it diminishes our ability to see G-d’s plan and all the good He has in store for us. By refusing to give in to the despair of exile we are able to bring the positivity and hope we need to bring Meshach. By seeing our current situation as a “temporary” one we will be able to see past the sadness and look to the future. Even though exile is a sign of punishment, our evident return to the land of Israel is a sign of G-d’s limitless love for us. It is the land of Israel that is the link between us and Hashem. Once we are able to see things in a positive light we are able to reestablish our trust in Hashem that He will eventually bring us out of exile and take us back to Israel.