Stand in Jerusalem’s Machane Yehuda market on any Thursday morning. The vendors shout their prices for fresh pomegranates, golden dates, and olives the size of small plums. Grapes cascade from wooden crates while figs split open to reveal their sweet interior. Israel overflows with the abundance that made King Solomon famous across the ancient world. Yet when Scripture describes this land, it chooses neither grapes nor figs, neither dates nor olives. Instead, the Bible calls Israel the “land of milk and honey.”
I don’t see honey flowing in the streets. Though the dairy products are excellent, milk would not be my first choice to capture the essence of Israeli agriculture. Why then does Scripture insist on this peculiar pairing? Why does Moses choose these two specific substances to describe the Promised Land when so many other options would seem more obvious?
In modern Israel, we have witnessed one of the greatest spiritual awakenings in human history. In 1948, Israel was a primarily secular country devoted to socialist ideals. Today, only three generations later, Israel is a predominantly traditional, religious and right-wing country. How did this happen? The answer lies embedded in the very description of the land itself.
Deuteronomy 30:2-6 presents a remarkable sequence that maps this transformation. The passage speaks of when “you and your children return to the LORD your God and obey His voice with all your heart and all your soul” (Deuteronomy 30:2), but critically, this spiritual return comes after the physical return to the land. Verse 5 states:
Only then does verse 6 follow:
The sequence is unmistakable: first return to the land, then transformation of the heart. This suggests the land itself possesses transformative powerāthat the land itself becomes a catalyst for spiritual renewal. The Sages recognized this unique quality of the Holy Land, teaching: “The air of the Land of Israel makes one wise.” They understood that physical proximity to this land carries spiritual consequences.
But the transformation goes deeper than wisdom alone. The Kabbalists explain that within the identity of the people and Land of Israel lies the power of reversal, the power to transform a curse into a blessing, past into future, and our vitality comes from this power. This mystical principle finds its clearest expression in the very phrase that describes the land.
The well-known expression “a land flowing with milk and honey” appears many times in Scripture, yet its true meaning is explained by the Sages. We have a principle that states “that which comes from the impure is impure, and that which comes from the pure is pure.” This law governs ritual purity throughout Jewish law, yet it has precisely two exceptions: milk and honey. Consider how milk is produced: it comes from blood, which transforms into milk within the mother’s body. Yet while blood represents death and impurity, milk embodies life and purity. Honey presents an even more striking case. Bees are flying insects, classified as sheretz (creeping creatures) under Jewish law, making them completely impure. Yet from these impure creatures flows honeyāpure, sweet, and permitted for consumption. These two cases prove that it is possible to transform something impure into something pure and good.
The Land of Israel shares this unusual quality of milk and honey. Just as milk emerges pure from impure blood, and honey flows sweet from impure creatures, so the Land of Israel possesses the power to take something painful or evil and transform it into something good.
We see the land of Israel’s transformational ability today. Just as the Talmudic principle teaches that blood transforms into milk (something pure from something that represents death), and honey emerges from the sheretz (sweetness from the most spiritually impure source), so too the Jewish people transform darkness into light through their connection to this sacred soil.
October 7th, in its horror, paradoxically awakened Jewish consciousness worldwide. Jews who had been assimilated suddenly felt their connection surge back to life. The attack also strengthened Israel’s resolve and revealed the depth of the nation’s resilience. Since that dark morning, the people and Land of Israel have, once again, transformed darkness into light.
The phrase “milk and honey” reveals the truth about this land: it transforms the impure into the pure, the bitter into the sweet, the broken into the whole. October 7th was meant to destroy, but the Land of Israel worked its ancient magic once again. The rivers of pain are becoming rivers of milk and honeyārivers of resilience and redemption. May we soon see a complete transformation before our eyes.
