Yerushalmi Kil’ayim

R. Simeon ben Lakish said: I will walk before the Lord in the land of the living (Psalm 116:9). But are not the lands of the living Tyre and its environs, Caesarea and its environs, [for] there [everything] is cheap, and there is abundance.

R. Simeon ben Lakish in the name of Bar Kappara said: [The psalmist means] a land whose dead will come to life first in the days of the Messiah. What is the [scriptural] proof? Who gives breath to the people upon it (Isaiah 42:3).

But if so, our sages in the exile have lost out! R. Simai said: The Holy One will bore through the earth before them, and they will roll through like wineskins, and when they arrive in the land of Israel, their souls return to them. What is the [scriptural] proof? And I will bring you into the land of Israel [ . . . ] and I will put my spirit within you, and you shall live (Ezekiel 37:14). [ . . . ]

It is written: And you, Pashḥur, and all who dwell in your house shall go into captivity; to Babylon you shall go, and there you shall die, and there you shall be buried (Jeremiah 20:6). R. Abba bar Zemina said: R. Ḥelbo and R. Ḥama b. Ḥanina [were discussing this verse]. One said: if one died (abroad) and was buried there, he has two [deaths]; if one died there and was buried here [i.e., in the land], he has one [death]. The other said: Burial here atones for death [there]. [ . . . ]

Ulla was a naḥota [emigrant from the land of Israel]; as he was dying there [in Babylonia], he began to cry. They said to him, “Why are you crying? We will bring you back up to the land of Israel.” He said to them, “What use is it? I am losing my precious stone [my soul] in an impure land; losing [the soul] in a mother’s bosom [i.e., in the motherland] is not the same as losing it in the bosom of a foreigner [i.e., on foreign soil].” [ . . . ]

R. bar Kiriya and R. Eleazar were walking in the stadium [possibly, street] when they saw coffins arriving from abroad. Said R. bar Kiriya to R. Eleazar, “What good does it do them? Regarding these I apply the verse: You made abhorrent my possession in your lifetime, and you came and defiled my land (Jeremiah 2:7) in your death.” He [R. Eleazar] said to him, “[Not so.] When they come to the land of Israel, they take a lump of earth and place it on the coffin [thus atoning for their sins], as it is written: And the land makes atonement for His people” (Deuteronomy 32:43).

Translated by Christine Hayes.