Why God could not enter into an intimate relationship with Abraham in Mesopotamia and had to guide him into a new land is an old problem. Judah Halevi, in his Kuzari, explains it with the uniqueness of the Land of Israel as an ideal land for the meeting of God by man. He attributes metaphysical qualities to the land and endows it with a spiritual climate: hayyei neshamot avir artzekh (‘the air of your land is the breath of life for our souls’; Judah Halevi, Tziyon ha-lo tishali, kinnot letishah be-Av). Of course, the old myth of the temperate climate which is ideal for the development of man was exploited by Halevi. Nahmanides, in his commentary to Lev. 18:25, followed in Halevi's footsteps, as did the mystics. For them, the attribute of kedushah, holiness, ascribed to the Land of Israel is an objective metaphysical quality inherent in the land.
With all my respect for the Rishonim, I must disagree with such an opinion. I do not believe that it is halakhically cogent. Kedushah, under a halakhic aspect, is man-made; more accurately, it is a historical category. A soil is sanctified by historical deeds performed by a sacred people, never by any primordial superiority. The halakhic term kedushat ha-aretz, the sanctity of the land, denotes the consequence of a human act, either conquest (heroic deeds) or the mere presence of the people in that land (intimacy of man and nature). Kedushah is identical with man's association with Mother Earth. Nothing should be attributed a priori to dead matter. Objective kedushah smacks of fetishism [A fetish (derived from the French fétiche; which comes from the Portuguese feitiço; and this in turn from Latin facticius, "artificial" and facere, "to make") is an object believed to have supernatural powers, or in particular, a human-made object that has power over others. Essentially, fetishism is the attribution of inherent value, or powers, to an object.]
Rabbi Soloveitchik - the Emergence Of Halachic Man [149-150]
Pretty shocking passage.
