Category: Land of Israel

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How Big Is The Jewish Quarter?

When Mark Twain arrived in the Holy Land in 1867 he saw a barren land with few inhabitants. His depiction of Land of Israel is as follows:

“The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became…There was hardly a tree or a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country”.

While in Jerusalem he did find connection to the spiritual, he still depicted it as hardly populated. Interestingly, according to the Ottoman census already by the 1860s the population he would have found there would have been majority Jewish. This begs the question, if the Jewish population was in the majority, how big was the Jewish Quarter over 150 years ago if the Jewish population was in the majority?

In the second half of the 19th century Jewish Jerusalem was bursting at the seams. More and more Jews were streaming to Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. So much so, that by the 1880s Jews started venturing outside the walls of Jerusalem for the first time.

The Jewish population lived throughout today’s Old City and beyond. There were Jews in abundance by the Flowers Gate in the North as well as in today’s Christian Quarter. What is known as El Khaladia Street in today’s Muslim Quarter was the main street of the Jewish population.

However, this began to change when the British took over the Holy Land as they employed the quarter system we are all used to today. In the years between 1917 and 1948 a series of Arab pogroms occurred with little resistance from British authorities. This decimated the Jewish population and pushed back to the current Jewish Quarter, which was extinguished in 1948 when the Jordanian were able to take control Jerusalem’s Old City for 19 years.

Upon liberating Jerusalem in 1967, Israel reestablished what is today known as the Jewish Quarter, but kept the erroneous four quarters the British had instituted. Unfortunately this gives a false impression that Jews only lived in that area.

In order for the Jewish people to have an authentic and honest connection to their ancestral homeland, they need a very real historical account of Jerusalem. That includes fact that most of the “Christian and Muslim Quarters” were in fact Jewish not so long ago.

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A NATION IN PROTEST: Breaking The Illusion and The Need For A New Israeli Ethos

More than 15 years ago I was dragged out of the Neve Dekalim Synagogue by four soldiers and then bussed out of Gush Katif. In those moments I wondered why and where the protest movement to stop one of the largest injustices brought upon Israeli citizens by their own government had gone wrong.

The fact is, up until that point and including the Oslo protests headed by Moshe Feiglin, all of the nationalist protests had a sectoral feel to them. They weren’t meant to be sectoral, but Israel with all of its claims of the need for national unity breaks down along tribal lines and that is the failure of all of the protests in the past few years.

True, the disaster of the first Amona protest in 2006, when cops used horses to stampede settler youth, drew condemnation from the left, but the protest itself was not successful – meaning it did not strike a real chord with anyone else except settlers.

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A lot has happened since then. Israelis know each other far better than before. Religious Zionists have penetrated the mainstream media and stand poised to take over the army in the next generation. All the while, both Chareidim and Religious Zionists find common ground on many issues.

Still, there appears to be a lack of real unity of purpose other than just survival or standing by while the country’s hi-tech leaders represent their craft as being indicative of the Israeli citizenry as a whole. The more we know each other, the more we realize we are all being pulled along together, without regard to whether or not we want to be heading where we are heading.

Perhaps the uniting factor in this new young generation, growing up in a post Gush Katif reality is the need for a new national ethos. Many settler youth reject their parents’ views that they need to conform to make it in Israel and like many on the left, they see the vacuous drive towards participation in the hi-tech ecosystem as being disconnected from the larger issues plaguing Israeli society.

This is where the intersection has arisen between the protests surrounding Ahuviya Sandak’s death, potentially at the hands of a negligent police and the disconnect many have in Israel from the government and the elite that rules it.

When Hill Top Youth were placed in administrative detention for six months over Duma and then tortured to be made to confess and still be found guilty despite an admittance that the confession came by way of torture – Israelis scratched their head.

True, most questioned it, but then went on with their life. What is going on now is a confirmation that the bias against the idealistic youth of Judea and Samaria is real and the “fringe opinions” over Duma might have had some legs to them after all.

The simple question is now beginning to be asked: Why all this trouble over a handful of teenagers that seem to be only focused on defending Jewish land from Arab squatters?

Why claim these kids are a threat to the entire nation?

The protests are growing, because people see that Ahuvia Sandak’s death is a symptom of a larger problem in Israel. True, we lead the world in innovation, but we are beginning to lose site of what guides us here in the Land in the first place. We have come home, but have buried the vessels of Redemption in the sands of the Negev.

The youth are showing us something else – that rights are not given to us by the police, the judges, or even the Knesset, but rather they are given to us by G-D himself.

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In a sense, the hate for these youth by the apparatchiks in the leftwing controlled security forces and judicial system stems from a sense of embarrassment and jealousy. After all, it is supposed their kids doing this – being Zionists, not these rag tag youth of the hills.

Yet, this goes beyond Zionism that guided Jews back to Israel – this is about Redemption itself. For that, one has to leave behind the trappings and false understandings fomented by those who built the early state, which were then foisted on everyone else.

In a sense we have to leave the construct of our assumptions about what we are doing here to see past the illusions that the governing institutions wants us to believe.

No one trusts the police here, yet before this past year there was too much at stake for all of the various groups to unite. Lockdown after ridiculous lockdown has taken its toll on the public and with it, the last remaining barrier that had prevented it from truly making grassroots change.

The youth of the hills are more than just guardians of the Land – they are messengers of a new way, which is really an old way. They are the David to the government’s Saul. We are not meant to come home to our Land and live like other Nations. Our soul’s are whispering that to us – trying to wake us up and these youth are the reminder that we can behave differently.

There is a price for conformity and that is the anonymity the machine wants us to fall into. However, these youth can and will save us from ourselves at the end. Most of us want something else, but we are just too afraid to admit it to anyone else. All of the technology and entertainment has done nothing to quiet the yearning for a shift to a Redemptive paradigm.

These protests are about regaining the process of reawakening what the Jewish return to its Land was supposed to be about. While this might be scary to many here, it is necessary if we are going to complete the transition from a nation like all other nations to one that is truly a Kingdom of Priests.

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Trump should let the Quartet die with James Wolfensohn

James Wolfensohn, the former president of the World Bank Group, passed away on Nov. 15, and in the conclusion of his obituary, The New York Times quoted his “mission impossible” quip about his envoy experience with the Quartet on the Middle East.

“The Middle East turned out to be my mission impossible,” claimed Wolfensohn. He was tasked with working on Israel’s so-called disengagement from the Gaza Strip. Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair would succeed Wolfensohn in leading the Quartet and be the last leader of the Quartet to have any gravitas on the world stage.

The Quartet has outlived both the involvement of Wolfensohn and Blair, who ended his own involvement with his 2015 resignation and now has outlived Wolfensohn himself. But it has also quite literally outlived its usefulness, if it ever had any at all.

It’s almost never in the news, and yet still exists and still has U.S. involvement. As a reminder, the Quartet was established in Madrid in 2002 and is comprised of the United Nations, the European Union, the United States and Russia, according to its website.Subscribe to The JNS Daily Syndicate by email and never miss our top stories

A review of the Quartet’s website is instructive in examining just what’s wrong with the body. Its failures—and they are plentiful—stem from its entire approach to Israel.

The tagline that is included at the top of every page of the Quartet’s website is “supporting the Palestinian people to build the institutions and economy of a viable, peaceful state in Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem.”

Let’s break down that sentence.

First, it does not mention Israel at all. That, in and of itself, is an important fact that cannot be defended in any way. How can you be about making peace between two sides and ignore that one side exists?

Second, Israel’s major cities and Ben-Gurion International Airport would be within easy rocket range of terrorists sitting on the Palestinian side of the border of a “West Bank” state. Who honestly believes that a new Palestinian government would stamp out the terrorists? Does anybody remember the Oslo Accords, which obligated the Palestinian Authority to outlaw and disarm all terrorists? Who enforced that? Who will enforce future Palestinian compliance?

Not only that, but by linking the Hamas-controlled Gaza terror statelet that now exists with a proposed entity in Judea-Samaria (what the Quartet partisanly labels the “West Bank”) and the Quartet necessitates the creation of a tunnel and/or railway linking Gaza to the P.A.-run territories. Such territorial contiguity would endanger Israel’s security is a very widely accepted fact by Israel’s defense policy establishment.

And that is in part because a tunnel and railway would slice across Israel’s middle and would connect, and thereby significantly strengthen, the potential military capacity of these two perennially hostile anti-Israel regimes. Hamas already takes advantage of every current opportunity to send terrorists from Gaza into Judea and Samaria, so just imagine what it would do if it is given a highway and railway tunnel system through which it could send whatever it wants.

If Israel tried to interfere with Palestinian Arabs using that corridor, it would become the subject of severe international condemnation. The United Nations would almost surely threaten sanctions, as would the European Union. Under such pressure, Israel would hesitate to act—thus effectively tying its hands in the face of a terrorist buildup.

Another issue with the Quartet’s mission statement that must be confronted is the use of a place named “East Jerusalem” when no such place has ever existed in history. The name “East Jerusalem” is an artificial construct that supporters of the Arab use in their propaganda to make it appear as if that part of the city is an intrinsically Arab area that Jews are illegally entering.

The truth is there are Jewish neighborhoods throughout the eastern, western, northern and southern parts of Jerusalem. It’s a shameful thing when Jewish organizations choose to use such geographically inaccurate and politically loaded language. At the time, anti-Israel extremists created the name “East Jerusalem” for one reason: They sought to rip Israel’s capital apart to defeat Israel. What it is that they are really saying with the term is that Jerusalem’s Old City and its surrounding neighborhoods are not part of Israel or part of Israeli Jerusalem itself. The original and oldest parts of Jerusalem are what they falsely label “East Jerusalem.”

For promoters of Israeli territorial concessions, the Gaza Disengagement that Wolfensohn was so heavily involved with was supposed to set the precedent they hoped would soon be repeated in the Judea and Samaria areas. Instead, Gaza has become the most graphic illustration of why relinquishing Judea and Samaria to the perennially hostile and extremely corrupt P.A. is a flat-out dangerous idea.

It’s worth noting that the last time before Wolfensohn’s death the Quartet was in the news at all was in June 2020, in the aftermath of the Trump plan for Middle East peace being made public. The P.A. declared to it, in a letter, “We are ready to have our state with a limited number of weapons.”

Led by Mahmoud Abbas, the P.A. understands that the Quartet’s envoys and its bureaucracy are biased in their favor, even more so than the United Nations, and that is why it appealed to it in its effort to stay relevant when so many other of its former friends around the world were suddenly not willing to kowtow to it any longer.

The Middle East’s political climate has changed remarkably in the last several years, largely due to the work of the Trump administration’s Middle East team. One thing the president can do now to bolster what has been accomplished in the Middle East during his term would be to end U.S. sponsorship from the Quartet. And the sooner, the better.

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Why Is Israel’s Deep State So Scared About Jonathan Pollard Moving To Israel?

Former PM Ehud Olmert attacked the US government’s decision to nullify Jonathan Pollard’s parole restrictions.

“We don’t owe him anything,” said Olmert. “His coming to Israel will only increase the fallout from his case.”

Nothing seems stranger than the above statement by former PM Ehud Olmert. There is one thing from refraining to comment on the Pollard case while he was in jail. While not commendable, at least such a move would be understandable, but to attack the US for following their own laws because by letting Pollard it will only further “embarrass” Israel is not only circular logic, but totally preposterous.

So, what is really going on here?

To understand why Olmert, whom most Israelis consider to be the worst Prime Minister the country has ever had, has come out strongly against Pollard being set free from his parole and most likely moving to Israel, it is imperative to understand what the Pollard case is really about.

Arrested for spying on the US in 1985, Jonathan Pollard was in a sense a romantic Zionist – in love with what he believed the State of Israel to represent. His arrest came after a series of meetings with LAKAM agents, which was a clandestine section of the Mossad. Both Pollard and his wife were drawn into the LAKAM circle through high value gifts and trips.

Eventually, LAKAM decided to. activate Pollard, who was responsible for bringing the group high value information, the US was holding back from Israel – essentially in opposition to agreements the two countries had signed.

While Pollard sought help and refuge at the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. when he and his wife found out they were to be arrested, the embassy under direction from Israel refused and threw him out. Moments later the FBI arrested him.

Everyone now agrees, Pollard’s sentencing was extreme. While most people who spy for friendly countries get a maximum of 10 years, Pollard’s sentence was for life, which translated into 30 years and then five years of a heavy restrictive parole.

While it is understandable for Americans to have a negative viewpoint of Jonathan Pollard, what is not understandable is the level of negativity espoused by Israelis like Olmert. The intelligence Pollard handed off to the LAKAM agents saved lives, and yet the elite in Israel are scared about his return.

In many ways Pollard is analogous to each of us. We all want to do good. We make decisions based upon noble intentions and then just like that – it all falls apart.

These decisions can cost us; especially when we are abandoned by the very thing that we believed could do no wrong.

This was Pollard and this is why the Deep State in Israel is nervous. At least this is the most probable reason.

Ultimately though, it is more or less the same attitude that caused Israel to flinch in the first place, which resulted in abandoning Jonathan Pollard for so many years, that Olmert is working from. It is this spineless, subservient attitude that has caused us never to accept collective responsibility as anation for what Jonathan Pollard went through. After all, he did it for all of us and it was for us that he needlessly spent so many years in jail.

The Deep State in Israel is nervous about Pollard’s potential move to the Holy Land, not because of any piece of information he may have. No, those people have already left this earth. The Deep State is nervous, because in prison Jonathan Pollard appears to have transformed into a wall of faith by humbly and accepting his lot. He has become a source of unity within the Jewish people. This unity and transcendence is what the elite and Deep State truly fear. His move to Israel would in many ways shift the focus away from faux Israeli “heroes” to a man who may have erred, but did so because of his love of Israel and paid the price for it year after year, while those who abandoned him moved up the political ladder.

The elite and Deep State in Israel don’t want an actual hero to show up here. That in of itself would expose their petty tirades and squabbles that have in the past led the third Jewish commonwealth to near disaster.

Pollard is far more about us than it really is about the man. It is how we as a collective accept national responsibility and come to terms with it when we don’t. The world is going through an uncertain time right now and yet, Israel appears poised to move forward into the future with a tremendous amount of positive energy. However, it suffers from disunity and a lack of meaningful leadership.

Could a man, who suffered behind bars due to the weakness of the government he believed he was helping be the leader we need after all?

We’ll soon find out.

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J Street Uses A Pro-Terrorist EU Bureaucrat To Malign Jewish Neighborhoods

J Street, in a mid-November email appeal, quoted an unnamed “top EU diplomat” in its tirade against an Israeli government call for bids for new homes in a nearly 30 year-old Jerusalem neighborhood where Ethiopian Jewish and Russian immigrants live. What’s more than J Street’s vitriol against the construction of Jewish homes is that the name of the EU functionary was intentionally left off of J Street’s rant because he is an anti-Israel extremist who earlier this year gave outright support for terrorists according to Israel’s Foreign Ministry when he stated that Palestinian Arabs affiliated with blacklisted groups remain eligible to participate in projects funded by the EU.

J Street is the controversial Washington, D.C., based Jewish pressure group that was created specifically, and almost exclusively, to lobby for an independent Palestinian state. J Street maintains, as a central theme of its propaganda, that Jews do not have a right to live wherever they choose and must be transferred out of their homes and neighborhoods in wide swaths of Judea-Samaria where Israeli citizens have lived for nearly fifty years.

The EU bureaucrat who opposes Jewish homes in Givat Hamatos, and was quoted by J Street, is a German named Sven Kühn von Burgsdorff.

von Burgsdorff previously was the head of the EU’s delegation to South Sudan and in a May 8, 2020 JTA article [https://www.jta.org/quick-reads/eu-may-fund-palestinian-supporters-of-terrorist-group-official-assures-aid-recipients] he was identified as heading the “EU mission to the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”

The Times of Israel news website reported on May 7, 2020 [https://www.timesofisrael.com/foreign-ministry-rebukes-eu-ambassador-over-support-for-terrorism/] that an Israeli Foreign Ministry official stated that the letter by “von Burgsdorff, constituted a ‘violation of all our agreements with the European Union’.”

The Times also reported that explicitly due to von Burgsdorff’s letter, Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz harshly rebuked the EU saying “we demand that the EU immediately end all support, financial or otherwise, for any entities that support terrorism whether directly or indirectly.”
Debra Shushan, J Street’s Director of Government Affairs signed the email that was titled “BREAKING: Outrageous steps by Netanyahu to expand settlements.” In the email J Street made the wild claim that “this week the Netanyahu government announced it will begin the tender process for the major new settlement of Givat Hamatos — a move which a top EU diplomat branded a “de facto annexation attempt.” Construction in Givat Hamatos is part of a deliberate settlement movement strategy to cut off Palestinian neighborhoods of East Jerusalem from the West Bank Palestinian city of Bethlehem.”

The reason why J Street’s Shushan left out von Burgsdorff’s name should be clear: he has been widely discredited as a supporter of anti-Israel terrorism.

Another issue with J Street’s email that must be confronted is the use of a place named “East Jerusalem” when no such place has ever actually existed in history. The name “East Jerusalem” is an artificial construct that supporters of the Arab cause use in their propaganda in order to make it appear as if that part of the city is an intrinsically Arab area that Jews are illegally entering. In reality, there are Jewish neighborhoods throughout the eastern, western, northern, and southern parts of Jerusalem. It’s a shameful thing when Jewish organizations choose to use such geographically inaccurate, and politically loaded, language. At the time anti-Israel extremists created the name “East Jerusalem” it was for one reason: they sought to rip Israel’s capital apart in order to defeat Israel. “East Jerusalem” does not actually exist and what they are really saying is that Jerusalem’s Old City and its surrounding neighborhoods are not part of Israel or part of Israeli Jerusalem itself. The original and oldest parts of Jerusalem are what they falsely label “East Jerusalem.”

J Street needs to be honest with Americans. If it opposes Jews living in certain places because they are Jews then why obfuscate on this? If they want to quote an extremist diplomat J Street should at least name that diplomat and not hide his identity due to the fact that he has been accused of supporting terrorists.

The political climate of the Middle East has changed remarkably in the last several years and J Street doesn’t seem to like it at all. The United Arab Emirates has two synagogues and yet if J Street would get their way, synagogues in Judea and Samaria would be dismantled and the Jews in these neighborhoods would be forced from their homes. Haven’t we had enough of Jews being told where they can and cannot live? What was gained by the Israeli government destroying Jewish homes and synagogues in Gush Katif in Gaza in 2005 to hand over Israeli held land in the name of a “peace” that never came about? The Judean Hills, since the times of antiquity considered to be the heart of the Land of Israel, should, especially, be an area where Jewish families feel secure in the idea that their homes will never be destroyed.

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Israel is Indivisible

The “Deal of the Century”is a game. One group in the Trump administration wants to use this deal to give Israel the power to annex large parts of Judea and Samaria. Another group of the administration believes there is a chance that the deal might just be scary enough for the Palestinian Arabs to come around and so there is still hazy wiggle room in every detail.

The first group of the administration does not believe that the Palestinian Arabs will agree, so the deal is a sleight of hand to push the end game further to our favor. The second group does not see the deal this way and really wants it to be a deal that works.

The problem with both of these approaches is it treats the most holy of lands as a type of real estate deal turned political weapon. The Land of Israel is the land of memory, of G-D consciousness, it cannot be divided.

The Land can be conquered, its people exiled, but divided from within – no.

Ultimately, this is the failure of the Trump plan. It aims to give the Jews a better deal than before, but it is a deal nonetheless.

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There can be no deal on the Land of Israel. It is a Land which is the most loved to the Creator. It is a Land where the Divine Presence, the Princess dwells within its earth, waiting to be uncovered.

It cannot be divided. For to divide the Land would render it profane, normal, and natural.

The “Deal of the Century” may be the best deal, but a deal is not what we need. What the people of this Land need is to connect to the true purpose of why we are here. The Kingdom of G-D is beyond borders and agreements. It flows from Jerusalem and extends throughout Israel and beyond to the world.

This is the ultimate vessel for Godliness in the universe. In order to activate it, we must understand that we ourselves are just are merely on a mission here. Our mission, both individually and collectively is to reveal the Divine Light of Creation. For this we need an indivisible Land of Israel.

Complete and one.

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Hebron, the Root of the Nation

Rebbe Nachman teaches the following:

“Repentance entails returning the thing to where it was taken from. This is the aspect of zarka, about which the holy Zohar brings: It was zarak (thrown back) to the place from which it was taken. What place is that? It is Chokhmah (Wisdom). For Chokhmah is the root of all things, as it is written (Psalms 104:24), “You created everything with wisdom.”

Returning to our roots is repentance itself. This applies at an individual level, within the person’s consciousness, as well as national, when we return to our roots in the Land of Israel.

This is why Rav Kook says the following at the end of the first chapter of Orot Eretz Yisrael:

“Anticipating of redemption is the force which maintains Jewry in exile, and the Judaism of the Land ‎of Israel is the redemption itself.”

No where is this more apparent than Hebron.

Hebron is the burial place of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jewish people, as well Ruth, Yishai, and many more ancient graves. It is our roots, our past, and the foundation for our future Kingdom. More than anything it is the testament that this Land is ours. The Cave of the Patriarchs is the oldest Jewish building stills standing dating back nearly 2000 years, built by Herod as a monument over the ancient cave where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah are buried. The sages teach that Adam and Eve are also buried there.

Hebron is a city of conflict.  It is a place where we the Jewish people have struggled, fought, lost, and now have returned.

Our roots are our source of strength and faith. These roots are what gives us our ability to push forward even at times where we have no strength.

This is why the decision by Defense Minister Naftali Bennett to build a new neighborhood on the ground of a formerly Jewish one, which had been taken over by Arabs after the massacre of the Hebron Jewish community is so important.

It is a return to our roots – repentance.

This is also why so many voices from the left and Arab Palestinians have come out against such a decision. They wish to stop us from returning, from repenting, from cleaving to our path that begins by reconnecting to our roots.

The following is an excerpt from a speech Rav Kook gave at the memorial service for the victims of the 1929 massacre in Hebron:

“Despite the terrible tragedy that took place in Hebron, we announce to the world, “Our strength is now like our strength was then.” We will not abandon our holy places and sacred aspirations. Hebron is the city of our fathers, the city of the Machpelah cave where our Patriarchs are buried. It is the city of David, the cradle of our sovereign monarchy.”

“Those who discourage the ones trying to rebuild the Jewish community in Hebron with arguments of political expedience; those who scorn and say, “What are those wretched Jews doing?”; those who refuse to help rebuild Hebron — they are attacking the very roots of our people. In the future, they will have to give account for their actions. If ruffians and hooligans have repaid our kindness with malice, we have only one eternal response: Jewish Hebron will once again be built, in honor and glory!”

“The inner meaning of Hebron is to draw strength and galvanize ourselves with the power of Netzach Yisrael, Eternal Israel.”

“That proud Jew, Caleb, announced years later, “I am still strong… As my strength was then, so is my strength now” (Joshua 14:11). We, too, announce to the world: our strength now is as our strength was then. We shall reestablish Hebron in even greater glory, with peace and security for every Jew. With God’s help, we will merit to see Hebron completely rebuilt, speedily in our days.”

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The Land of Israel is about Balancing the Spiritual and Physical

As I noted in my previous article, Rav Kook teaches the following in Orot HaTechiya 28:

“The holiness that is expressed from within the physical is the holiness of the Land of Israel. When the Shechina (Divine Presence) descended into exile with the Nation of Israel, holiness stood in opposition to the physical. But holiness which battles the physical is not a complete holiness. It is necessary that holiness become subsumed within the Divine from above, which leads to a holiness that is expressed through the physical itself. This is the foundation of repairing the entire World.”

By drilling deeper into this point we gain an understanding of the harmonious nature of the process of Redemption. In exile the Jewish people found it necessary to separate between the physical and spiritual. One could not fathom a world where the two could exist in harmony. Yet, this is exactly the point of returning home.

Rebbe Nachman teaches the following in the 35th lesson of the Likutey Moharan:

“Know! Teshuvah (Repentance) entails returning the thing to where it was taken from.”

This applies on both an individual level and national level. Our spiritual condition cannot be complete until we have returned to the place from where we were taken. Since Israel outside of its Land is not in its rightful place, then on an individual level as well one cannot fund harmony between the spiritual and physical.

Teshuvah is about returning to ourselves – about being in balance between the physical vessel that we were given when we came into this world and the spiritual expression, the ideal we are meant to bring into reality, which is the will of the Creator.

This balance can only happen in the Land of Israel. Outside the two cannot work in harmony, with the spiritual side always pushing back against the physical.

In Rebbe Nachman’s story of the Lost Princess, when the viceroy falls asleep after failing to follow the Princess’s instructions for a second time, his servant runs and hides when a long procession of soldiers walk by.

Why?

The servant represents our body and the viceroy who is asleep our soul. Sleep is always a hint to exile. as it says in the Song of Songs: “I am asleep and my heart is awake.” The servant, as the body cannot stand up to the rigors and challenges of this world as long as the soul is asleep and so hides.

Only in Israel can we truly awaken and achieve a complete harmony between the physical and spiritual.

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Can We Fix the Vessels of Redemption Within the State of Israel?

Everything in the physical world can be used as a vessel to either draw or contain Divine Light or the opposite to block it. After all, the Creator seeks to always shine his Will on all of the Creation. The State of Israel as a tool for renewed Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel can either be used to complete the process of Redemption or the opposite and stall it. The chaos we are now witnessing in the State is nothing more than the vessel itself as it is structured coming to a close. The tools that came into being when it was established were either incomplete or fashioned in a way in which the light from above could not be contained.

When the State of Israel was created, it was done so as a hasty declaration and a response to the invasion of five Arab armies. True, the Zionist movement had been moving towards an independent state, but the invasion gave the Mapai a chance to take full control over the Zionist project. This had been Ben Gurion’s aim from the beginning. After all, the usurpation of the formal Zionist movement did not give them control over the street. The Revisionist Zionist movement, through the oratory and ideology of Valdamir Jabotinsky were far more beloved in the eyes of most Jews in Israel.

It was only when the British decided to end their control over the Holy Land due to the Jewish rebellion led by Menachem Begin’s Irgun and the late Avraham Stern’s Lechi that Ben Gurion and others used this as a pretext to take full control over the Zionist movement.

In taking control, the Labor Zionists were able to rewrite the history books, glorifying their leadership as well as injecting Western governing concepts into the body-politic. The parliamentary structure, so unstable and not suitable for a Jewish State was used. The courts were structured in a way to enable continuous Labor and internationalist control. Any chance for a true indigenous and authentic Jewish expression so desired by the initial waves of Jewish pioneers as well as Jews that had already been living in Israel for thousands of years, were stamped out to make way for an internationalist, communist controlled bureaucracy.

Not About Redemption

The Labor Zionists never saw the State as anything but a tool to establish their long term control over the Holy Land. Any thought that the State of Israel that had risen was meant to be a vessel for the Redemptive process was an anathema for them. True, Ben Gurion paid homage to the return and could have harbored positive feelings to the idea, but the superstructure of control that was created painted a different story.

Begin’s 1977 Revolution Not Enough

When Menachem Begin surprised the Labor establishment by breaking their electoral control of the state, the Revisionists as well as the Jews of Middle Eastern and North African descent believed that a revolution was underway.

While there was a cosmetic change, Begin and Shamir after him never put full energy into the areas of true Labor control – the courts, economy, and the media.

It was not until Prime Minister Netanyahu came along that the media or at least some of it began to change as well as the economy. As things began to open up and the disastrous effects of Oslo felt, the populace turned its back on the Two State-Solution as well as social welfare programs championed by the Left.

With the current political stalemate in Israel showing no signs of letting up, one must take a look at the entire structure of the State itself within the context of how it was formed and understand that the system is begging to be changed in order to take the Redemptive Process to the next level.

Rav Kook teaches the following in Orot HaTechiya 28:

“The holiness that is expressed from within the physical is the holiness of the Land of Israel. When the Shechina (Divine Presence) descended into exile with the Nation of Israel, holiness stood in opposition to the physical. But holiness which battles the physical is not a complete holiness. It is necessary that holiness become subsumed within the Divine from above, which leads to a holiness that is expressed through the physical itself. This is the foundation of repairing the entire World.”

Ultimately, the vessels of Redemption which flow from Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel were never seen as conduit for the Holiness of our Divine mission in this world. The two remained disconnected and so 72 year later the State itself requires a true fusion of the Vessels within it to the Holiness we seek to draw into the World.

The light of Redemption can be harnessed within the State of Israel, but the concept that this is what is necessary must be injected into the conversation. The Left would like to continue its subversive control over the institutions and the Right would like to pretend it only cares about being a capitalistic Western Democracy, but neither can stand up against the current wave of yearning for something beyond what we have. The only thing missing is the right leader to clarify the path ahead and by doing so repair the vessels of Redemption strewn out in front of us.

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Reclaiming Our National Soul

The final struggle over the Land of Israel is not rooted in the physical. While it’s true that Yishmael appears to be the violent opposing force to the yidden’s ability to draw closure to the galus, exile, the fact that we could crush our enemies in a matter of days or hours means that the key to the final redemption is not found in our military might.

So what’s holding us back?

Most of us have heard the famous gematria where the letters making up Amalek (עמלק) equal Safek (ספק) or doubt. While this concept has been applied to our personal relationship with the almighty in a daily sense for thousands of years – it is important to to see its connection to the current national predicament in the Land of Israel at the End of Days.

Rebbe Nachman teaches that the Kingdom of Haman/Amalek will use as its weapon the insatiable desire for money and material success. This weapon hangs over each of us and has penetrated the very makeup of our national enterprise. All of us have become pulled into its clutches and it has turned us from a nation of idealists to an extension of the Western consumer empire.

This safek, doubt about where we are heading flows from our fear of losing the material goals we have grown accustom to setting for ourselves. Zionism has in effect become pacified by its material success. Amalek has gained control. It is this pacification that prevents us from finishing the journey home, because home is not just a piece of land, but rather a recognition that the Land is above the material equation so often used when sizing the value of whatever it is one wants. The Land of Israel and the Nation of Israel are not quantifiable. We seek quiet and “normalcy,” but the more we seek these things the more Yishamel rises and pushes against us.

Amalek uses material pursuits not as a means to build vessels for holiness in our world, but rather as an end to themselves. This shift creates the space for doubt and the malaise that exists within us and the world. This doubt causes the perception that there is a disconnect between the divine and the physical world, which has caused us to pull back leaving us to clutch the material as the only meaning we feel we have created in our lives.

We can only rescue the Lost Princess from the castle and restore the Divine Presence to our Land by first removing the desire for the “castle of pearls on a mountain of gold” in its entirety. Doing this, will restore the pursuit of material wealth to just a means to create real holiness. This will naturally fill our national collective with a unifying Divine goal reclaiming our soul and Land forever.