Tag: Land of Israel

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Replacing Mourning With The Song of Joy

We are constantly mourning our predicament – Our yearning for completion, for living in a world of strife and shifting to a world of redeemed purpose. Yet, we have been mourning our loss of connection and lack of clarity of purpose for so long we know nothing else but mourning.

Redemption lies within. It lies within the song that moves us at our core, the song of creation, jubilation, and joy. This is the song that the Tzaddik plays to call us home, to move back to ourselves.

The challenge though is that in the two thousand years of exile we have lost will to search within and are caught up with the comfortability of mourning that which we can fix by simply letting go of the sadness we have built.

Exile is a mindset. It is a cycle of external wandering in hopes that we can find solace and time to think about who we really are. Now our wanderings actually led to the place that we dreamed of. Yet, we have faltered and stayed mourning for a loss of connection that we feel fail to recognize that the very place we are now in can help us recover who we are.

We are home. We have returned to the Land of the Lost Princess, the Land of Israel, of the Divine Presence. All that there is left to do is recognize that we no longer need to mourn.

(Based on Likutey Halachot Pirya v’Rivia Halacha 3, Story of the Seven Beggars – 6th Day)

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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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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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Returning Home, Leaving Our Trauma Behind

Inside each Yid is unbounded consciousness.

This point of God awareness is wrapped up in the layers of our world. Outside the Land of Israel we had no yearning; either on an individual or a national level for uncovering our authentic identity. Only now, upon our return home has this need and desire become aroused.

This arousal from within flows from a point within our hearts where the altar of Godliness exists. This altar is the gateway to the universe within, the Gan Eden of our souls. The return to the Land unlocks this gateway, this cosmic altar where our da’as flows into this world. However, the transformation and trigger from galus to geulah comes with inner obstacles and false perceptions.

The return to the Land of Israel requires the Tzaddik to remove the storm raging within our minds, which are threatened by the chaos of leaving the galus behind. This chaos has the power to derail the geulah – to hide the princess from our grasp.

This is what the climb out of the gutters of galus is about. The constant rising and falling until we get it – until the concretization of a true malchus, kingdom, which can only happen in Israel – happens.

Yet, it cannot happen without realizing that each of us when it comes down to it is just a point of Godliness expressed in the physical realm. Each one of us is only a machzit hashekel, half shekel in need of another half shekel to be whole. We have returned home – to rescue the princess within, but we forgot that we are here to rescue her and instead are running after the false loves of our past arduous journey outside the Land of Israel.

The Tzaddik has blazed a path ahead, past the inner obstacles and confusions. He saw ahead and rode the stormy seas back home unlocking our yearnings and drives. Now we need to hold on and know the only thing holding back the full completion of our redemption is the letting go of our past trauma and focusing on the only thing that matters – the now. Only then we will see the princess and only then the Land’s full affect on our inner selves will be felt.

(Based on Likutey Moharan 25; Shivchey HaRan – Journey to Eretz Yisrael; Toldos Yaakov Yosef – Parsha Ki Tisa; Olat Reyiah Part 1 Page 40; Shemoneh Kevatzim Part 1 Paragraph 25)