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HOLIDAY READING

Rabbi Alex Israel

Body and Spirit

heodore Herzl was the man who yearned for the breadth of the Judaism of G-d prepares the nation who lives
transformed centuries of Zionist they read about in Tanach: sovereignty there as an eternal inheritance that
Tyearning into a practical plan. In and government, a Land, a national comes from a covenant, oath and trust.”
creating the Zionist Congress, he put culture, an army. Reflecting this, as On Yom HaAtzmaut we celebrate the
a Jewish dream into action, activating Ivrit developed as a modern language,
a series of events which turned vision Biblical Hebrew was preferred to Mish- survival of Medinat Yisrael; the miracle
into reality. It was the Dreyfus Affair naic Hebrew. Our Zionist dreamers of the wars of 1948, ’67 and ’73; the mir-
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that triggered Herzl’s Zionism. If Jews and pioneers adopted the imagery of acle of the ingathering of the Exiles; the
could not be accepted by other nations the Tanach. Achad Ha’am was saying miracle of Israel thriving economically
without hatred and demonization, that Judaism was in crisis. and culturally. This, says Rav Kook, is
they would have to establish their own a spiritual process. But there is more
nation state. This would seem like a secular repu- to do. We need to address the second
diation of millenia of halachic life in challenge, the spiritual. How can the
For others, the catalyst was not the Diaspora. But Rav Kook agreed. In spirit of G-d and the values of Judaism
antisemitism at all. It was a sense that Galut, the nation was sick; Judaism had become more pronounced in the public
Judaism in the Diaspora was somehow become distorted. Nationalism, though sphere? Our prophets dreamed of a
a pale representation of a greater Jewish many of the original pioneers rejected country that would champion a sense of
vision. As Achad Ha’am wrote in 1897: traditional Torah uMitzvot, was an out- G-dliness which would manifest itself in
“The Western Jew, having left the ghetto growth of holy yearnings. A return to justice and compassion. We have yet to
and having sought acceptance by the nationhood was a return to health: realize Rav Kook’s fusion, to articulate
gentile majority, is unhappy because his “We dealt much in soulfulness; we an agenda of a Judaism that can be fully
hope of an open-armed welcome has forgot the holiness of the body. We lived in a modern state, a Judaism that
been disappointed. …The heart of the neglected physical health and strength; will appeal to the entire gamut of the
Eastern Jews was sensitive to another we forgot we have holy flesh, no less Jewish people.
tragedy as well – a spiritual one. than holy spirit” (Orot HaTechiya #33). When we say Hallel on Yom HaAtzmaut,
In the West it is the problem of the “Sanctity in nature is the sanctity of Eretz we will say בוט יכ ’הל ודוה for the survival
Jews; in the East, the problem of Juda- Yisrael. The Shechina that descended to and physical flourishing of our beautiful
ism. The first weighs on the individual; Galut embodied the power of sanctity country, and we will pray: העישוה ’ה אנא
the second, on the nation. The one is in opposition to nature. But holiness אנ החילצה ’ה אנא ,אנ as we commit our-
felt by Jews who have had a European which fights the natural is not a holistic selves to building a just and holy society
education; the other, by Jews whose sanctity” (ibid #28). which will embrace all Israel.
education has been Jewish… It is not
only the Jews who have come out of the Thus Rav Kook embraced the build-
ghetto; Judaism has come out too. … ing of the Land – from agriculture to 1 For example: Tanach – ץע; Mishnah – ןליא.
The spirit of our people desires further the arts, from politics to academics – Tanach – חרי ,שמש; Mishna – הנבל ,המח.
development.” as a sense of Judaism returning to its
true full-bodied expression, the nation
The “Eastern Jews” to which Achad revived. For Rav Kook, the physical
Ha’am referred saw their shtetl, their was not merely secular. Material and
halachic Judaism, as limited to a private spiritual were inseparable, intertwined: Rabbi Alex Israel is an author, Tanach
or communal existence, preoccupied teacher and international lecturer.
with minutiae – whether one put on “The Land of Israel has an intrinsic
one’s right shoe or left, the kashrut of a meaning. It is connected to the Jewish A member of the Mizrachi Speakers Bureau
drop of milk which falls into meat. They people with the knot of life… The Land mizrachi.org/speakers

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