Page 29 - HaMizrachi Australia Rosh HaShana Yom Kippur 5781

MIZRACHI IN THE NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS YAMIM NORA’IM READING

Rabbi Dov Lipman Gael Grunewald

The Call to Israel

eeking to raise the morale of the looked up to Eretz Yisrael, their hearts seeing a growing interest in aliyah to
Jewish people in exile, the prophet sought the sanctity of the Land and at Eretz Yisrael.
SYishayahu describes the days great personal sacrifice and risk, they
when the Children of Israel will return came to an uninhabited land to instigate As Head of the Rural Growth and
to the Land of Israel: “And in that day, the redemption with their own hands. Development Division of the World
a great ram’s horn shall be sounded, Zionist Organization, I have received
and the strayed who are in the land of The medium shofar, the regular shofar, dozens of enquiries from various aliyah
Assyria and the expelled who are in the is the pioneering shofar, the natural organizations seeking places that can
land of Egypt shall come and worship voice, the national emotion that calls absorb hundreds of families. Entire
the L-rd on the holy mount, in Jeru- on every Jew anywhere in the world to communities seek to move their lives
salem” (Yishayahu 27:13). This is how be part of the State of Israel. Families, to the Land of Israel.
the Prophet connects the sound of the lone soldiers, young students see our
shofar and the return to the Land of small country as their national home This Rosh Hashanah, let us pray with
Israel. In Musaf on Rosh Hashanah, and leave their country, their homeland the utmost intention that G-d will blow
we ask: “Our G-d and the G-d of our and their father’s house, immigrating to a great shofar for our freedom. Both
fathers… blow a great shofar for our Eretz Yisrael and realizing their dreams as individuals and as a whole, may
freedom” and thus we connect the of national belonging. we know how to transcend the here
sound of the shofar to the national free- The third shofar, the little shofar, is and now and succeed in serving G-d
dom of the people of Israel. blown only if there is no kosher shofar, out of the desire to cling to His ways.

Rabbi Kook, who saw pioneering as i.e. when there is no great shofar, no May we merit to live in a generation in
which G-d’s revelation in the world is
a value and a mitzvah, explains that longings for the Holy Land and no ordi- only through the great shofar and not
Redemption has three shofarot: large, nary shofar, the natural desire to con- through pandemics and the like.
medium and small, and on Rosh Hasha- nect to the flag and national anthem.
nah, we specifically ask, “blow the large Then and only then does the wrong
shofar for our freedom.” shofar, the enemies of Israel, come and
blow in our ears the sound that awakens
The Shulchan Aruch also distinguishes us to redemption.
between three shofars. One, the best
shofar for Rosh Hashanah is from a The shofar of an unclean animal sounds
ram’s horn. Second, if there is no ram’s the voice of Mashiach and does not give
horn, all shofars are kosher. And the the Jews of the Diaspora respite. Start-
third type of shofar, from an unclean ing with Amalek, through expulsions,
animal or a non-Jew’s shofar, is prohib- riots, the Holocaust and the travails of
ited but if one blows one of these, he has our own times, this year we have heard
fulfilled the obligation. the sound of the coronavirus shofar that
arouses us to the Land of Israel.
Rabbi Kook compares these three sho-
farot to the three ways of redemption: The global pandemic is changing our
spiritual aliyah, national aliyah and priorities and the sound of this invalid
aliyah out of necessity. shofar coming out of the impure ‘corona Gael Grunewald is Head of the Rural Growth
beast’ is alerting entire communities and Development Division of the WZO,
There were generations when aliyah around the world. Along with the rise in former Director of World Bnei Akiva and
to Eretz Yisrael was through the great anti-Semitism, the transition to remote one of World Mizrachi’s representatives in
shofar, as people from all over the world work and distance education, we are the National Institutions.

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