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years ago which have just recently yielded are Jews, and this is our natural home,
our very first bottles of wine. Ascending where we can flourish and grow.
the mountain, you’d trek through our Before I moved here, I felt like a fish out
nearly four thousand blossoming fruit
trees, an innovative ecological freshwater of water, flopping around on the river
bank gasping for air. The fish has a short
oasis, a horse flanked by a flock of sheep,
and intoxicating views of the Dead Sea, memory; it thinks that the natural state of
Masada, Jerusalem, and the Judean Desert. a fish must be to gasp for air and slowly
die. But then the fish flops its way back
These mountains were designated by into the river and, revitalized, finally
the Israeli government for agriculture realizes, “Oh, this is what it is to be a fish!”
and tourism, and if our goal was merely This is how I felt when I planted my roots
to fulfill that mandate, we could have here in Judea. I was filled with a new sense
simply built functional structures and of life, vitality, joy, and mission. “Oh, this
completed construction long ago. But we is what it is to be a Jew!”
all felt that what we could bring to life in
these mountains would be leTiferet Yisrael, a A taste of redemption
source of pride and splendor for the nation
of Israel. A place of indescribable beauty, Judea is not merely a geographical location
our goal was to transform these barren on a map or a destination you type into
mountains into nothing short of a jewel Waze. Judea is a return to our identity;
in the crown of Judea. Although we are a journey of self-actualization and self-
far from completion, I am deeply grateful discovery. Judea is a taste of redemption.
that our farm is already considered among We are approaching the holiday of
the most beautiful destinations in Israel. Pesach, the chag hageulah, the “holiday
I say these words with humility. We of redemption”. Before I moved here,
recognize that what we have accomplished “redemption” was just a word, a theological
here far transcends anything we could concept I mentioned three times a day in
have accomplished with our own skills my tefillot since grade school. But since
and strength. If not for Hashem’s help coming to Arugot Farm, I have experienced
and often thinly-veiled miracles, there moments, however fleeting, when
is no way that we could have possibly redemption became more than just an idea.
manifested this vision. The only thing Ramban explains why he calls the book
we could possibly take credit for is saying of Exodus the Sefer HaGeulah, the “Book
hineni, “here I am”.
of Redemption”, even though only the
The head of the Gush Etzion Regional first twelve of its forty chapters recount
Council first sent us to these mountains the Exodus from Egypt. Redemption, he
because settling them would be, in his explains, is not just freedom from slavery,
words, “the most strategic and geopolitically or freedom from anything for that matter.
important endeavor in Gush Etzion.” But Redemption is self-realization, actualizing
it didn’t take long for me to realize that our potential and fulfilling our mission in
strategy and geopolitics were not the real the world. Only after receiving the Torah
reasons we were settling these mountains. at Sinai, building the mishkan within
The real reason we are here is because we which G-d’s presence would dwell and

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