Clarity

So here I am. Staring blankly out of my bedroom window at the gray screen that covers the world here in chutz l’aretz. God exists within every bit of physicality in this world. Or so I’ve been told. Somewhere hidden deep beneath the gray, slushy snow banks, along with the McDonalds cup and the Coca-Cola can from before the first snowfall is a Divine source. It exists only because a benevolent creator willed it to be. In some deep spiritual reality, in order for the world to develop according to Plan and for the Divine potential to be actualized, this snow bank needs to be exactly here, exactly now. That all, of course, is obvious. But then how come it doesn’t awaken my soul?

With a dream-like smile on my face, a longing gaze in my eyes, a physical pain in my heart and a yearning in my soul, the borders of the screen get fuzzy and a series of dramatic bells take me back to a moment in my not-so-distant past.

So here I am. Sitting on a rooftop in Sfat with a cup of Chai tea in hand, Yosef Karduner serenading me with his Godly praises on my iPod, and the mountains of Northern Israel rolling on before me eternally. And it is here, with, with the sun and the breeze as my witnesses that I will attempt to transfer the status of my soul at exactly this moment onto a one-page-double-sided paper ripped clandestinely out of some poor innocent’s notebook. In just over a month, I’ll be on a plane back to Toronto, to a place formerly known as ‘home’, when the world meant something entirely different. When I look out at these mountains, my heart physically aches and my soul threatens to jump out of my body and sail directly up to it’s Creator. I see the struggles of three thousand years of Jewish history reflected in the heaven-kissed peaks and deep, dark valleys. I see the dichotomy of the finite and the infinite attempting to coexist and make space for each other within themselves. I see the big picture, the master plan, stained by individual trees and interrupted by lone cars on a highway in the distance. And where do I fit in to all of this?



I’ll save you the soul bearing that followed, and zoom in on something so totally bizarre and absolutely illogical that I was experiencing. Through looking at a physical land mass, a geographical collection of mountains, I experienced a moment of intense self-knowledge and complete clarity in my relationship to an infinite Being. Apart from the shocking aesthetic differences, what is really so incredibly different about a dirty snow bank on a polluted side street in Toronto and a majestic mountain top in the hills of the Upper Galilee? Rationally – very little, but realistically - everything.

In Orot Hatechiyah, Rav Kook attempts to explain the constant struggle and tension that exist in Eretz Yisrael today. There are three forces battling within Am Yisrael in the development of the state of Israel – the religious, the nationalist, and the humanist. These forces battle in the Diaspora as well, he explains, yet they manifest themselves in an intensified manner in Eretz Yisrael. And why is that? The most important things in life are ‘good for nothing’, meaning they are ends in themselves, not means to something greater. Torah is one example of this, Eretz Yisrael is another. Eretz Yisrael is not an external means to an end for Am Yisrael, although through being a unified nation functioning according to Torah in our land, we do have the potential to bring about unprecedented change in the world. Primarily, however, our connection as a people to the land of Israel is something inherent, intrinsic and internal. When we are in our land, we experience the spiritual reality that means being completely connected to the essence of who we are, both as individuals and as a nation.

Then how come all the fighting? Why all the tension? After all, I’ve never seen a fanatic observant Jew in Toronto throw a stone at his reform brother driving down Bathurst Street to temple on Shabbat! Nor have I ever seen an unaffiliated Jew in Toronto beat up his brother because he has a strange hairdo and wears a funny hat all the time! When Am Yisrael is disconnected from its essence, when the spiritual umbilical cord is cut, the nation begins to fade away. As a man in Chevron told me on Parshat Chaya Sarah last year, "this is your first time breathing fresh air - you had no idea you were surviving through an oxygen mask all these years". At the time, I thought he was crazy. Now with a lot of learning, experience, growth and perspective, I know he just understood the reality of the world in a way I had never seen it. People are asleep and apathetic, merely existing in a perpetual state of drowsiness, unaware of the spiritual realities that the soul of the nation is experiencing at any given moment. Sure, returning to the land brings problems, but when you see a sick child lying quiet and calm in his bed, wouldn’t you do anything to bring him back to his mischievous, trouble-making, vase-breaking self? The tension in Israel may at times seem unbearable, but at least it lets us know we are alive.

And this is what it means to be a Jew in Eretz Yisrael. Because of nothing more than God’s infinite mercy, I have had the blessing of spending the last year and a half learning Torah in Eretz Yisrael, strengthening my relationships to my self, my people, my Torah, my God and my land. I am attempting to unify these relationships in a way that they cannot ever be lost because they will define who I am and the eyes through which I see the world. If one aspect is ever missing, I should feel a lack and an identity crisis so large that it should shake me up and drive me to teshuvah. To be a Jew in Eretz Yisrael is to be so aware of your essence, so connected to your true self, that even when you feel confused, lost and scared, you have total clarity about these feelings and you have the ability to feel them completely. You are alive.