How Israel Can Fulfill Its Role in the World
Israel: The Journey from Spirituality to Corporeality
The awakening desire for spirituality is called “the land of Israel.” The people who lived in the land of Israel before the ruin of the Second Temple were in spiritual attainment. This means that the spiritual degree of the people of Israel and its presence in the corporeal land of Israel matched at that time. In that state, the people merited living in the land of Israel. When the people of Israel lost their spiritual degree and yielded to egoistic desires—due to the growth of the ego—the mismatch between their spiritual level and their presence in the land of Israel prompted the ruin of the Temple and the exile.
While the past spiritual fall caused the exile of the people of Israel from their land and their dispersion among the nations, today the situation is reversed: the physical return to the land of Israel preceded the spiritual return. Nevertheless, the match between the spiritual root and the corporeal branch must be kept, and for that reason the people of Israel are obliged to attain the spiritual degree called “land of Israel.” For that objective, the wisdom of Kabbalah is a means for the people to correct themselves.
Why the Israeli Nation Must Develop Spirituality to Secure Their Homeland
When Rabbi Ashlag completed his Sulam commentary on The Zohar, he wrote, “From these words we learn that our generation is the generation of the days of the Messiah, hence we have been awarded the redemption of our Holy Land.… We have also been awarded the revelation of The Book of Zohar … but in both, we have only been awarded a gift from the Creator, but we have not received anything in our own hands.”
The physical end of the exile and the return of the people of Israel to their land is not enough. A spiritual return is required. Baal HaSulam distinguishes between what he calls “a time of giving” and “a time of receiving.” A time of giving pertains to the creation of potential existence by the upper force; and the time of receiving is the actual realization of the possibility.
Until the people are corrected, they will not feel comfortable in this land.
The uncertainty and insecurity of day-to-day existence in Israel is there to prompt its dwellers to rise to the spiritual level called “the land of Israel.” The goal of the upper force is to bring humankind to search for the reason, the root of all processes. All the pressures on the nation of Israel by other countries, and its interior social, personal, and national level crises, exist only to compel people to ask about the purpose of their existence in this world.
