Published: 18 April 2018
Last updated: 4 March 2024
Every time I say Birkat Hamazon, the Grace after Meals, and every Shabbat when the Torah scroll is out, I say the blessing on the State of Israel, Reishit Tzmichat Geulateinu – the beginning of the flowering of our redemption.
These words are from Rav Avraham Itzhak Kook, the first Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi in pre-1948 Palestine who lived there from 1904 to 1935. Though he did not live to see the creation of the state, he was convinced that the return of the Jewish people to its land was a cornerstone of the Divine plan.
I am not sure that even Rav Kook would have imagined that less than 100 years from his death, nearly half the Jewish people would live in its ancestral land. Rav Kook exemplified the belief that the return to the Land was both an act of personal transformation as well as a collective statement. His ideas were rooted in Jewish mysticism but they also appealed to many secular Zionists.
For Rav Kook, there was another level too. He believed that once the Jewish people were restored to its Land, there would be implications for the entire world. It would herald the era when the prophets’ vision of global peace could be fulfilled. Just two years before he died, Rav Kook saw the rise of Nazism. He warned his followers that Hitler was a form of Amalek and needed to be utterly obliterated. However, he did not predict that the Nazis would wipe out one third of our people.
Around eight years ago, after a lifetime of preparation, Aharon, my husband, and I returned to Israel for the final time. He had been born here. We had spent two years of our married life here and made dozens of visits. Now it was time to settle. Three of our four children were already living here (the fourth followed).
I had a wonderful life in Australia but something was missing. I am fifth-generation Australian but I had never felt fully Australian. Australia was not threatening or even unwelcoming. It is a wonderfully accepting society. The problem was not external. It was simply that something in my very being knew that this was not the place with which I reverberated. The principles that Rav Kook had expounded had a direct impact on me. It hit me particularly when listening to members of the indigenous population, who describe how they belong to their tribal lands. I realised that I do not belong to Australia.
I wanted to live where my people were the majority, where we set the calendar around Shabbat, festivals and fast days. I was driven to join my people in creating our own identity and our own destiny. I wanted to live in the miracle of the revival of Hebrew. In less than one generation, the Jewish people revived the Hebrew language. Israelis express themselves in our unique language, one that sprung from this Land. And more than eight million Israelis use it every day.
The Jewish people were once the homeless, wandering. They had to respond to the host societies in which they lived. Jews as a collective could not determine their history. That was a time when belonging to the Jewish people meant being devoid of power. We waited for Divine intervention to relieve us of our powerlessness.
Change was inevitable. Through Zionism, we rejected the idea that the exile was G-d’s will. We realised that exile had run its course. We stopped passively waiting for redemption and took control of our destiny. Our people began to move and to build and transform. They transformed themselves from artisans and academics to builders and farmers. They transformed the Land and made it bloom. And as they transformed the Land, they transformed themselves further. And after the proclamation of the state, the achievements continued, with the ingathering of the Jewish people from all over the world. With each wave of immigrants came new problems and often setbacks to the nation-building effort.
The transformation is far from complete. Israel has not become the ideal society. Indeed, the idealism seems to have evaporated. Our achievements brought with them new challenges and we have not yet risen to them. The victory of the Six-Day War eventually accentuated the underlying unresolved problems: how to balance Jewish ideals with the realities of a nation-state, how to maintain idealism and vision in a complex reality of a 100-year long regional conflict.
Our biggest problem is the lack of leadership. There are no visionaries who inspire with their selfless devotion to building an ideal society. There are no leaders within the religious community who articulate what a transformed Judaism looks like or who focus on how Israel can fulfil the prophetic vision. Idealists and visionaries still contribute to Israel’s intellectual life but have a minimal impact on the way the country is governed. Quality leadership is required.
Israelis are still “getting used” to being a majority in their own country. Many still carry with them the scars of generations of minority life. We have not worked out what it means to be a “Jewish” state. We have not worked out how to relate to “the strangers who are within our gates”. We certainly have a long way to go before we are “a light unto the nations”.
Despite its problematic internal leadership, Israel is an inspiration to the Jewish world. The fruits of Jewish scholarship nurture Jewish learning around the world. There is no yeshivah anywhere that can ignore the wisdom of contemporary Israeli scholarship. Serious women’s learning has been spearheaded by institutions and innovations in Israel. Israeli young leaders spend time in Jewish schools around the world, providing inspiration and scholarship. Whereas in the early years, Israel was reliant on donations from the Diaspora for support, now Israeli funds support Jewish communities in distress (and provide aid to non-Jewish victims of disasters as well).
This does not mean that the Diaspora has become dependent on Israel, Far from it. The relationship is symbiotic. Jews everywhere have a stake in this country and Israel benefits from this. Important social welfare and educational projects are still funded by donations from affluent Jewish communities, including Australia. Moreover, Diaspora Jewry can be the voice of wisdom, looking from outside and providing perspective.
The Diaspora can and should prick our shared Jewish conscience, asking pertinent questions about how Israel is living up to her role as a Jewish State. Rav Kook believed that Jewish spirituality only truly came alive in the Land but the Jewish intellect had flourished in the Diaspora and that intellect needs to be brought to bear on decisions made here that affect the entire Jewish world. We need to share our achievements and our struggles.
