The State of Israel is engaged in a very difficult war. While its young soldiers have shown incredible bravery and a spirit of towering self-sacrifice, the country is suffering from deep trauma. In the north and the south, tens of thousands of its Jewish citizens have been uprooted from their homes. Families throughout the country have suffered the inexpressibly painful loss of fathers and children. Israel’s image as a mighty unbeatable nation has been shaken. Like a boxer staggering around the ring from a series of unexpected blows, Israel must immediately adopt new strategies to make a decisive comeback and vanquish its murderous foes.
Outside of the Land of Israel assimilation and anti-Semitism are endangering world Jewry. In some places, intermarriage has reached eighty percent. Jews in England, France, and America who once believed that the persecutions of our past could never happen again are now living in fear, not wanting to face what the future might bring.
Since the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel, a growing majority in Israel are saying that a wide gamut of previous false conceptions must be changed. For example, the fantasy that we can live peacefully with the Arabs in Israel must finally be buried. Concurrently, the dementia-like notion that surrendering chunks of our Homeland is the path to co-existence with Islamic fanaticism must be interred as well. Furthermore, the delusion that Israel can be a liberal secular democracy cut off from the Revelation at Sinai and our Divine Historic Mission as God’s Chosen People must be abandoned. The political and secular military leadership of the country must be replaced with statesmen and commanders steeped in the foundations of Emunah and inspired by the eternal teachings of Torah. No more shall the lives of enemy “civilians” be given priority over the lives of Israeli soldiers.
Another counterfeit conception is the tragic belief that Jewish life in gentile lands is perfectly kosher. This falsehood must be erased. The reality must be faced. Wherever we wandered throughout the exile, in whatever alien land, after a period of tranquility and prosperity, assimilation ravished our numbers and the pogroms returned. This repeating lesson came to teach us that there is only one Jewish Homeland – not two or three or four. The exile must come to an end. In the words of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the Diaspora must be liquidated before the Diaspora liquidates the Jews.
People who understand that Divine Providence directs all of Jewish History recognize the Hand of Hashem behind the curtain of events of our times. They know that the ongoing war with Hamas and the Hezbollah, and the threat from Iran, have all come as a wake-up call to force the Israelite Nation to embark on a new phase of Israel’s Redemption – the only hope of salvation for a tottering world. Similarly, the deep thinkers of Israel know that it is the Hand of Hashem which has stirred the long-simmering pot of world anti-Semitism into a renewed boil in order to sever our ties to foreign lands and to bring us back home. Hashem is once again forcing His People to hear the Great Call of the Shofar of our Freedom. Daily outbreaks of Jew hatred have brought Diaspora Jewry to an emergency crossroad. We cannot sit passively and wait for Mashiach to rescue us from the quagmire which we ourselves created by reveling in the cursed exile too long. We have to act now.
Greater Aliyah would give Israel more manpower and more soldiers who are desperately needed to insure our military superiority amongst neighbors who live by the sword. A new wave of Aliyah would also save innumerable Jews from the persecutions which may soon fall upon them, similar to persecutions we previously suffered throughout our many failed experiments in foreign gentile lands. But Aliyah is much more than this. The Ingathering of the Exiles is the way that the Shechinah returns to Zion. It is the key to returning the Kingship of Hashem to the world as foretold by the Prophets of Israel. As the great Sages of Israel have told us, the Rambam and the Ramban, Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi, the Baal Shem Tov, the Gaon of Vilna, the Chatam Sofer, Rabbi Kook, and others, it is Aliyah and the resettlement of Israel which usher in the era of Mashiach and not the other way around. As we daily repeat in our prayers, it is the ingathering of Jews from the Diaspora which returns the Divine Presence to Zion and which leads to the return of prophecy, and to the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash, may it be soon.
The question remains: How can we work alongside Hashem to promote a new wave of mass immigration to Israel? In Part Two of this essay, we will attempt to analyze the crisis of Aliyah from the West and suggest some necessary actions that need to be adopted now.
