Maybe I am mistaken, but I have the impression that the secular media in Israel is more interested in celebrities who become Breslov Hasidim, or Chabadnikim, or Haredim like HaRav Uri Zohar, and less interested in writing about baale tshuva who embrace the world of Religious Zionism. Maybe this stems from the general media’s dislike of the settlement movement and of old-fashioned Zionism. Or perhaps, celebrities who become baale tshuva are more attracted to the Haredi or Hasidic worlds for reasons we will attempt to explore. As far as the general population is concerned, I would venture to guess that each year the same number of baale tshuva end up in Machon Meir, the yeshiva for baale tshuva associated with the teachings of HaRav Kook, as they do in Haredi or Hasidic yeshivot, but you don’t hear about these spirited Zionist idealists in the media.
Before discussing this phenomenon, let me first explain in a very abridged fashion how a totally secular screenwriter in Hollywood like me ended up in the beit midrash of Rabbi Kook.
During my years in Hollywood, living the fast life in LA, I always felt that something was missing. The feeling was a vague inner anxiety that no amount of success or money or marijuana could quench. One day, on the beach in Santa Monica, a conversation with a friend turned spiritual, and he asked me why I didn’t know anything about Judaism. It was true. After my very reform bar mitzvah, I had no connection to Judaism whatsoever. Instead of the bar-mitzvah celebration being a beginning, for me it was the end. When I left the beach that day, I drove to a Jewish neighborhood in West Hollywood and entered a Jewish bookstore run by Chabad. I purchased a Bible in English, a book about Judaism for beginners, a book called “Advice” by Rebbe Nachman, which sounded interesting, and a book that the salesman recommended, a layman’s commentary on the “Tanya.” With my mini-library, I drove back to the beach and started reading.
I began with the Torah. “In the beginning, G-d created the heavens and the earth.” That was interesting, I thought. There was a G-d, and I hadn’t paid any attention to him for years. Then G-d tells Abraham to go to the Land of Israel. G-d didn’t tell him to keep Shabbat. G-d didn’t tell him to keep kosher and put on tefillin. The very first thing that G-d told to the father of the Jewish People was to go to Israel.
I kept reading the Torah as if it were an exciting screenplay. G-d tells Moshe at their very first meeting to take the enslaved Jewish People out of bondage in Egypt and bring them to the Land of Israel. Then over and over again, G-d tells Moshe that He is giving the Jews the Torah so that they can live in peace and prosperity in the Land of Israel. But when I looked around Los Angeles, the place was loaded with Jews. Religious Jews too. What were they doing in California, I wondered? To me, from a straightforward reading of the Torah, G-d wanted the Jewish People to live in Israel.
To make the story short, one night I had a dream – very much like the dream in the beginning of “The Kuzari.” I dreamed of a gigantic tefillin and heard a thundering voice from Heaven, “THIS IS WHAT YOU NEED – TO ATTACH YOURSELF TO G-D!” I was startled. The voice was so real. So that morning, I drove to a Chabad House in Santa Monica and asked the Rabbi if I could put on tefillin. Of course, he was overjoyed. One of the questions I asked him was why didn’t all of the Jews, at least those who believed in the Torah, live in Israel rather than California or New York. He told me that one day in the future, the Jewish People would live there, but the time hadn’t come. That was the task of Mashiach, he said, not ours.
I continued reading the Torah and became more and more convinced that G-d wanted the Children of Israel to live in the Land of Israel and no where else. Sinai was a tremendous event, but it was only a station along the way. The destination for the Jewish Nation was to live a life of Torah in Israel. Page after page, I got the same message. It seemed perfectly clear to me. The entire Tanach was about establishing the Jewish Nation in Israel. Although the book I had bought about the basics of Judaism didn’t mention the Land Of Israel at all, Rebbe Nachman’s book, “Advice” had a chapter filled with praise for the Land of Israel. He taught, “To be a true member of the Jewish People is to always move to higher and higher levels. To do this is impossible except through the holiness of the Land of Israel… Pray to G-d to give you desire and yearning for the Land of Israel. Then you will succeed in reaching there.”
So I prayed and I prayed. One night, I ask G-d to give me a sign – should I go to the Land of Israel or not? The next morning, there was a big travel brochure in my mailbox. On the cover was a photograph of the Kotel and the words, “Jerusalem, My chosen.” I bought an airplane ticket that day.
In Israel, I traveled all around the country looking for G-d. Enchanted by the Biblical hillsides and valleys, I fell in love with the Land and knew that, yes indeed, this was the one and only place for a Jew. Each time I returned to Jerusalem from my travels, a Rabbi at the Kotel would try to convince me to attend a class or two at some yeshiva. Each time, I politely refused. Who wanted to go to a yeshiva? I was looking for G-d! Finally, the fourth time he approached me, after two months in the country, I agreed to visit a yeshiva for a class and a meal. It was a Haredi yeshiva for American students, all of them dressed in dark suits and black hats. Having been raised on Hollywood movies, the place looked like a detective film starring Humphrey Bogart and Peter Lurie. Or Poland in 1930. These men in black certainly didn’t look indigenous to the Land of the Bible, the Land where Joshua and King David had roamed. The class I attended was interesting, and the guys were very friendly, but when I asked them at lunch about the State of Israel, their smiles turned sour and they tried to convince me that the Medina was trafe. I had just heard in the class that G-d orchestrates everything in life – even directing the path of a leaf as it falls to the ground. But in their worldview, the gigantic endeavor of gathering Jews from the four corners of the world and rebuilding the Jewish Nation in Israel – that was the doing of Satan, not G-d. That didn’t make any sense to me, so I said goodbye and never returned.
On that first visit to Israel, I never encountered the world of Rabbi Kook. On Purim evening, the night that HaRav Tzvi Yehuda Kook passed away, I was at a disco party at Hebrew U. Every time I would visit the Kotel, I always passed a tent in the plaza, but I had no idea it was a Gush Emunim protest against the withdrawal from Yamit. I knew Israel was the place I had to live, but I didn’t know where to begin. I didn’t know Hebrew, nor where to find work as a screenwriter, and I had a teaching position at the New York University Film School waiting for me in New York. So I returned to America.
When I arrived in Manhattan, I crashed. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. There was no kedusha in the air. There was no kedusha anywhere. I felt like the outer-space creature ET, stranded on the planet Earth. After two weeks of spiritual suffocation trying to recover the high I had experienced in Israel, I decided to take a train ride to Brooklyn, to the Chabad neighborhood in Crown Heights. But there was no kedusha there either. If I had been holding a Geiger counter that measured kedusha, the needle would have remained fixed on zero. The black neighborhood bordering the train station gave way to a neighborhood filled with Hasidim, but it was the same New York air. True, the feeling changed when I entered a small beit midrash to daven mincha and got my first glimpse of the Rebbe. Kedusha shone from his face like a laser. But when he spoke, he spoke in Yiddush, and I felt like I was back in Poland again. I visited the neighborhood a few times after that, sat in on some “Tanya” classes in English, went to a fabringen with several thousand avid Hasidim, but I felt out of place, like I had wandered onto the set of someone else’s movie. With all due respect to Crown Heights, it is a long long way from being the Holy Land.
Then the first Lebanon War broke out. I was learning in a Hebrew ulpan in the Jewish Agency building in Manhattan, when two shlichim from the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva walked into the classroom looking for volunteers to help out in Israel – Meir Indor and HaRav Yehuda Hazani, of blessed memory. They had set up their emergency volunteer headquarters in the offices of the “Jewish Press” newspaper in Brooklyn. When I arrived the following day to sign up, no one was in the office, so I began to answer the ringing telephones. HaRav Hazani and Indor showed up in time for the evening news. The TV was bolted high on the wall, so the full-bearded Rabbi from Israel had to climb up on a chair to switch it on. When Israeli jets bombed the city of Beirut, he jumped up and down on the chair, cheering in triumph. “That’s the Rabbi for me!” I thought, finally glad to have discovered my mentor. He was everything that I had been searching for – a profound Torah Scholar with a passionate love for Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael, Medinat Yisrael, and Hashem, all in one. Partnered with the always unpredictable, always on-the-move Indor, the pair were like Batman and Robin on a mission to whisk America Jews off to Israel to give them a taste of what Yiddishkeit was really about.
When the time came for the first planeload of volunteers to fly to Israel, HaRav Hazani asked me to stay in New York and head the volunteer program while he and Indor returned to Israel to organize things on the ground for the volunteers. Disappointed, I did what the Rabbi asked. Two years later, when I arrived on Aliyah, the Hazani Family welcomed me into their home. HaRav Yehuda took me to Machon Meir and ordered me to sit and learn. He set me up with a hevruta, Rabbi David Samson, and, with the passing of time, we wrote four books in English on the teachings of Rabbi Kook.
Which brings us back to our original question. Judging from the general media in Israel, celebrities who become baale tshuva, to one degree or another, seem to be more attracted to Breslov or Chabad, or the Ultra-Orthodox – as opposed to Religious Zionism. Certainly, every group that holds aloft the flag of Torah and the reverence of Hashem is to be praised. We can learn from every Torah way. Rabbi Kook teaches that people have different types of souls. Some people have Breslov souls, while others have Chabad souls, Haredi souls, or the national, Clalli souls which characterize the followers of Religious Zionism. Celebrities often have egotistical natures, and this may draw them to sects which highlight the private, individual worship of Hashem. For some, the costume-like attire of Ultra-Orthodox Judaism may also be a factor which attracts them. In their eyes, the shteitl-like worlds of Hasidic and Haredi Jewry, with their once-upon-a-time look, may seem more like authentic Judaism to them, even though the long black frocks and streimels are a relatively recent invention of the past few hundred years. In contrast, the more open, not as clearly defined world of Religious Zionism, with its overlapping of borders between the religious and secular worlds, coupled with the temptations and challenges which this mixture entails, may seem like a lightweight brand of Judaism to them. Of course, we don’t know the value of individual mitzvot. Who is the true Hasid – a settler with a small knitted kippah who drives home after work to Elon Moreh along dangerous roads bordering Arab villages and watches the evening news on TV before phoning his sons in the army? Or a Haredi Jew who studies day and night in a Mea Shaarim yeshiva and maintains that Hashem will protect us, not Tzahal? And while some people claim that that the Dati Leumi community is second-class Jewry, many Religious Zionists are as knowledgeable in Torah, and as scrupulous in the practice of mitzvot, as the most Haredi of Jews, and are also actively involved in the rebuilding of the Nation and Land of Israel. Rabbi Kook taught that a person who is more involved in the mitzvah of settling the Land of Israel is closer to perfection and first in blessing in the World to Come. But Chabad, Breslov, and Haredi schools have other opinions. Of course, no one has a monopoly on the truth. As Rabbi Kook taught, truth is all of the viewpoints taken together.
Therefore, I can only speak for myself. When I see the famous photograph of 4000 Chabad shlichim from all over the world gathering annually in Brooklyn in front of Lubavitch World Headquarters at 770 Eastern Parkway, I sigh with heavy remorse. For Chabad, the center of world Jewry is Brooklyn. How much more powerful a picture it would be if all the shlichim were to assemble in Jerusalem! What a powerful message of Aliyah it would broadcast to all the Jewish world. What an example to emulate! As the Prophet declares, “For the Torah shall go forth from Zion, and the word of Hashem from Jerusalem.” Not from Brooklyn. And not from Uman as well.
When I first read the Torah on a beach in California, I didn’t see any mention of the Monsey or South Florida. All of the Prophets envision the rebirth of the Nation in Israel. The Exile is a curse that is destined to end. Ever since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Diaspora isn’t needed anymore. Today, Diaspora Jewry is irrelevant to Jewish Destiny. Both the Torah and the Prophets of Israel teach that the greatest sanctification of the Name of G-d is when the Jewish People live as an independent Nation in the Land which Hashem promised to our Forefathers. As the Prophet, Ezekiel, states: “And I will sanctify My great Name which was profaned amidst the nations, which you have profaned in the midst of them. And the nations shall know that I am the L-rd, when I shall be sanctified in you before their eyes. For I will take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all the countries, and I will bring you into your own Land” (Ezekiel, 36:23-24).
Is the Redemption complete? Certainly not. Are there shortcomings with the State of Israel. Indeed yes. But because there are things which still need correction, we mustn’t throw out the baby with the dirty bath water. Patience is needed. First the physical vessel is created and then the spiritual is added to it as a crown. My advice to baale tshuva? Read the Torah in a simple, straightforward manner and you will discover that the purpose and goal of Am Yisrael is to sanctify the Name of G-d in the world and to establish His Kingdom on earth by building a holy Torah Nation in the Land of Israel. Medinat Yisrael is the vessel which Hashem has created to bring this great sanctification about. Some people insist that the restoration of the Jewish People in Israel is the task of Mashiach, not ours. But Hashem isn’t waiting for Mashiach. He has already started the work. He has already brought myriads of Jews home to Israel. In a remarkable short time, He has raised the Jewish People up from the graveyards of Europe and rebuilt the State of Israel into one of the most powerful and developed nations in the world. Plus, there is more Torah learning in Israel than in any other place on the globe. Hashem isn’t standing on the sidelines waiting for the Redemption to come. Why should we?
That’s why I chose Religious Zionism – to be a part of this miraculous process of Divine Redemption which is unfolding in our time, before our very eyes, every day, all around us. To me, that’s what the Torah is all about.
