{Originally posted to the Israel Rising website}
“When the Lord returned the captives of Zion, we were like people in a dream. Then was our mouth filled with laughter, and our tongue with exultation: then said they among the nations, The Lord has done great things for them. The Lord has done great things for us; so we rejoiced! Bring back our captives, O Lord, as the streams in the south. They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. Though he goes on his way weeping, bearing the store of seed, he shall come back with joy, bearing his sheaves. ” – Psalm 126
We have come home.
After 70 years since the British left the Land of Israel (which they sinisterly called Palestine) with their tails between their legs, the State of Israel has risen from the dreams and hopes of the Jewish people around the world to become a global leader in so many areas.
Against all odds and in a miraculous fashion the State of Israel has become a beacon to so many around the world. The number 70 is a transitional number. It represents the end of one era and an entry to another. After all the first exile of the Jewish people lasted 70 years exactly as prophesied. King David lived 70 years, which is seen as a paradigm for the concept of the years of kingship. 70 is also the number of root nations in the world as well as being the numerical value of Gog uMagog. The sages taught that there are 70 faces of Torah.
So What’s Next?
The Nation of Israel is meant to lead the world to a new era. We of course are not quite there yet, but the feeling that we are heading to something incredible is all around us. The challenge for Israel is that transitioning from a country at siege yet extremely successful to one which takes its success and transforms the world may result in altering Israel as we know it.
Anyone with eyes wide open can see that the world as we know it is collapsing. The paradox of new advances that are literally changing how people live to the chaos across the globe with super powers preparing to destroy each other can be overwhelming.
Despite the potential carnage, there is light and hope.
It is at this juncture that Israel is meant to lead. The broken world we live in is only broken because we have yet to fix it.
Rebbe Nachman of Breslov said the following: “If you believe that you can destroy, believe that you can”
Israel has all the ingredients to lead the world from its darkness to a state of light, yet something is holding us back, keeping us from transforming the chaotic storm winds into a new order. For 70 years the State of Israel and the Zionist movement has been rooted in classic Western nationalism. But that in its core can only take the Jewish people in Israel so far. Our job is to bring a new, rectified order to the world. One that merges the physical and spiritual together.
Achievements in technology cannot be divorced from the traditions of the Torah. These advances are part of a holistic redemptive process that sees an Israeli experience as one that blends multiple forces together. If we think of advances in technology as only a “tikkun olam” (rectification of the world) in a physical sense then we are lacking a wider perspective. Technology is a tool or vessel for the spirit or will of the Creator.
The State of Israel as an entity is a tool for a global redemption. It is at one hand the vessel which was formed to allow the reconstitution of the people of Israel in their ancient ancestral land as prophesied more than 2,500 years ago. This has happened in miraculous fashion, but the State of Israel is far more than that. It is now transitioning into the activated tool for the will of “Knesset Yisrael” the mystical concept which expresses the rectified Israeli Collective, whose mission it is to ultimately repair the broken world, which still awaits its full rectification and direction.
Rebbe Nachman teaches in Likutey Moharan that the Jewish people’s role is to repair the “supernal altar” of the nations. This means that we are to turn them away from worshipping a false notion of spiritual connection and recalibrate their yearning for a divine relationship to one which is an authentic personal relationship to the one above or better expressed, the one within. We can only do this by example.
The vessels to spread the light of the Creator have been built in the first 70 years of the State of Israel. It is now time for Israel to rise to the occasion and steer the world out of the darkness and chaos it finds itself in.