From the power of pleasure, willpower is born; that resolute power without which nothing could ever be achieved. This is not just a type of faith that hovers above the limitations of time, nor is it just delighting in the promised picture of the future, but is an active drive, to get up and do something, in the knowledge that “nothing stands in the way of willpower.” With willpower one can overcome obstacles using strategies that descend to the finest details on the way to a Jewish state without forgetting the ultimate goal.
Torah Authority – Wisdom
Once the foundations of faith have been laid, we reach the level of revealed consciousness. The first of the conscious powers of the human soul is in the sefirah of chochmah (wisdom), “The beginning is wisdom.” Wisdom is not yet intellectual perception itself, but like an initial spark; an undeniable experience of seeing the light of truth.
In the context of rectifying the state, wisdom means recognizing that the Torah’s authority is above all other authority because the Torah is a “Torah of truth,” and there is only one truth. Obviously, the Torah itself grants broad authority to social norms and to the laws of the country, as the sages teach us, “The law of kingdom is law.” However, this includes the consideration of our “moral compass” that indicates a hierarchy in which Torah law stands above manmade laws. This comes to the fore in particular in the law that states that whenever there is a contradiction between the mitzvot of the Torah and the king’s decree (even a Jewish king who was anointed by a prophet), the Torah’s law takes preference.
It might seem that we can give up on this stage prima facie, because, unfortunately, there are many Jewish people today who do not see the Torah as the ultimate source of authority. However, the greatest rule of this rectification process is that “nothing is ever lost.” Just as we believe in the Torah, so too we believe in the Jewish People as a whole and we trust that sooner or later the teshuvah process will escalate until the grand majority of the nation will lovingly accept the Torah’s authority. In order to do so, the current threatening representation of “a state run by Torah law” must be refuted, showing instead how “the State of Torah” is the most beautiful and suitable thing for us as a people.
In the first stages, it will be necessary for those Jews who recognize the Torah, at least, to express this recognition by setting a correct order of priorities in which the Torah takes the place as the ultimate and definitive authority.
The Consciousness of Wholeness – Understanding
In the human psyche, the sefirah of binah (understanding) is the stage at which the light of wisdom is integrated and becomes tangible as an integral, well-defined intellectual perception. In the current context, we will place the consciousness of wholeness at this stage of recognition – the wholeness of the Torah, the wholeness of the people and the wholeness of the land.
The wholeness of the Torah means that the Torah must be related to as a composite entity in which each facet contains holiness, yet only when the entire Torah is perceived as one all-inclusive unit can it be correctly illuminated. When “God’s Torah is complete, it revives the soul.”
The wholeness of the Jewish People comes to the fore in the statement that “All Jews are responsible for one another,” and every Jew has an integral part of the complete picture. This is also the root of the correct attitude towards conversion, as we shine our approval to those righteous converts who join the Jewish People, while taking care not to accept false conversions, which accelerates the dangerous process of inter-marriage that jeopardizes the wholeness of the nation.
