Israel: The Journey from Spirituality to Corporeality
The awakening desire for spirituality is called “the land of Israel.” The people who lived in the land of Israel before the ruin of the Second Temple were in spiritual attainment. This means that the spiritual degree of the people of Israel and its presence in the corporeal land of Israel matched at that time. In that state, the people merited living in the land of Israel. When the people of Israel lost their spiritual degree and yielded to egoistic desires—due to the growth of the ego—the mismatch between their spiritual level and their presence in the land of Israel prompted the ruin of the Temple and the exile.
While the past spiritual fall caused the exile of the people of Israel from their land and their dispersion among the nations, today the situation is reversed: the physical return to the land of Israel preceded the spiritual return. Nevertheless, the match between the spiritual root and the corporeal branch must be kept, and for that reason the people of Israel are obliged to attain the spiritual degree called “land of Israel.” For that objective, the wisdom of Kabbalah is a means for the people to correct themselves.
Why the Israeli Nation Must Develop Spirituality to Secure Their Homeland
When Rabbi Ashlag completed his Sulam commentary on The Zohar, he wrote, “From these words we learn that our generation is the generation of the days of the Messiah, hence we have been awarded the redemption of our Holy Land.… We have also been awarded the revelation of The Book of Zohar … but in both, we have only been awarded a gift from the Creator, but we have not received anything in our own hands.”
The physical end of the exile and the return of the people of Israel to their land is not enough. A spiritual return is required. Baal HaSulam distinguishes between what he calls “a time of giving” and “a time of receiving.” A time of giving pertains to the creation of potential existence by the upper force; and the time of receiving is the actual realization of the possibility.
Until the people are corrected, they will not feel comfortable in this land.
The uncertainty and insecurity of day-to-day existence in Israel is there to prompt its dwellers to rise to the spiritual level called “the land of Israel.” The goal of the upper force is to bring humankind to search for the reason, the root of all processes. All the pressures on the nation of Israel by other countries, and its interior social, personal, and national level crises, exist only to compel people to ask about the purpose of their existence in this world.
The Remedy for Anti-Semitism
Some people contend that if the entire Jewish nation were to come live in the contemporary state of Israel, the desired changes in the world would come about as a result. This is not true. Israel will become important, and people will go to live there only if we tell ourselves and the rest of the world that the country is important for everyone and that we are assuming our mission as the chosen people: to start building the spiritual center of the world there, which is what the worldexpects us to do.
We must work to attain the upper spiritual worlds everywhere on the planet, but especially in the land of Israel. Every place on earth has a different force acting on it. When a person moves from one place to another, certain forces are acting upon him that cause him to move. We cannot grasp how much we are operated like marionettes and have nothing of our own except the thought about the upper force and the desire for connection with Him. All other things in us are only operations from above.
Israel has a special force to it. If we live there, we must be in unique balance with the upper force; otherwise we will have to be expelled from the land as we were exiled before. But the four exiles have already passed, and there will not be another exile because the inner structure of the soul does not require it. Instead, torments will increase in Israel until we realize that we must ascend in the spirit to attain the spiritual land of Israel as well.
If Israel Fulfills Its Role, the World Will Join Them
After the correction of all the attributes, both Israel and the other nations of the world will come together and unite, and we will feel the Creator completely. Until we attain that situation, however, the correction lies on the shoulders of the people of Israel, the representatives of the spiritual Israel in this world. The people of Israel should correct themselves before anyone else. Thus, to the extent that we correct ourselves, we will also promote the nations of the world toward their own correction.
If everyone in Israel would face his or her inner enemies, the external enemies would disappear; the inside creates the outside. The outside depends entirely on the inside, just as the lower degree depends on the upper degree. The lower degree is created by the Upper One and receives its sustenance from it. By the same token, the behavior of the nations of the world is a consequence of our own behavior.
The Circulation of Kabbalah Will Aid the Correction of the Entire World
According to what we learn from the writings of Baal HaSulam, masses of people should participate in advancing toward the end of correction. He speaks of a process of mass- correction of souls. In any case, one’s private spiritual progress is different than that of the collective. For the individual, the correction is performed through personal ascents and descents, whereas for the collective, it is done by connecting with the leading individual. The nations of the world feel the delay in their progress; they feel dependent on Israel, but they only need Israel for the first corrections. Afterward, they will rely on themselves for their own corrections.
Today, the task of Kabbalists is to try to circulate the need for correction to the entire Israeli nation and to create a suitable method for everyone by publishing books and qualifying teachers. A lot needs to be corrected, but even a single shred of a thought creates immense positive changes and prevents terrible pains.
“How Israel Can Fulfill Its Role in the World” is based on the book, Awakening to Kabbalah: The Guiding Light of Spiritual Fulfillment by Dr. Michael Laitman.
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