Rabbi Eli Horovitz
There are nations that celebrate their independence with feasts and fireworks, we also celebrate our independence with joy, but for us, Independence Day is connected with the Day of Remembrance for the fallen of the IDF and when the taste of Holocaust Day has not yet worn off.
It's not exactly a holocaust for resurrection, but they come as one - the holocaust is the end of exile! Because what is exile if not the actual destruction of our public form, in spirit and soul?!
Independence Day and the days preceding it, Holocaust Day and Remembrance Day, the virtue of these days is to break free from the magic circle of private accounts. Remember, call, swallow and flow. Silence and tears. And year after year the tears flow more naturally.
While I was standing in the Cave of the Patriarchs, at the ceremony of the end of Memorial Day and the beginning of Independence Day, where our story as a nation began, at a very difficult moment that is difficult to describe, a moment when we remember those who gave their lives and those who were murdered because of being Jewish - in that ceremony I thought about the couple of our young neighbors who were murdered by terrorists shooting at They drove, I thought of my friend who was murdered along with his son... we remember the many thousands of those who were murdered, and at the same time the flag is raised on the Cave of the Patriarchs and we feel that we are a free people in our country after 2,000 years of exile.
In that sharp moment of transition, I thought about the country's birthday. What is the joy about? What is the value? What is the meaning of the State of Israel?
As in the private account that a person makes on his birthday, an account of his life and whether he used the potential that the Holy One, blessed be He, gave him. An account that a person finds out for himself, who am I? What do I belong to? Where am I going?, so is a country's birthday, it is a time of public soul-searching for the people of Israel.
Remembrance Day and Independence Day is "Erichta Day". There is no H. Bayer without D. Bayer. The sanctity of Independence Day rises beyond words thanks to the spirit of devotion and closeness to God that manifests itself in the devotion of the soul and the public sacrifice that we celebrate on Memorial Day to remember the part of us that has returned to its origin. By that devotion the value of our public life becomes clear to us, that everything belongs to supreme holiness. This is a great foundation.
We get to live in a period of division and polarization in the nation. And it is good for us and sweet for us to feel the shocks passing over the nation. There are no two nations.
We are privileged to receive the holiness of Independence Day in Hebron, the cradle of our nation and the cradle of our kingdom. We get to accept the sanctity of the holiday in the middle of the intifada - a national abdication of the Arabs of the region. We get to live in a period of division and polarization in the nation. The intifada is not pleasant, the polarization and division are even less pleasant, and it is good and sweet for us to feel the shocks passing over the nation, not like a leaf blowing in the wind. We will see the one nation tormented within itself. There are no two nations.
Independence Day is an eternal holiness that belongs to our inner selves, to the name of the Messiah who preceded the world. The joy and honor on Independence Day is very great, but also very serious and important. What does it mean to be an independent nation of Israel that after generations of dispersion in exile, we gather for the third and last time to our place?!
Zionism is not a modern phenomenon equivalent to ordinary nationalism, there is a special Israeli heroism and devotion of the pioneers of the settlement that is based on something deeply internal.
The joy is the joy of a mitzvah because we were commanded to inherit the land and not to leave it. Here in the land of the greed of ancestors, all dreams will come true in the return of God, the return of Zion we were like dreamers. Because the dream that emerges from the depth of the Holy, from the depth of the Torah - is reality. The longing in exile for holiness is the beginning of Zionism. The students of the Gra. The revival movement is the transformation of spiritual visions into reality. This is a spiritual revolution. It is first of all the understanding that redemption is the way of nature, and from this the knowledge of national unity is renewed, the bond of a people in its country, and then the boundaries of statehood become clear.
What motivated Herzl was the sight of suffering, he gave his eyes and heart to the plight of his brothers. The humiliated national and human honor, the moral degradation, the religious distress (although he did not care about religion himself) set his wheels in motion.
We stood up and became a nation - this is a simple and natural joy, in which the whole nation shares, but the holiness of the joy belongs to the recognition of what it means to be a nation.
Independence Day has many meanings - religious, national meaning, Gush Etzion, Hadera pioneers. There is a meaning of a safe haven, a place to raise a family freely, etc., etc. As the number of Jews, so the number of meanings for this day. I do not intend to expand on the heroic stories of the defenders of Gush Etzion and Tel Hai, nor on the devotion of the swamp drainers nor on the idealists who founded Petach Tikva, who made a blooming garden out of a place that the English conference decided that nothing could be grown there. In order to understand the meaning of "independence" in a broad sense, one must first define what "independence" is?!
Independence is liberation, freedom from foreign influences, physical and cultural enslavement, to be ourselves and reveal the self-identity of our reality. Today it is in fashion that everyone is looking for their own identity. It is right and honest that a person should know who he is, but it is not so simple. Both in the search for the identity of the individual and in understanding the identity of a nation, it is necessary to recognize from beginning to end, and this is of great importance on this day when we celebrate our independence.
In the nation of Israel, the unique identity of each and every person is closely related to the identity of the nation, and therefore the only way for a Jewish person to discover himself is through studying our general reality as a people, but in order to do this, one must study the entire history of Israel and the entire Torah.
Independence Day is a day that marks the unity of the people in their internal agreement. It would not be useful to announce the establishment of the state, if there is no weapon, but when there is the internal agreement and the strength of spirit expressed through the government, this is the birth of the state and this is the fulfillment of the commandment and this is the foundation of redemption. The State of Israel is the beginning of the growth of our salvation. It is as great a happiness as certain and absolute as the time of our freedom.
On Passover the nation was born and on Independence Day the state was born
The sanctity of the time of our independence, it is the same thing with the time of our freedom, there is a redeemer of Israel and there is a redeemer of Israel. On Passover the nation was born and on Independence Day the state was born. When Passover comes, the dam is broken and a great light shines upon us and sanctifies us with the holiness of the ever-present freedom. No less than that is the sanctity of the time of Independence Day, even though it is a sanctity that was discovered not long ago, and it doesn't matter that the sanctity of Passover is from Dauriata and the sanctity of Independence Day is from Durban. From the time of our freedom to the time of our independence and to the freedom of the board A of the time of the giving of our Torah, of freedom, with special centers from Dauraita and Darbanan.
Israel sanctifies the times and reveals the sparkling lights of eternity. Different notes play on the strings of our souls, different accents, first redemption and last redemption, the formulation of a ring of haste and kamaa kamaa, the equal and the different, and above all the sequence in everything, like different parts of a symphony. But just as there is no meaning to the time of our liberation without engraving on the tablets, so Independence Day has no meaning without Jerusalem Day. without the discovery of the soul.
All the complications in the transition between D and H Bayer - because they are not connected to KH Bayer.
Holiness is a divine being that preceded both the exodus from Egypt and the Lord in Air 588. Holiness is permanent and has existed since eternity and there is a certain moment in history that this holiness emerges and rises, and from that moment, the power of Israel's court and Torah to sanctify them.
The sanctity of Independence Day continues from the same heavenly scent of the sanctity of Passover freedom
Every year we get to experience this holiness. The sanctity of Independence Day is drawn from the same heavenly scent of the sanctity of Passover freedom, although there are great differences. Precisely what is missing in Pesach, is what is increasingly being completed on Independence Day. This is one redemption that does not stop, it goes from the hasty redemption of the Exodus, the experimental one, which contradicts nature, where the whole world of nature and real life stands still, surrendering before the great genius of God, and to the last station, which is the slow natural redemption, little by little, step by step , the redemption that settles within human nature, nations and the world.
The world of miracles does not destroy nature, but works within the natural systems to uplift them until they are also partners in the processes of redemption. The purpose of the exodus from Egypt is "And I brought you" - "And you shall inherit the land and dwell in it because I have given you the land to inherit it." The truth is that these words are also implied in our first redemption, on the seventh day of Passover, which is a Sabbath day without any special and explicit instruction, but from the Oral Torah we learn that the seventh day of Passover is the day of the splitting of the Red Sea.
Those who are not busy with these issues all year long come to Independence Day and this day means nothing to them. What is Independence Day? A very strange thing, the day we declared a secular country, a complicated country.
I was once in a bookstore and there was an American weekly "Newsweek", the woman who was in front of me in line said to the seller "It's not from this week, it's from a few weeks ago". The seller replied that they are still selling the old weekly because it is in special demand. The demand was because the newspaper was dedicated to the obituary of the State of Israel. I took the newspaper to see, there was a detailed description of how all the achievements of the Israeli state are collapsing. A survey among Americans was also published there which shows that only 28% believe that Israel will still exist in fifty years.
Those who do are engaged in clarifying the meaning of Independence Day all year long, so when we reach Independence Day, according to the depth of the study we have learned, we reach another height from which we are able to direct and decipher, each according to his level, the spirit of independence, as the circumstances of nature activate. As Gaula Kama Kama Kama activates. To see how this spirit makes its way within the people as well. According to this, a person will reach the conventions that this is his truth, and according to this, he will continue to the destination.
This study and clarification gives a lot of strength and power. Wars have a reason. To understand that the good of war is the exposure of the Holy Light, is a very difficult thing. It is possible to evoke the heroism of war and the enormity of the devotion of the soul in many styles, but to understand that the inner turmoil of war is to give room for the illumination of the divine content - this belongs to the holiness of God in general, and in a special way to this year, which is a year of actual war.
The founding fathers of Zionism, they had a vigorous protest against the holiness of the diaspora, they imagined that a new Israeli Jewish type should be created. Strong, hero. They saw in their souls such a type in imitation of the types they saw in their foreign environment. They squinted at the foreign world. It is a terrible and terrible forgery, but as the forgery and the lie in it reached bankruptcy and the weakness of this external heroism was revealed, then there is a tendency to return to the style before the national revival, Torah without nationalism. According to these, the first days in exile were better than the situation today. There was a father's house there, there were families, there was a continuation of the Torah and the Judaism of his son was evident.
To stand together with all of Israel in the sorrow and pain of anguish and bereavement, this is the main joy of life - to share in the distress of one's brother
Today there is such a trend to abolish nationalism. You can turn on the radio and find many stations like "The Voice of Truth" etc. A person who is only engaged in Torah study without being connected to nationality. Not a nation, not independence, not a political struggle, not the mitzvot of resettlement of the Land of Israel. Focusing on the Torah class building, there is nothing else in their world. Of course, not the army either. If only they would devote an hour a day to studying nationalism, that is, studying the faith and virtue of Israel and the Land of Israel, then when great things happen to the people of Israel, such a person would feel a sense of great exaltation. Thank God that it is good. And when there is suffering, I don't mean an attack, in an attack it is possible that every person will feel that the heart is drinking blood, fine... But someone whose whole world is only the Torah without nationalism will not feel connected when the nation is humiliated.
I once visited a semi-Orthodox yeshiva and they were just sitting there discussing, what is the deal with the Memorial Day siren? To get up at the siren or not to get up? I was an "outsider" there and listened. It's serious, it's two minutes of canceling the Torah. In the end, they decided there that they would stand, but not stop studying. will study quietly. Then one of them approached me and asked my opinion. I replied: "I feel so sorry for you, you don't know what pleasure you are missing out on!" This pleasure to stand together with all of Israel. The pleasure of the sorrow, of the pain, of the agony that cannot be learned and it is impossible not to be in the pain and bereavement, and in the dedication of the soul and the fierceness of the soul, this is the essence of life, this is the pleasure of life - to share one's brother's distress.'
A person who does not study nationalism, a person for whom the State of Israel does not raise or lower, a person for whom God in the Air is a normal day on which one can say supplication and certainly not say Hallel, such a person... it is not easy. It's a fact that it's more difficult to be knowledgeable about Shas and Poskim and the entire Torah. I think there is actually a lawsuit for a new person. It is a test of generations, not of a year or of one generation, but it is significant for each and every one of us.
The new type is a person who lives a full life uniformity, with the two currents rising in his midst. In other words, complete devotion to the Torah and knowledge of the Torah and fulfillment of the Torah does not contradict going into battle. It is consistent with all attachment, worry, expectation and life.
Sometimes you have to go to battle and sometimes you have to take a book
Psalms and pour out the heart on the soul of Israel. The two things are not contradictory.
In the last seven days I met with several important scholars and people of Torah with whom I studied in the past and it was very interesting this difficulty, that on the one hand there is a world of holy Torah, and on the other hand there is a world of holy of holies of military action. This harmony, the ability to walk in the midst of the very difficult reality and be in the midst of the holiness of the Torah and be full of values in the light.
And in the content of divine morality, it requires a new type, it is not a simple thing. It's happening.
The sanctity of Independence Day reveals this claim in our generation, which will be fulfilled to the extent that we internalize our national Torah issues.
