HaRav Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook, the only son of Israel's first Chief Rabbi, Rabbi Avraham HaKohen Kook, learned Torah for 50 years and edited his father’s prolific writings before assuming the spiritual leadership of Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem for the next three decades of his life. In addition to being a giant of Torah, he was the spiritual father of the Gush Emunim settlement movement, inspiring his students to build new communities throughout Judea, Samaria, the Sinai, Gaza, and the Golan. Once he told his students: “Our Sages inform us that the air in Eretz Yisrael causes wisdom, and the first thing to know in our generation is that every Jew belongs in Eretz Yisrael.”
Why is it that Jews who make Aliyah are certain that Israel is the place where Hashem wants the Jewish People to live while Jews in the Diaspora lack this clear understanding? The answer is very profound and only Jews who have been blessed with a deep connection to the Land of Israel can understand it. Because of this it is almost impossible to explain to a Diaspora Jew why he belongs in Israel. In simple language, he or she just doesn’t get it. As Rabbi Kook explains in the very first chapter of his book “Orot,” a Jew’s connection to Eretz Yisrael is not a simply rational matter, but is rather one of the inner secrets of Torah which is the exclusive realm of “the deep thinkers of Israel” who have reached the most transcendental levels of Divine knowledge and Divine Inspiration.
How are we to comprehend this mystical matter? Obviously, not every oleh in Beit Shemesh or Ranaana is a kabbalist versed in the secrets of Torah. But as Rabbi Kook explains in a subsequent chapter of his book, the detailed study of the esoteric realms of the Torah is not the only path to Divine Inspiration. Someone was feels a deep attachment to the Land of Israel, and who yearns to live only there, opens his being to the channels of Divine Wisdom where this certainty of knowledge is found, until he or she feels that Hashem has reached out to them with a personal command of “Lech lecha!”
The yearning for Eretz Yisrael, the attachment to the Land and the closeness to Hashem which comes with it contains ever-expanding levels. Every time a Jew visits the grocery store in Jerusalem or Tel Aviv, every morning when a parent brings a child to school, every seed a farmer plants, every house a person builds or buys, and each time a Jewish soldier in Israel puts on a uniform in defense of the Holy Land and its children, he or she absorbs a greater attachment to the inner recesses of cleaving to Hashem, whether the person is aware of the connection or not.
Kook writes that the Hebrew letters in his soul expand and expand making the person larger than life in his or her attachment to Torah. He states that the Jew who has the greatest love for the Land of Israel and who strives the most in its settlement is closest to perfection and the first to be blessed in the world to come.
Since the vitalness of Eretz Yisrael to Jewish life and a true connection to Torah is so cryptic, how then can we explain the importance of Aliyah to those of our brothers and sisters who remain attached to foreign gentile lands where a living attachment to Hashem is blocked by the impure spiritual barriers reigning there?
Firstly, great patience is needed. Little by little, like the drops of water which Rabbi Akiva realized were piercing a boulder, we can teach them of the wonders of Eretz Yisrael and the blessings of living here. As experience attests, this is a slow and tedious process. Some Diaspora Jews are so enveloped in the darkness of the material world they inhabit, including the Orthodox Jews among them, that efforts to enlighten them often bring forth a response of denial or even resentment on their part. They are not to blame. They simply can’t see the truth.
As Rabbi Kook writes, in their connection to foreign lands and foreign nationalities, and in their preoccupation with only the surface level of Torah, their connection to Hashem and to the most exquisite treasures of Divine Attachment have been severed. But the spark of love in their souls for the Land of Israel, a part of our genetic inheritance from our holy forefathers, can always be lit, sometimes in the most magical of ways, through our own deepening connection to our Homeland. As Rabbi Kook teaches, when our own love and yearning for Eretz Yisrael expands and expands, the yearning for the Land which Hashem gazes upon from the beginning of the year to the end increases in the heart of every Jew, no matter where he resides. In this way, even Jews sunbathing on the shores of South Florida and Australia can be suddenly struck with an inexplicable yearning for the Promised Land that will one day set them homeward bound – may it be soon, Amen.