Our generation needs repentance out of love.
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, in relating to the type of repentance needed in our age, the age of the ingathering of the exiles and the national rebirth, says:
?The generation that considers everything it hears from its parents and teachers to be beneath it, will not take their moral messages to heart, neither will those messages satisfy their thirst or instill in them any reverence? For such a generation, only exaltation is appropriate, not to be bent over and downcast... Our generation cannot repent out of fear, yet they are exceedingly suited to repent out of love, in combination with reverence for the sublime? A generation with a profound spirit will desire and feel compelled to hear profound lessons wherever they turn? Simple, mundane lessons by themselves, no matter how full they are of truth and justice, will not satisfy them, nor will they give them rest?
?True, we won?t be able to save them from their evil ways and to set them on the proper life course unless we talk to them in simple, straightforward language, in terms they are accustomed to and find understandable. Yet the topics we talk about with them must be lofty, sublime and majestic. By such a combination, they, down in the abyss that they inhabit, will find the powerful splendor and the supreme bliss that they are seeking.?
The call of the hour is to commence this holy task of teaching our young generation ?to think and to feel that which is appropriate for a Jew and a human being to feel.? (Ikvei HaTzon 111-112)
Today, Rabbi Kook?s instruction to our generation is that we must ascend from repentance out of fear to repentance out of love. This is an obligation we have to our own children and to generations to come.
Every generation must be addressed in its own language, as it says, ?The L-rd your G-d will remove the barriers from your hearts and from the hearts of your descendants, so that you will love the L-rd your G-d.? (Deuteronomy 30:6) The Torah mentions both ?your hearts? and ?the hearts of your descendants.? Each generation must be addressed in its own language. The language of the parents is not like the language of the children.
Yet, if we conduct ourselves properly, we will be privileged to see with our own eyes the fulfillment of Malachi 3:24: ?He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers.?
Rabbi Avraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook, in relating to the type of repentance needed in our age, the age of the ingathering of the exiles and the national rebirth, says:
?The generation that considers everything it hears from its parents and teachers to be beneath it, will not take their moral messages to heart, neither will those messages satisfy their thirst or instill in them any reverence? For such a generation, only exaltation is appropriate, not to be bent over and downcast... Our generation cannot repent out of fear, yet they are exceedingly suited to repent out of love, in combination with reverence for the sublime? A generation with a profound spirit will desire and feel compelled to hear profound lessons wherever they turn? Simple, mundane lessons by themselves, no matter how full they are of truth and justice, will not satisfy them, nor will they give them rest?
?True, we won?t be able to save them from their evil ways and to set them on the proper life course unless we talk to them in simple, straightforward language, in terms they are accustomed to and find understandable. Yet the topics we talk about with them must be lofty, sublime and majestic. By such a combination, they, down in the abyss that they inhabit, will find the powerful splendor and the supreme bliss that they are seeking.?
The call of the hour is to commence this holy task of teaching our young generation ?to think and to feel that which is appropriate for a Jew and a human being to feel.? (Ikvei HaTzon 111-112)
Today, Rabbi Kook?s instruction to our generation is that we must ascend from repentance out of fear to repentance out of love. This is an obligation we have to our own children and to generations to come.
Every generation must be addressed in its own language, as it says, ?The L-rd your G-d will remove the barriers from your hearts and from the hearts of your descendants, so that you will love the L-rd your G-d.? (Deuteronomy 30:6) The Torah mentions both ?your hearts? and ?the hearts of your descendants.? Each generation must be addressed in its own language. The language of the parents is not like the language of the children.
Yet, if we conduct ourselves properly, we will be privileged to see with our own eyes the fulfillment of Malachi 3:24: ?He shall turn the heart of the fathers to the children, and the heart of the children to their fathers.?