Last week in our T’shuva “seminar” we learned that the pathway back to Hashem is through forging a living attachment to the Jewish People as a whole (Clal Yisrael). The individual Jewish soul does not exist in isolation. It is contained, formed, and shaped by the collective body of Am Yisrael. Only in our connection the light of this national soul can we begin to examine our own lives and our connection to Hashem.
Returning to the Soul of the Nation
Instead of my lecturing, in this segment of the Teshuva seminar, I am going to turn the pencil and paper over to you. Consider the following to be a notebook about returning to Hashem and His Torah through the shared experience of the Jewish People. Reading the questions will help you, but actually writing down answers will catapult you much further along the way in your Teshuva journey.
Rabbi Kook teaches that many spiritual struggles, bouts of confusion, feelings of alienation, and descent into sin are rooted in the separation from the soul of the Jewish People. This “workshop” explores your relationship to Knesset Yisrael as a living connection. It invites you to examine where you feel close, where you feel estranged, and what it might mean to return not just to Hashem, but to our People. Of course, most readers will stiffen up indignantly and respond, “I’m already connected to the Jewish People.” Chances are that you are. But isn’t there room for improvement? Let’s find out. You do not need to answer every question. Choose the ones that speak to where you are right now. Answer honestly. You may be brief, personal, emotional, even uncertain. All responses are valid.
Teshuva and the Jewish People
1. When do you feel most connected to the Jewish People and what can you do to deepen that connection?
Think of moments when you felt proud to be part of something greater than yourself in your being part of the Jewish People. Was it during a holiday? At a funeral? A protest? A quiet Shabbat meal? What made you feel connected - memory, a song, an encounter with tradition? How can you return to the feeling more often?
2. Where or how have you felt disconnected from the soul of your People? What has that disconnection done to your inner life? Has the disconnection made you feel alienated from the community or from Jewish practice? Where has that distance left a mark on your spiritual being and your self-worth. What would need to heal so that you could feel safe in returning?
3. What part of you has gone spiritually numb because you’ve been living off borrowed light - external sources and identification with foreign cultures instead of your own Jewish and Israeli wellsprings?
How much of who you is predicated on secular sources and values?
What voices or authorities have you depended on to tell yourself who you are?
Whose expectations have you been trying to live up to?
Where is your own Torah, your own practice, your own sense of HaShem and your own unique way of expressing your connection to him?
Where is your own prayer waiting to be reclaimed?
4. What would change in your spiritual life if you saw the Jewish People as the source of Divine Connection?
How might your prayers change if you remembered that the people around you are also vessels of holiness, and that you share a joint destiny and mission? Would you approach tradition, mitzvah obligation, current events, community involvement, connection to Israel differently?
What does it mean to love Hashem through loving His holy and complicated Nation?
What would it mean to let love for the Jewish People be a form of spiritual practice?
How might your Teshuva, prayer, and learning shift if you remembered that holiness lives within all of our People?
5. Where have you mistaken separation for elevation?
Have you ever “spiritualized” you withdrawal from others, telling yourself it was to become “pure,” “above,” and “independent”?
Are those reasons true or just protective?
What might you gain by returning, because of our shared root, to community involvement and greater involvement with the struggles and joys of the Jewish Nation in Israel, in spite of the imperfections you see?
What positive things might return to you if you chose to rejoin in whatever way you can, even if at the moment it is only a little?
If you have replied to these questions honestly, the answers can be a compass on how to proceed toward a more rewarding connection to your true inner self, to the Jewish Nation, and to Hashem.
A series of five Rabbi Samson illustrated videos on Teshuva can be seen at: https://machonmeir.net/torat-eretz-yisrael/