“Where dwells the Holy One, blessed be He? Wherever He is allowed to enter!” - The Kotzker Rebbe
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“A generation of thirsty souls,
Fear of G-d without definitions.
No grand declarations-
Study Torah, and then comes light.
Modesty comes from within,
So say the girls,
A skirt one day a week,
Trying, striving”.
“Thirsty Souls” by Ben Zur (בן צור) is one of the most heartfelt and reflective songs to emerge from contemporary Israeli spiritual music. It captures a generation’s longing for faith, authenticity, and connection - a yearning not for perfection, but for presence. The song’s voice is intimate, confessional, and deeply human: it does not preach, but prays. It acknowledges weakness and imperfection, yet still dares to hope.
It is the voice of a young Israeli soul standing between heaven and earth - seeking, falling, rising again.
Religious identity in Israel has long resisted being categorized in binary terms. The traditional dichotomy between “religious” and “secular” fails to account for the lived reality of millions of Israelis whose practices blend faith, culture, and autonomy. This phenomenon-manifested in gestures such as the wearing of tzitzit without a kippah or the donning of a modest skirt only on Fridays- reveals a postmodern reconfiguration of the sacred
Few phrases in Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’s thought are as haunting as the “God-thirsty soul.” It evokes a human being wandering through the desert of existence-parched, restless, yearning for transcendence. In The Halakhic Mind, written amid the darkness of World War II, the Rav describes revelation as an inner transformation: “The letter of the Scriptures, once a dead word, becomes an inner word-a certainty, insight, confession-in the God-thirsty soul”.
This thirst is not intellectual curiosity but existential longing-a hunger that only communion with G-d can satisfy. Even the Halakhic Man, archetype of discipline and intellect, lives within this tension. His mind is bound to law, yet his heart yearns for God.
“Teach me faith and trust,
Stay with me even when I choose wrong,
Hold me, even in moments of shame,
Remind me: through silence, much is received.”
The Rav often linked this thirst to the dialectic of silence and speech, writing: “The religious act begins in silence, in the mute tension of a soul that cannot speak yet must speak… It is the speech of the God-thirsty soul which breaks the barrier of silence.” (On Prayer).
The motif of thirst reappears in Soloveitchik’s writings on repentance: “The sinner thirsts for purification as one thirsts for water in the desert. His longing is not for comfort but for transformation.” Thirst thus becomes the emotional core of teshuvah - not guilt or fear, but a profound homesickness for the Divine. In U‑Vikkashtem mi‑Sham (“And From There You Shall Seek”), the Rav defines man as a seeker whose existence is defined by desire rather than possession: “The greatness of man lies not in what he has found but in the intensity with which he seeks. The religious experience is born of the endless search, of thirst that knows no quenching.” The Rav’s “thirsty soul” is deeply human. It is the yearning of every person who senses finitude.
In his autobiographical essay The Lonely Man of Faith, he confesses: “I experience an eternal polarity. I am lonely - for I thirst for the Infinite and am imprisoned in the finite.” For the Rav, thirst is not a sign of failure but of vitality. The soul that thirsts is alive. True religiosity, he implies, is not about arrival but about longing.
“Seven times the righteous one may fall and rise;
I have never despaired.
I know-life is a ladder,
It’s not meant to be perfect.
Accept me just as I am,
Don’t forget I’m only average.
Guard me even in my fall-
In the lowest place, the prayer is heard.
There is tzitzit but no kippah,
And what lies beneath the shell?
Trials we cannot name,
The impulse-on flight mode”.
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Biblical study has nearly vanished from secular curricula:
“The Tanakh, once studied for four or five hours a week, has become a ceremonial relic, taught sporadically and without inspiration. Apathy, politics, and a fear of spiritual commitment have eroded what was once a cornerstone of Israeli education.” (JFeed, 2025).
The author laments that students graduate 'cut off from the moral and historical language of their own people.' As reported by JNS (2025), secular parents have begun to express alarm at the absence of Jewish content: “Parents are waking up to the fact that their children cannot identify fundamental Jewish ideas or stories. They do not know Abraham from Amos, nor can they distinguish between Yom Kippur and Shavuot”.
Following the October 7, 2023, attacks, Religion News Service reported:
“More than half of young Israelis surveyed said their sense of religiosity or spirituality had changed since October 7. For some, the tragedy deepened faith; for others, it exposed a void they could not fill”. (October 2025). This spiritual vacuum, emerging in a time of crisis, highlights the cost of decades of neglect in religious and moral education. The crisis in religious education in Israel is not only pedagogical-it is existential. In secular frameworks, the language of faith has faded; in some religious ones, intellectual openness has been replaced by insulation. What emerges is a generation with deep emotions but shallow roots.
As one educator summarized, “We are producing brilliant scientists and devoted yeshiva scholars-but fewer Jews who understand both worlds.”
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“Rabbi Hamnuna Saba (the elder) explained that 'willows of the brook' are the two pillars we mentioned, NETZACH AND HOD, from which water comes out. .. we see that these two grades, NETZACH AND HOD, stand on the grade of the Righteous, YESOD. Fruits and gathered blessings are issued from them…” Zohar Vayechi: 225
The willow is not passive but generative-the one that draws water and nourishes the others. The “brook” (nachal) is the stream of Divine vitality, and the willow becomes its conduit. Just as the arev-the guarantor in Jewish law-stands between debtor and creditor, the willow mediates between heaven and earth, between God and His people.
The aravah is the arev: the one who bridges, connects, and sustains.
How was the mitzvah of the willow (aravah) performed on Succot?
“There was a place below Jerusalem called Motza. They would go down there and gather long branches of willow, bring them and stand them upright alongside the altar, with their tops bent over the top of the altar”. -Mishnah Sukkah 4:4
The Rav, in a tribute to a beloved rebbe at Yeshiva University, once compared the rebbe’s work to the ancient ritual of the aravot-the willows brought up from Motza to the altar. The Rebbe took American boys-young men with scant background, sons of a new world-and raised them up. From a low place, he brought them, teaching them to stand tall and proud around the altar of observance and learning, their heads gently bowed in humility and in reverence.
The aravah is the arev: the one who bridges, connects, and sustains.
Who will now descend for our young generation?
Who will raise them, water their roots, and quench their thirst?
After all, “Kol Yisra’el arevim zeh bazeh”
“The people of Israel are guarantors for one another”
Itzhak David Goldberg, MD, FACR is Professor Emeritus at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.