Rabbi Abraham Livniwas born in Marseilles, France in 1925. Horrified by the Holocaust, he converted to Judaism and began a long course of Talmudic study which led him to Israel in 1963 where he studied at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva. After earning a doctorate at the Hebrew University, he taught Jewish Studies at Bar Ilan until his death in 1985.]
Question: Why does Torat Eretz Yisrael place such an enormous emphasis on the return to the Jewish People to Israel?
Answer:
The answer to this question lies in a straightforward reading of the Torah and the Prophets. The reader will quickly discover that, without exception, our Biblical writings all conform to a fundamental permanent feature and message which runs throughout the sacred narrative of the Children of Israel - the centrality of the Land of Israel to Jewish Life and the obligation of the exiled Jews to return. The Return constitutes not only a major theme of the Bible, in its three parts, Torah, Prophets, and Writings; it is actually its backbone, structuring the entire Biblical message and giving it its historical as well as existential dynamic.
With its message and the promise of Return, one could even say that the Bible is the Book of Return par excellence. Additionally, the Torah teaches us that the ESSENCE of the Jewish people is the Return. The Return of Israel to Zion is, in reality, a return to order and harmony in the world, a return to the Divine Will for mankind. Chaos reigns when the People of Israel are not in their place. The debasement of Israel and its humiliation in the miseries of Exile signify the debasement and humiliation of Divine Truth on earth.
“I am concerned for My holy Name, which the House of Israel has caused to be profaned among the nations to which they have come" (Ezekiel 36.21).
When Israel is disdained and despised, Hashem and the Revelation of Sinai is disdained and despised in the same measure. The obscurity that envelops Israel is the obscurity of a world deprived of the light of the Divine Revelation. But this obscurity cannot veil the light forever, and this chaos cannot paralyze for all time the inner dynamic of the order of the Creation. The Return is an ontological necessity more powerful than any human obstacle.
“Not for your sake will I act, O House of Israel, but for My holy Name" (Ezekiel 36.22). The Creator will reestablish the order of His Creation, since only the Return of Israel can make His Will known to mankind. This Return is the expression of a still more grandiose Return, the Return of the entire Creation to its Creator. Because the Creation needs the Return, no matter how difficult its fulfillment may be, and because the universe is traversed by a dynamic of Return at its source, it follows that the Jewish People, as the prototype of all of humanity and the spokespeople for the entire created universe, must, of necessity, also be traversed by an essential dynamic of Return.
The Return constitutes, therefore, the essence of the People of Israel, and through them, the essence of the Creation as a whole. It is through the lens of this truth that the Biblical message in its totality should be viewed. “The Creator created the Return before He created the world," says the Midrash (Pesachim 54A).
This concept that T’shuva (Return) was created before the world is much broader than the mundane understanding of penitence, a concept whose breadth Rabbi Kook reveals in his book, “Orot HaT’shuva." In effect, inasmuch as the Creation is a projection from the Divine Infinite, it could subsist only if its very essence were the Return. Projected outward, the Creation must return to its Source. No other Nation can assume, as can Israel, the essence of the Divine Creative Plan. The very essence of Israel, then, must be the Return.
The Four Levels of the Return
To fully grasp the concept of the Return, one must consider it in all its dimensions and at all of its levels. In effect, one of the special features of Israel is its ability to unite in a single unified vision the world of spiritual and metaphysical truths with the earthly and material world. Thus, in Jewish thought, the notion of the Return is divided into four distinct planes, which we could designate as follows: geographical, moral, spiritual, and metaphysical.
Only those who succeed in linking together and unifying these four levels and in recognizing that they are interdependent and complementary to one another can apprehend in depth the essence of Israel, and understand its history and its place in the world.
Everyone knows that the Hebrew term “T’shuva" has several different meanings; a return, repentance, an answer, and a temporal cycle. It is just as evident that these four meanings of the word T’eshuva correspond to the four levels of all reality. There is, then, a Return on the physical or geographical plane, on the moral plane, on the spiritual plane, and on the metaphysical plane. When the prophets speak of Return, they refer, in effect, to all four planes at once.
Naturally, there can also be a partial Return, one effectuated separately at one level only. For example we can have a Return to Zion without any apparent spiritual return. Likewise, there can be a moral Return without its being accompanied by a return to Zion. However, the word Return, in authentically Biblical Jewish thought, necessarily encompasses all four dimensions, distinct but connected, and only when they are unified can the stature of Israel reach its full development.
It is important to stress, moreover, that the primary sense of the word “T’shuva" is a geographical one. Rabbi Yehuda Alkalay makes this point in his Kitvei:
The primary meaning of the word T’shuva (repentance, return) is the return of man to the place from which he went out. Thus, in the book of Samuel (I, 7:17), it is written: “Then he would return to Ramah for his home was there." It was as a metaphor that the Sages later applied the word to those who repent and return from their sinful ways… The collective T’shuva of the people, however, can be understood only in the primary sense, that is, as our return to the Land of Israel from which we went out, since our home and our life are there (Kitvei, Rabbi Yehuda Alkalay, vol. 2, p. 326).
For the bearing of this “Law" of the Return in all its dimensions, at one and the same time, the Jewish People were chosen and set apart. Selected as the messengers of the Divine Plan, Israel bears the Return in its essence and mission, as well as in its destiny. The Jewish People have no choice but to accomplish and perfect their Return on the four levels of creative reality.
The return to Zion, reconstituting the physical body of the Nation, will, of necessity, be followed by a moral restoration. This, in turn, will lead to a Return to the rich culture and spiritual heritage of Israel, centered on the Torah, no longer the Galut Torah of an exiled people, shrunken by their preoccupation with survival and focused on the individual, but the Torah of the Land of Israel in all its glory. And this Return to the Torah will ultimately be crowned by a Return to the pure, revitalizing sources of Life, in the living presence of the Shechinah, dwelling once more amidst Its children in Zion. May it be soon.
[Excerpted from the author’s book “The Return of Israel and the Hope of the World." Translation by Rosalie Moria. The excerpt also appears in the recently published “Torat Eretz Yisrael Anthology."]