What Is the Difference Between the Land of Israel and the State of Israel?
I once visited a place in Israel that housed the furniture and utensils of Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam). I noticed how “Medinat Israel” (Hebrew for “The State of Israel”) was inscribed on his challah knife’s handle. It is a sign of how Baal HaSulam sanctified the notion of the State of Israel. It is important to note how specifically “The State of Israel” and not “The Land of Israel” was written on the knife. Baal HaSulam supported the establishment of the State of Israel.
We who live in this physical location should thus understand that our connection with the State of Israel should serve as a springboard to reach the spiritual Land of Israel, the inner place where we connect to the Creator — the upper force of love, bestowal and connection that guides us.
In the physical location of the State of Israel dwells a special force that serves to embrace or expel its inhabitants. That special force is the connection between the people of Israel and the Land of Israel. If we strive to cling to the Land of Israel, we then grow to become a unique and powerful influence in the world. But if we do not adapt to the Land of Israel, then we feel an opposite repelling force that expels us.
What is the Land of Israel? The word for “land” in Hebrew (“Eretz”) shares the same linguistic root as the Hebrew word for “desire” (“Ratzon”). Also, the Hebrew word for “Israel” comes from two words that mean “straight to God” (“Yashar-El”). Accordingly, the Land of Israel is the desire in which the Creator becomes revealed to us, according to our efforts. In order to value the Land of Israel so that it will not expel us, we need to approach the desire called “the Land of Israel” — a desire that is entirely aimed at the Creator. If we approach and become included in this desire that aims with an intention to love, bestow and harmoniously connect, then we ourselves become “the people of Israel,” i.e., those who advance to the Creator’s revelation.
Why did Baal HaSulam value the State of Israel so much if the Land of Israel is a desire that resides within people? There are special forces in the physical location of Israel, but those forces act on condition that the Land of Israel is under the control of the people of Israel. If not, then the opposite situation unfolds: the nations of the world control the Land of Israel and it thus lacks a mutual connection with the Creator. We thus cannot yet say that the Land of Israel is under the control of the people of Israel.
Nevertheless, Baal HaSulam saw a direct connection between the physicality and spirituality in the land, as if one dresses in the other. Before the establishment of the State of Israel, Baal HaSulam had envisioned how the people of Israel would control the entire area of the Land of Israel.
What, then, can we learn from the State of Israel now being at war for several months, with thousands killed and several thousands evacuated from their homes? We can learn that it is a blow that the Creator brings upon us, which we need to take into account even more than we should have before.
It is written, “any generation in which the Temple is not built, it is as if it had been destroyed in their times” (Yerushalmi, Yoma 1a). So we need to think that we destroy the Temple every day, and we need to consider how we calibrate our attitudes to each other, to life in general, and to the kind of connection needed in order to put an end to our ongoing destruction of the Temple, and begin its reconstruction.
The problem is that nobody feels that it depends on them, even though there is a nature-set condition of mutual responsibility that we need to fulfill. We will have to answer to this responsibility. We are the generation living between exile and redemption, and we are headed to eventually control the Land of Israel. How? It is by establishing a connection with the opposite desire — the desire to bestow, i.e., the very quality of the Creator. In other words, only the Creator — and not the created beings — can control the Land of Israel.
The spiritual Land of Israel is either controlled by the Creator or the nations of the world, i.e., it is either under the control of the desire to bestow or the desire to receive. Moreover, we — the people of Israel — determine whether one or the other is in control. If the nations of the world control Israel, or in other words, if the desire to receive controls the desire that should be aimed in a direction of bestowal and love similar to the Creator’s quality, then it is due to those who have been granted the ability to aim themselves in a manner of bestowal — the people of Israel — failing to fulfill their role.
I thus hope that everyone who needs to awaken to their responsibility as the people of Israel in the Land of Israel, will do so sooner rather than later. The transition from a life of global despair and crisis to a harmonious and peaceful world, the likes of which we have yet to see, depends on this upgrade to a more positively-unified human consciousness.