In the short time between 1948 and today, we have built the State of Israel as a strong and prosperous country under immense pressure and constant bombardment. However, we have not achieved a state where we feel stable or safe in this land. Quite the contrary. Day by day the menace increases both from outside the country and within it, and we feel how at any moment, everything that was achieved with blood, sweat and tears, can crumble and dissolve. There is a constant existential threat.
Our inability to achieve security stems from the way we have gathered on this land. We founded this country as brothers in need, as foreigners who agreed to live in this land, knowing that the world is against us and through lack of any other choice. From this starting point, today we are in danger of disintegrating and losing our independence.
When our ego wins and divides, and it always does, “brothers in need” are no longer able to keep us together. Every quarrel goes away instead of strengthening closeness, every friction weakens instead of strengthening and increasing love. Until we can no longer stand each other. And the neighbors adjacent to our borders, feel our disunity and strike us.
Our well-being depends on the peace between us. Therefore, from the very beginning, we should strive to see in each other not brothers in trouble, but brothers. Full stop. We should want to guide each other, be concerned with each other’s well-being and measure ourselves constantly in relation to our mutual concern: Have we achieved these ideals? If we haven’t, we will immediately need to rectify our mistake.
We should become a nation that is no less than a family. Only a concept called family can hold such abysmal differences and by so doing can turn itself into an even stronger and more successful nation.
Our independence depends on an internal factor, and that is our will. The desire to connect across the divide. Connection is the spiritual power that has been inherent in us since our ancestor Abraham founded the nation across the division created by the growing ego or self-benefit. And we do not use this power because we do not want to.
This power, which can dwell between us from the desire for love and mutual embrace, is the highest power. Since it is potentially anchored in us, it is sufficient to ensure our survival here. Nothing more, nothing less. Erecting a real building requires we do it with the right intention, i.e., that it should serve all of us. In this way, not only will Israel truly be built, but the whole collapsing world will be fortified.
It does not take much. A little compromise. I just have to stop seeing the Jew outside of me as a stranger.
Posted on The Times of Israel, LinkedIn, Facebook