Israel has leapt ahead of other countries in the global efforts to inoculate its population against COVID-19 with the fastest vaccination rate in the entire planet. What Israel has yet to discover is that such an effort will be ultimately useless until the nation realizes its role and capacity to cure humanity from all its illnesses, as it holds the only lasting antidote to health, (as well as the key to peace and success): our unity.
Around 12% of Israel’s population has already been vaccinated with doses of the Pfizer vaccine as a result of a well-oiled 24/7 campaign and an efficient healthcare system. Vaccine distribution efforts in Israel are by far faster and more successful compared to those of other developed countries such as the US and European nations. But as much as we would like to believe that this is the panacea to get rid of the coronavirus, we will soon discover that the miracle cure to the pandemic does not lie within the biological sphere but instead at the human level, in the right connection between people. A method for reaching that goal is the real example Israel should give to the world.
Why is this successful immunization program not enough? It is not sufficient because it gives us the false impression that only through such measures are we protected from diseases, while nature is trying to teach us that we cannot sit on our laurels until we address and fix the root cause of the problem: our lack of alignment with nature’s balance, wholeness, and perfection. Our human intolerance, hostility and egoism cause imbalance within multiple levels of nature—inanimate, vegetative, animate, and human—which negatively boomerangs back upon us in the form of diseases. Our hatred of one another thus harms the system we all share and is reflected back on us in the form of all kinds of problems and crises.
So what is the true role of Israel I have mentioned? It is to pioneer the implementation of the method for attaining unity above division between people to the point of reaching the tenet “love your neighbor as yourself.” Israel’s role is to lead the way in moving humanity toward the attainment of unity and recovering balance with nature that has been lost as a result of our fractious, egoistic and self-centered human relations.
A method for realizing this goal is set out in the wisdom of Kabbalah and this knowledge has been inherited by the people of Israel through the generations so that they will become a conduit for the worldwide expansion of unity. As Rav Yehuda Ashlag, author of the Sulam (Ladder) commentary on The Book of Zohar wrote, “It is upon the Israeli nation to qualify itself and all the people of the world to develop until they take upon themselves that sublime work of the love of others, which is the ladder to the purpose of Creation.”
As the press of nature increasingly tightens humanity’s interconnection and greater rivalry and conflict surface between people, the conditions become ripe for humanity to learn how to organize our increasing connection positively, how to unite above the growing divisions.
Jews need only come to the realization that by starting to relearn and implement our historic and unique method for achieving unity and by disseminating this know-how to all, they will bring harmony to themselves and to the world at every level of nature. Such unity will radiate a positive unifying example throughout the entire planet and then the people of Israel will truly become “a light unto the nations” (Isaiah 42:6). Therefore, Israel can and should provide the role model for humanity to follow in order to reach the goal of achieving immunity from all its suffering and pains through healthy human connection.
[People wearing face masks wait at a new coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccination center, as Israel continues its drive to vaccinate its elderly population against COVID-19, at Rabin Square in Tel Aviv, Israel December 31, 2020. REUTERS/Ammar Awad]
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