As an observant Jew I strive to redeem and to raise up my surroundings. From the morning when I awake to the evening when I go to sleep, the movements of my body (including “the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart”) act as the means to achieve this purpose.
Coming Home, Realizing the Authentic Self
More than this I am driven by the fact that the Jewish people have returned to their roots, to their homeland, the Land of Israel. The redemption is a movement home. This is to discover self authenticity and realization within ourselves and our people. Yet, there is a sense that things are out of reach for us and there is an inability to grasp the innate desire that lies within to pull ourselves up and out of the impure concepts we have gathered in exile. The Land of Israel is our way out. It allows us to use our days to uplift our personal world and to steer the National trajectory.
Coming home and becoming an Israelite is not easy. It involves a period of abandonment of the past as well as an allowance of the natural desire to cleave to the root of creation within each remember of the Nation to drive oneself to natural and authentic “Jewish Observance.”
In exile we formed a fear of Heaven, yet in our homeland we can focus that same energy to making a perfect State, G-dly Kingdom, “A City Upon the Hill,” in its proper location.