Zionism is T’shuva Too!

By: Tzvi Fishman

Published: October 2nd, 2012

David Ben-Gurion publicly pronounces the Declaration of the State of Israel, May 14 1948, Tel Aviv, Israel.
Photo Credit: Rudi Weissenstein

Rabbi Kook teaches that even in the return of the non- religious Zionists to Israel there is a profound holy core. The inner source of their desire to return is the Divine Ideal itself – the return to the Jews to the Land of Israel, as the Torah and the Prophets of Israel both promise. With time, the holy spark in the Zionist movement will surely be ignited into a towering flame. This great transformation may take one hundred years or more. We need to remember that after nearly two-thousand years in exile, a few generations is like the blink of an eye.

The important thing to know is that the t’shuva of the entire Nation is destined to come. Rabbi Kook writes:

The awakened yearning of the Jewish people as a whole to return to their Land, to their roots, to their spirit and way of life — truthfully, there is the light of t’shuva in this (Orot HaT’shuva, 17:2).

The Book of Ezekiel includes an overview of Jewish history which traces Israel’s exile among the gentile nations, and her ultimate return to the Land of Israel and Torah. Only after the nation’s physical revival in Israel do the Jewish people undergo the period of spiritual cleansing which leads them back to Torah, as it says:

For I will take you from among the nations, and gather you out of all countries, and I will bring you into your own Land. Then I will sprinkle pure water upon you, and you shall be clean; from all of your uncleanlinesses, and from all of your idols, will I cleanse you. A new heart will I also give you, and a new spirit will I put within you; and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh. And I will put My spirit in you, and cause you to follow My statutes, and you shall keep My judgments and do them. And you shall dwell in the Land that I gave to your fathers; and you shall be My people, and I shall be your God (Ezekiel, 36:24-28).

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