Pensamiento judío sobre Génesis 22:5

Albeit, even in the experience of Shared Destiny there is an element of separateness, but the ‎apartness of destiny is totally different both in character and experience. It is not the negative ‎sentiment that Balaam foresaw in his prophecy of “they are people which dwells alone” (Numbers ‎‎23:9), but rather the special awareness that Moses promised Israel in the last few hours before his ‎death: “And Israel shall dwell in safety [separate and secure] by the fountain of ‎Jacob”(Deuteronomy 33:28). In truth, this self-isolation is nothing but the aloneness of a glorious, ‎strong, holy, and sacred existence. It is the isolation expressed in the singularity of a people, in its ‎holy self-image and unique existential experience. It is loneliness that creates an individual spiritual ‎personality. It is loneliness that demonstrates man’s honor and his aloofness. It is the solitude of ‎Moses, whose exalted spirit and sublime vision the people did not comprehend. It is the solitude ‎of Elijah and the other prophets. It is the solitude of which Abraham spoke to his attendants when ‎he said, “You sit here with the donkey, and the lad and I will go to that place, and we shall ‎worship” (Genesis 22:5, emphasis added). While man’s isolation is a destructive feeling of ‎inferiority that expresses self-negation, the solitude of man testifies to his greatness and sanctity ‎‎— the greatness contained within himself and the sanctity that hovers in the recesses of his ‎unique awareness. Isolation robs man of his inner peace; loneliness bestows upon man security, ‎self-esteem, significance and confidence — “separate and secure” (Deuteronomy 33:28).‎

Judaism has always believed, as we said at the outset, that man has it within his power to take fate ‎into his own hands and shape it into the destiny of a free life, a life full of meaning and saturated ‎with the joy of living, turning isolation into aloneness and disparagement into significance. For this ‎reason Judaism places so great an emphasis on the principle of free will. [And] for this reason ‎‎[Judaism] so appreciates the human intellect, which has it within its power to free man from his ‎enslavement to nature and allow him to rule over his environment and its blind circumstances and ‎subjugate it to his will. The Community of Israel is obligated to use this free will in all facets of life, ‎and especially for the good of the State of Israel. If secular Zionism, in the end, comes to ‎understand that the establishment of the State of Israel has not weakened the paradoxical fate of ‎Jewish aloneness, but, on the contrary, that the incomprehensible state of, “I shall take you unto ‎Me as a people” (Exodus 6:7) has become even more pronounced in the international arena, it ‎must ask itself the age-old question: “What is your occupation; from where do you derive . . . and ‎from what people do you come?”(Jonah 1:8).The question is asked in any event; if not by the Jew, ‎then by the gentile. We must answer with pride that, “We fear the Lord, the God of the heavens” ‎‎(Jonah 1:9). Our historic obligation today is to raise ourselves from a people to a holy nation, from ‎the Covenant of Egypt to the Covenant of Sinai; from a compelled existence to an original way of ‎life, permeated with morality and religious principles, that transcends history. We must go from ‎being an Encampment to being a Nation. The task of religious Zionism is to fuse the two covenants, ‎the Covenant of Egypt and the Covenant of Sinai; the covenants of fate and destiny, of isolation ‎and loneliness. This task entails self-perfection by suffering; the out-pouring of lovingkindness ‎brought about by combining all the elements of the nation and uniting them in one community, “A ‎nation unique in the land”(II Samuel 7:23),and the readiness to pray for one’s friend and to feel his ‎joy and his grief. The goal of this self-repair is the purposeful consecration of self and ascent to the ‎‎“Mountain of God” (Psalms 15:1).One great goal unites us all. A single exalted vision captures our ‎hearts. One Torah (Written and Oral) directs us all to a unified end — the fulfillment of the vision of ‎aloneness and the vision of the sanctity of an Encampment/People that ascends to the level of a ‎Community/Nation and ties its lot to the destiny that was proclaimed to the world in the words of ‎our ancient father Abraham: “And I and the lad shall go unto that place and shall worship God and ‎return to you” (Genesis 22:5).‎‎