Pensamiento judío sobre Jonás 1:8

Fourth, the Beloved knocks in the heart of the youth which is assimilated and perplexed. ‎The ‎period of hester panim in the 1940’s brought confusion among the Jewish masses ‎and ‎especially Jewish youth. Assimilation increased, and the urge to flee from Judaism and the ‎Jewish ‎people reached its apex. Fear, despair, and ignorance caused many to forsake the ‎Jewish ‎community and “climb aboard the ship,” to flee to Tarshish from the presence of the Lord ‎‎(Jonah ‎‎1:3), just as Jonah sought to flee God’s presence. A seemingly unstoppable tidal wave ‎stood over ‎us and threatened to destroy us. Suddenly, the Beloved began to beckon to the hearts ‎of the ‎perplexed, and His beckoning, the establishment of the State of Israel, at least slowed the ‎process ‎of flight. Many who were once alienated are now bound to the Jewish State with ties of ‎pride in its ‎mighty accomplishments. Many American Jews who were partially assimilated find ‎themselves ‎beset by hidden fear and concern for any crisis that the State of Israel is at the time ‎passing ‎through, and they pray for its well-being and welfare even though they are far from being ‎totally ‎committed to it. Even Jews who are hostile to the State of Israel must defend themselves ‎from the ‎strange charge of dual-loyalty and proclaim daily and declare that they have no stake in ‎the Holy ‎Land. It is good for a Jew when he cannot ignore his Jewishness and is obliged to ‎perpetually ‎answer the questions “Who are you?” and “What is your occupation?” (Jonah 1:8), ‎even when ‎extraordinary fear grips him and he does not have the strength or fortitude to answer ‎with true ‎pride, “I am a Jew, and I fear the Lord, the God of heaven” (Jonah 1:9). The unrelenting ‎question ‎of, “Who are you?” ties him to the Jewish people.‎

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).‎‎