וַיֹּאמְר֣וּ אֵלָ֔יו הַגִּידָה־נָּ֣א לָ֔נוּ בַּאֲשֶׁ֛ר לְמִי־הָרָעָ֥ה הַזֹּ֖את לָ֑נוּ מַה־מְּלַאכְתְּךָ֙ וּמֵאַ֣יִן תָּב֔וֹא מָ֣ה אַרְצֶ֔ךָ וְאֵֽי־מִזֶּ֥ה עַ֖ם אָֽתָּה׃
At sinabi nila sa kanya: “Pakisabi mo sa amin, ikaw na dahilan kung bakit dumating sa amin ang kapahamakang ito: Ano ang iyong hanapbuhay? Saan ka nanggaling? Ano ang iyong bayan? At saang bansa ka nagmula?”
Kol Dodi Dofek
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.
Kol Dodi Dofek
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).