TESHUVAH
Teshuvah (repentance) is a return to the source, to the beginning; [it is] to join together all the branches of life to the root from which they sprung.
Our soul is pure, “...the portion of G-d from above...” (Job 31:2), in its lofty origin bounding in life, abounding in light and splendour, but its greatness and its splendour, its power and its glory, are manifest in the higher spiritual realm.
When, however, [the soul] began to be linked with the practical world of the mundane, when it combined with the body and all its energies, joined with its worries and cares, and became entangled in the complexities of life’s hard struggle - although it was only in this way that [the soul] was able to make its mark upon a material and palpable world, upon a world of life bound up with terms of exigency, and the force of activity - yet then did [the soul’s] branches sink inevitably downward to such an extent, that it adapted itself to those enterprises and that substance of life which are circumscribed by the limitations of flesh and blood.
Thus were the lamps of [the spirit] dimmed, and the brilliance of its light became obscured, and all the myriad ways of going astray in human life emerged from out of this darkness.
And we are summoned to teshuvah, “...a heavenly voice emanates from Mount Horeb, proclaiming and saying, “Woe to them, to the people, because of [their] insult to the Torah!’...” (Avoth 6:2), causing a stir in our hearts. And from time to time and particularly in the Days of Teshuvah we take note that ‘it is time to act for the L-rd’ (Ps. 119:126) and the time has long since arrived for us to return in repentance, that is, to connect those diverse branches of life, manifest in all our deeds, in all our enterprises, in all our traits and in all our attributes, to the very genesis of their roots, to the purity of the soul, to the inception of its being, to the nobility of its honour and the fount of the light of its life. “Return, O Israel, unto the L-rd thy G-d...” (Hosea 14:2).
In a state similar to that of the soul within the body of the individual, is the spirit which brings into being an [ideological] movement within an entire people.
And it is clear to us that our holy [Zionist] movement, the movement of the national rebirth and the Return to Zion, has been preordained since ancient times [deriving] from that holy source, that divine desire which throbs in Knesset Israel, saying without ceasing, “ My soul yearneth, yea, even pineth for the courts of the L-rd;/My heart and my flesh sing for joy unto the living G-d.” (Ps. 84:3)
The first steps [taken] upon the birth of this holy [ýZionist] movement, as conceived by its first progenitors, revealed themselves to be steeped in the dew of holiness, longings foreordained.
Was not the vision of [R. Yehudah] Halevi full of a deep spiritual thirst to behold G-d’s graciousness in His holy Temple, His dwelling-place a palace of holiness, and holy ministers praising [Him] with awe-inspiring grandeur, in effulgent splendour.
The rebirth of Israel’s soul in all its full capacity, all the lustre of its holiness, that is [G-d’s] “... word. Selah...” (Habakkuk 3:9), which prepares the spirit to begin those enterprises which will bring about the Settlement of Eretz Israel. And holiness and innocence, in the full sense of Judaism, were visible in every aspect of the Hibbath Zion [movement] which was revealed.
But in the course of time this noble soul, was bound within the context of the labour of material and practical life, tangible down-to-earth life, with all its struggles with all the shadows within it, with that murky darkness spread throughout the passages of life’s hard battle, abounding in obstacles.
Thus was the light [of the spirit] dimmed, and its brilliance and its glory dulled, and from this diminution of radiance of the original light emerged many misleading roads, and at the expense of fortifying the practicable, the earthly and political nature, our original holy aspiration was overcast with gloom, and we wander stumbling across its paths, dark-visaged and of troubled mind.
And [we are now] upon this holy ground - the site of all the noble hopes which are bound up so firmly with the roots of our loftier lives lifting themselves up to the heights of the pure and holy, which will come to us, in company with the steadfast preservation of all the treasures of our holiness - our heritage since ancient times - from the fount of the holy light, from the well of the Torah of Truth, the Torah of Life, our eternal legacy from [He Who is] the source of the living life, the brilliance of the spirit of the everlasting life that is the light of Israel and its holiness.
And we are now on the borders of this holiness, suffering so strongly, because of the paths full of stumbling-blocks and the forgetfulness of the original principles of the spirit of the national rebirth, the first origins of an active Hibbath Zion in the full force of its holiness.
And because of the diminishing of the light, resulting from the forced joining of the spirit of the rebirth to the material, to the earthly, we are in such a state of gloom and weakness, that even the practical side of life suffers severely.
And from out of the great distress, from out of the intensity of the grief of the descent to the fearful depths, we are summoned by the bat-kol which emanates out of the ruins of Zion and Jerusalem, to teshuvah, to the return of the entire [Zionist] movement, in all its branches, to its roots, to its inception, to the grandeur of its nobility and its majesty, “If thou wilt return, O Israel,/Saith the L-rd,/Yea, return unto Me...”(Jeremiah 4:1) “and great is the repentance which brings redemption and healing to the world ” (Yomah 76).
And as we cry out in anguish of spirit, to the entire world, to each individual, so, too, do we call upon the movement in itself, in all its parts, and our hearts cry out to G-d, for “...You have made a Promise to us concerning repentance [foreordained] from the beginning, and it is concerning repentance that we look in hope to you.” (Yom Kippur prayer) “Return, O Israel, unto the L-rd thy G-d” (Hosea 14:2) “...‘Come, and let us return unto the L-rd;/For He hath torn, and He will heal us,/He hath smitten, and He will bind us up./After two days will He revive us,/On the third day He will raise us up, that we may live in his presence...”(Hosea 6:1-2), speedily and in our days, amen.
---HaRav A.Y. Kook, Ma’amarei HaRe’iyah
(translated by Rhea Magnes)