Shiurim

Back to Shiurim List

Is There One Way to Think About Yom Ha'atzmaut?

By: Rav Yechezkel Yakovson

Summarized by Malkie Ziegler (SFW '08)

How can it happen that part of the Jewish people do not see the miracles of Yom Ha’atzmaut?

The first possible reason is that we know the truth and they have closed their eyes to it. A second possible reason is that what we are doing is shtuyot. However, these do not appear to be correct. There is a third answer:

Within Am Yisrael there are many people who think that what they are doing is the only correct way of avodat Hashem, and anyone not acting in the same way is wrong. This idea can be seen both with someone sitting and learning all day and with a professional. Each of them wrongly may say, "My way is the only way. Their way is wrong."

However, we see that Hashem created the 12 tribes each with their own strengths and it is only together they can make one unit, Am Yisrael. The same is true of a husband and wife. The woman gives what she can give in her unique way, and the husband gives what he can give in his own unique way. It is only in this way that harmony is formed. This same idea is seen in Tzahal, the Israeli Defense Force. The Army is made up of units and diffeent kinds of soldiers are needed to be in each unit.

Rav Kook writes in his ma’amar, ‘Misped B’Yerushalayim’, that amongst all the shvatim there are two unique ones, Yosef and Yehuda. Yosef took care of the physical needs of the people and Yehuda took care of the spiritual needs of the people. David Hamelech joined the two but he was only one man and only once in history was a man liek that able to see, live and combine both sides.. After David, there was a division in the malchut and once again the spiritual and physical were split.

Two kings died in war, Achav, a rasha, and Yoshiyahu, a tzadik. According to Yonatan Ben Uziel, in the future we will cry as we did over these two kings. There will be Mashiach ben Yosef and Mashiach ben David. Mashiach ben Yosef will not last because chomer, physicality, without ruach, spirituality, cannot last. The crying in the future will be over the separation between chomer and ruach, that they cannot exist together.

Herzl was only worried about the physical and the tragedy is that the Rabbonim did not work with him and worry about the ruchniut, the spirituality. We cannot push away what we have but rather we need to work with it, to help add the spirituality.

In the Gemara Sanhedrin we are told that Hashem wanted to make Chizkiyahu into Mashiach and Sancheriv into Gog uMagog but he did not because Chizkiyahu did not sing shira. 200,000 soldiers died one night in a plague saving Yerushalayim but Chizkiyahu did not sing shira. This shira is hallel. Rashi says that he also did not sing shira after Hashem healed him from his illness. Why did Chizkiyahu not sing shira? Why was this such a grave mistake that because of it we are still in galut?

Chizkiyahu was a great tzadik and a great talmid chacham. There has never been such a great level of Torah in a generation as there was in the time of Chizkiyahu where the children knew the halachot of tumah and tahara. However, he was so spiritual that he thought that the physical does not really matter and so there is no need to say shira over the physical.

We are called Am Yisrael. Am is the physical nation and Yisrael is the spiritual. However we need both elements to be Am Yisrael.

Hashem brought us to Eretz Yisrael and did not leave us in the desert to teach us that we have to connect the physical and the spiritual. Mashiach can only be someone who understands the true connection between the physical building and the spiritual building of Am Yisrael.

Sometimes there are great Rabbonim who do not say hallel because they are so spiritual that they do not see the importance of gashmiut.

We are waiting for Mashiach ben Yosef, who will connect and combine the ruchniyut and the gashmiut.