These are not easy times for Israel. An ancient people and a relatively young state, who still searches for its identity. For decades, we have tried to be like every other nation, yet something has not worked. Something has remained unresolved. What do we keep missing, even before the establishment of the state?

“Judaism must present something new to the nations. This is what they expect from the return of Israel to the land.” This was written by Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) in his Writings of the Last Generation at the beginning of the previous century. He spoke with David Ben-Gurion and the leaders of the Jewish community of his time about establishing a spiritual state, one that would serve as an example to humanity of how to live in connection and love above differences, how to build a place where the single force that operates throughout nature can become revealed between people’s hearts.

Baal HaSulam understood that the state would have no lasting right to exist if it did not help advance the world to the connected state that humanity is destined to reach. According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, this is the developmental program embedded in nature for the human species, and we are the ones meant to lead its realization. The program will inevitably unfold; that is not in question. Nature does not ask for our opinion or seek our advice. The only uncertainty is how much suffering we will have to endure before we grasp the evolutionary direction to complete integration among human beings.

In 1933, he published the article “The Arvut (Mutual Guarantee),” where he explained:

“The Israeli nation had been constructed as a sort of passageway by which sparks of refinement would flow onto the entire human race throughout the world… until they develop to such an extent that they can understand the pleasantness and tranquility that are found in the kernel of love of others.”

“The Israeli nation had been constructed as a sort........

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