Saturday, January 21, 2012

Taste It

AHHHHHHH! D.R. gets this weeks zikkui harabbim award [with a special mention of C.A.F. as well]. This is a passage from Rav Kook's Oros Yisrael [the Hebrew is here] translated superbly with great effort. This is a beautiful poetic, moving, call to return home, that is so appropriate for the month of Shvat when the fruits of Israel start to blossom. If you have no emotion when reading this I would get your neshama checked by a "neshamaologist".


It is a mitzva to really taste the sweetness, the pleasure of the radiance of kedusha of ארץ ישראל - in order to imbibe and be sated by the consolation of her bosom [a child feels very secure at his mother's breast, so a Jew in the Holy Land - See Yeshayahu chapter 66 A.E.], in order to draw forth and take delight in the brilliance of her honor.

And we must announce it to all the world, to the downtrodden exiles, that the conduit of a life filled with bounty, light and the pleasantness of the kedusha of our beloved land begins to open. The first buds are seen in the land, the time of the zamir* arrives and the sound of the dove is heard in our land (Shir HaShirim 2:12). The pleasant land seeks out her sons; she lovingly extends her arms to them; she covers all the sins with her love, [saying,] return, return, exiled ones, my lost sons, to the embrace of your mother. Remember and return to the Source of your existence; remember the fair sweetness of the strength of His love, as was in the house of our mother and the place of our parents; behold He longed to reveal it to us.

And if the beginning of revelation is only these thin lines of light that we now see, swiftly the light will expand, filling the breadth of our land. G-d is with us.


*Translator's note: zamir is variously understood to refer to zmirat kramim, pruning of the vineyards, zmira, song (as of birds in spring), or zamir as the name of a particular species of bird - nowadays translated as "nightingale". [This is an allusion according to Chazal to the redemption - A.E.]