As we enter Shabbat before Tisha B’Av, the national day of mourning for the Jewish people, it’s worth examining our present and our future.

🧵 By all objective metrics, we are in the midst of our collective redemptive process.

Even the most ardent of anti-Zionist rabbis can acknowledge this.

הֵ֚מָּה מֵ֣י מְרִיבָ֔ה אֲשֶׁר־רָב֥וּ בְנֵֽי־יִשְׂרָאֵ֖ל אֶת־יְהֹוָ֑ה וַיִּקָּדֵ֖שׁ בָּֽם

“These are the waters of strife where the children of Israel contended with the Lord, and He was sanctified through them.”

Bamidbar 20:13 What is Strife?

It appears to be that action, or that moment, that causes everything to disappear.

visionmag.org/strife/

Blue Springs - a poem by Ari Osher

🧵 As the fingers move and the heart quivers,
Attached,
Attached,
To her ever being.

Two stories are unfolding simultaneously for the Jewish people.

On one side our Nation is being reborn in our Homeland.

On the other we fighting to remain in Exile.

🧵 It is a tale as old as the Nation itself.

Throughout our history we have always grappled sovereignty in our Land with maintaining power and influence in the large Empires.

But things are different now.

HaShem’s promise to bring us Home to the Land of Israel has been fulfilled.

We are together, we are one.

So why don’t we act like it? I know very few Jews.

I know Ashkenazi, Sefardí, Haredi, Persian, Mizrahi, Russian, French, Italian Jews. And many others.

Yet I barely know any Jews.

It’s not that Israel is committing occupation - we can’t - we’re native to the Land. By definition an occupier can’t be native.

The issue is our actions look like occupation. That’s the problem.

How do we formulate actions for the future that truly embody our historic mission? Two statements can be simultaneously true:

1. Israel’s rebirth in our historic Homeland is the most important event in human history thus far.

2. The way we treat our closest neighbors (the Palestinians) is unjust.