Friday, February 14, 2020

Faith that the desert will yet bloom



מה רבו מעשיך!!
One of the most amazing things about living in Eretz Yisrael is the living Torah, metaphors that are real and not just stories, the land as peirush, living commentary. A rainy winter like this is what the second paragraph of the Shema is about, is the embodiment of so many images described in the Tanakh.

If you lived in exile in lands where there is no desert and no rainy season then the Tanakh remains just a story, you will not have experienced the real meaning of the prayers for rain, the heartfelt prayer each autumn that there will be enough rain, that you will get to experience this miracle of seeing the desert transformed not by technology or human intervention, amazing as irrigation might be, but by the divine act of bringing rain at its appointed time.

In exile the idea of the wilderness turning fertile seems like a miracle that must be outside of nature. Living in the Land of Israel you see the miracles Hashem has created as part of the natural cycle of the Land, how at a stroke the land languishes in drought, even the hardy acacias whithering with thirst, how one extra rainy season brings the desert to life, moshivi akeret habayit em habanim semeha, Halleluyah. Shabbat shalom!

Yehehzkel's vision of the dry bones - the desert in bloom gives faith that a nation beaten down by the might of Babylon can yet rise again

Faith from the experience of the climate and nature of the Land itself, anyone who has lived here has a faith derived from experiencing the cycle of drought and rebirth, that just as the desert can flood and bloom, so the biblical prophets promises of redemption can be realised.

A belief that miracles can occur naturally as part of the natural order of the world, not as some kind of outside supernatural intervention, a faith that the inconceivable is not the impossible, that it can become real, that dreams and yearnings for returning to Zion can happen. In this sense the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in Israel is a miracle within nature, just because it seemed like an impossible dream did not mean it could not be done, miraculous things happen all the time through the natural order that Hashem created, miracles don't necessarily mean magic.

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