To Whom Does the Land of Israel Belong?

The Land of Israel belongs to whoever adapts themselves to it.

What does this mean and how does it work? According to the wisdom of Kabbalah, “land” (Eretz in Hebrew) means desire (Ratzon), the very matter or substance of creation. The Land of Israel thus refers to a desire aimed directly at the upper force of love, bestowal, and connection, called “the Creator,” since the word “Israel” comes from a connection of two words “Yashar-El” (“straight to God”). It is a desire that we can develop that longs to love, give, and positively connect as is the Creator’s quality of love, bestowal, and connection.

We do not sense this desire through our inborn corporeal senses of sight, smell, touch, hearing, and taste. It is rather a spiritual quality of love, bestowal, and connection that exists above our corporeal sensation, i.e., above wishing to receive solely for self-benefit. This spiritual state casts a shadow into our world, a reflection that materializes as physical land with borders, terrain, climate, and a history. Kabbalah explains that every spiritual force has a physical imprint as people, places, and events in our world, because everything exists in a single system.

Therefore, if we live according to spiritual laws of love, bestowal, and connection, then we will feel blessings, abundance, and peace, even here in the physical Land of Israel. But if we reject these laws and live in hatred and division, primarily serving our egoistic and divisive drives, then this same land rejects us. As it is written, “the land will vomit you out” (Leviticus 18:28).

Is this not exactly what we have seen? 70 years ago, we returned to the land physically but we did not adapt to it spiritually. We did not match the land’s inner quality, arranging ourselves to live according to laws of mutual love and bestowal.

Why does this coarse land respond to something as intangible as love or hatred? It is because spiritual forces work on every level of reality, the still, vegetative, animate, and human. Nature absorbs our inner state. It reacts to our intentions. The land itself “feels” whether we relate to each other with either unifying or rejecting attitudes.

While we know of the Earth as being physically constructed of atoms and molecules, beneath it lies a spiritual infrastructure, a matrix of desire and intention. Every desire has a structure: five levels, each with its own corresponding intention. When we aim our desires outwardly at the benefit of others, then we awaken nature to respond to such an intention positively, as a force that brings harmony and peace.

However, humanity has yet to mature spiritually. Our desire to bestow has not fully formed, and as a result, conflict and suffering persist, especially in the Land of Israel. Why? It is because the human being, “Adam” in Hebrew, has not yet reached a state of being “Domeh le Elyon,” i.e., “similar to the Most High.” Until we reach similarity with the upper force, with the Creator, with the altruistic and integral laws of nature—all of which Kabbalah describes interchangeably—we influence nature with our corrupted egoism and nature reflects that imbalance back at us.

Kabbalist Yehuda Ashlag (Baal HaSulam) wrote in the 1940s that just as Earth formed through a struggle between opposing forces, so too humanity is in constant conflict. However, while the still, vegetative, and animate levels of nature exist in balance, human beings project their egoistic imbalance onto the whole system, which is the reason for the myriad forms of suffering in the world.

What must we do as humans? We must become human in the fullest sense of the word, “Adam,” a being that resembles the Creator. How? It is by developing love for others, by rising above egoistic reception and shifting to an altruistic modus operandi, one where mutual responsibility, concern, support, and encouragement thrive in our connections. Then we will feel a new reality. We will see the world differently as harmonious and peaceful, not because the world changes, but because we do.

In our world, we feel mostly negative forces. Positive forces of love, bestowal, and connection are rare, usually limited to family and instinctual relationships. But if we learn how to awaken the positive force through unity, we can enable balance in the entire system. When that happens, all levels of nature—still, vegetative, animate, and human—will harmonize.

So why were we given this land again after 2,000 years of exile? It was not for the sake of simply possessing it. It was for the purpose of correcting ourselves within it. “Correcting ourselves” means undergoing a process of changing our inborn egoistic intention to an altruistic one that elevates us to the human level, the level of Adam where we enter into balance with nature, or in other words, similarity to the Creator. The return is thus an opportunity. But time is limited. If we fail to correspond to the Land of Israel’s inner quality, it will again reject us.

Based on the video “The Land of Israel – Spiritual States” with Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman. Written/edited by students of Kabbalist Dr. Michael Laitman.

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