Am Israel Chai! (The Nation of Israel Lives!)
After the horrendous and inhumane Hamas attack and on the verge of a larger-scale war, the iconic and defiant slogan of “Am Israel Chai (The Nation of Israel Lives)!” can be seen and heard everywhere in Israel and all over the world.
But what does this actually mean, and what is the significance of the survival of Israel?
Israel is not a nation like others. The predecessors or “forefathers” were not connected by genetic, tribal, or cultural ties; they did not even have a common religion at that time.
The original group of Jews that later became the Nation of Israel started with the assembly of special citizens of ancient Mesopotamia from many different nationalities and cultures.
The only thing that was common between them was their unique sensitivity and inclination to seek unity and mutually complementing cooperation above and against the inherently selfish, egocentric, and individualistic human nature. Their original ideology — attributed to Abraham — was “Love your friend as yourself,” which was and remained incomprehensible and unacceptable to everyone else but these few unique people who assembled together.
We can say that these people were “chosen” and naturally selected by natural evolution to serve as unique transitions for humanity at a much later stage in human development, at which stage we are standing today.
Then, they started to develop their “instinctive sensitivity and inclination” into a method, and this method — unity and mutual guarantee above and against instinctive mutual separation, distrust, and animosity — later became the “national constitution” for these people when they committed and vowed to keep “brotherly love” above instinctive “unfounded hatred” at any given circumstances and against all provocations, temptations, and difficulties.
As humanity and, with it, the human ego — both outside of Israel and within the Jewish nation — grew, keeping this “supernatural” — above inherent human nature — unity became more and more difficult. In the end, even Jews lost their ability to live by their unity over 2000 years ago.
This is when the last exile of the Jews and, with it, Judaism — an external and mostly physical method and set of traditions to keep Jews together — was born. But what truly kept Jews together and against assimilating into other nations was the seemingly illogical and disproportionate hatred and rejection against them.
As Rav Yehuda Ashlag described, Jews are like nuts in a sack; although they keep grinding and colliding against each other, external hatred and rejection keep them together.
We can see it even today. A nation, the Israeli society, which went almost into civil war based on the myriads of disagreements between different fractions in society, is now united and fights together as a result of the collective grief and existential threat the nation encounters. Even Jews in the Diaspora find themselves as targets of exploding antisemitism. Thus, suddenly, even those Jews who did not care about the fate of Israel started supporting the existential fight of the Jewish State.
But this unity, caused by external threats and blows from others, is not enough to facilitate the survival of Jews and Israel. The Jewish Nation has to revive the original unity and mutual guarantee, existing in “brotherly love,” “as one man with one heart” above and despite the vast differences and perceived incompatibility, without suppressing or erasing anything.
The unique Jewish unity — which needs a special method to develop and sustain — is unity above concomitant separation, love against concomitant hatred, holding and uniting and balancing two extremes while also harnessing special, natural developmental forces that enable existing between vast and contrasting opposites and using even the negative forces for positive and constructive goals and mutually beneficial purpose.
At the end of the day, the Nation of Israel does not live and survive for its own sake. Modern-day Jews have to rediscover and keep the original purpose for which Jews were chosen by natural evolution. Jews and the Nation of Israel have to become the unique and guiding positive example for everybody else, facilitating humanity’s global integration and development into a single, living, and mutually integrated entity.
The Nation of Israel exists and lives for the whole of humanity, as without the Jewish method — shown and publicized by Israel — humanity will self-destruct here and now!