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Another factor in this ephemeral but unexpressed serenity is that people here are basically satisfied with their lives. Survey after survey over all of the years show that at least three quarters of the Israeli population express itself as being happy with their lives. This is a far higher percentage than that recorded in the polled population of the United States or Western countries generally. The lesson of the rabbis that wealth can only truly be measured by one’s satisfaction level of the life and assets that one possesses is certainly true here in our society. Again I attribute this to the fact that people have a sense of a higher purpose - albeit again usually unexpressed but still present - in just living here. There is a sense of history and destiny that shrouds the life of every Jew living in the Land of Israel. It gives our lives here a certain surreal and spiritual quality that compensates for any imagined material lack that one may think is present in one’s life. The Torah community in America can have very little influence on American life generally - rather the opposite is true. American life strongly impacts the Jewish community and its Torah community as well. This fact is true in all exiles and diasporas since Jews are always a small minority of the population. Here in Israel there is a large Torah community that impacts all of Israeli life in various ways and strength and here we are always dealing with a Jewish community that is the strong majority population of the country. That contributes to an underlying sense of pride and purpose that leads to satisfaction in one’s life and to this sense of serenity that permeates our country and its people.
The Torah itself states that outside the Land of Israel the Jews would always be burdened by having a lev ragoz - a troubled, dissatisfied, frustrated sense of spirit and life itself. The tensions of living in the exile are omnipresent. One is driven either towards assimilation into the general non-Jewish society with the accompanying feelings of subliminal alienation and regret or towards a constant struggle to retain one’s Jewish identity in the face of an overwhelmingly negative cultural majority. In any event psychological serenity and satisfaction are rare to find between these choices of life attitudes and practices. The lev ragoz haunts Jewish life in the exile and is part of the life and community of Jewish existence in the exile. The Torah views this type of life in the exile as "dwelling in darkness" - the description it gives of the great Babylonian Talmud itself since it was composed in the exile of Babylonia. Israel, the land and the people who dwell in it, experiences a Jewish life that exists nowhere else. This is probably another key to the serenity of life and purpose of existence that living in the Land of Israel brings to all those who live there.
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Hosha'ana Rabba FLYDUBAI & HOSHANA RABBA- ANI VAHU HOSHIA NA- I & HIM SAVE US
"Ani vaHu Hoshia Na", "I and Him, Save Us". We don't just pray to Him, but we also pray to and for ourselves that we should emulate and educate our children to have that instinctive altruism with which He created the world. President Trump seemed amused about Yaniv Hayon, our PLUMBER who confidently worked with G-d like Superman (he learned from a pilot on a TV show!) to save 174 lives on the Dubai hijacking, but we in Israel are totally accustomed already 78 years to our plumbers, teachers, garbage-men, rabbis, farmers & doctors being Hashem's shlichim! This is what Zionism is about.
Moreshet Shaul Hashem Is your Shadow – part I
Based on Siach Shaul, Pirkei Machshava V’Hadracha p. 420 – an address from 1941
P'ninat Mishpat A Non-Contractor in Changing Times – part I
(based on ruling 85128 of the Eretz Hemdah-Gazit Rabbinical Courts)
Moreshet Shaul Our King on Rosh Hashana, Our Father on Yom Kippur.
Based on Aroch Siach, p. 221 (Rav Shaul Yisraeli)
