Opening Letter
Temple, Words and Melodies
Take flight, take flight, melodies
And song shall touch song
Between ladders and windows
You are singing, you are building
Building the Temple
Building the Temple
(Yehoram Gaon singing the words written by Haim Hefer, a non-religious Israeli writer)
“What are you doing with someone who wants to build the Temple?” the interviewer asks Gadi Wilchersky, stand-up comedian, actor, activist and Israeli screenwriter, who joined the Zehut Knesset list.
A terminally ill patient says to me, “I know that you want to build the Temple and all of that. But nonetheless I am with you because I know that only with you will I be able to access the cannabis oil that saved my life.”
“My brother is a fan of yours,” says the woman ahead of me in line, “but I will not vote for you, because you want the Temple.”
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For years I have been involved with almost every aspect of our lives, formulating plans to deal with all of Israel’s central challenges, and speaking from every platform on the economy and security, education and housing, the cost of living and the legal system. Nonetheless, it is as if the Temple is chasing me, its shadow covers me…”Temple! He wants to build the Temple!”
It's strange…I don’t have an operational plan for the Temple and in the ZEHUT platform you will not find a chapter about building the Temple. Nonetheless, that is what they see in me.
Suddenly I understand that they are not against me, it is not some evil media trying to scare everyone away from me. They actually respect me, they take an interest. They are the people who are closest to me, the curious who sense that I have some content to offer them. They really are looking at me. It doesn’t matter how much I attempt to don a mask of ‘normalcy’. That is what they see in me:
Building the Temple.
“You can’t run away from it,” I tell myself. “That is what you are – the Temple.” Ultimately, you will not be able to hide behind one thousand amazing programs. You have to address this issue – because all of these great plans and proposals come from there.”
But I have no words.
I have no words to explain it because there is no language with which to understand it. There is no consciousness within which to contain it and our ability to dream does not exist.
I am used to evading the issue, distancing the question with a quick explanation that the entire Temple business will not happen until we all want it. “I want to build the Temple, but I can’t build it without you,” I once said in a private conversation with journalist Reno Tzror. The steeliness in his question turned into a smile. “You will have to wait a long time,” he said. “I have patience,” I replied.
“The Temple will not be built with a coalition grab. The Temple will be built like the giving of the Torah, when we are united like one person with one heart. I need you to drag me and the stones to the Mount…” I summed it up. Reno relaxed and continued to the next question. And I made note of an effective technique with which I can gloriously evade the question of questions. Since then, I use that technique every time that the question is asked.
This technique is not about evading the question with an incorrect answer. The answer is actually precise and well-founded in our sources. It is evasion because it doesn’t solve the real point of contention. The person I am speaking with will say to himself:
“You are dreaming of the Temple. But your sweet dream is my nightmare! So what are you actually telling me? That you really are crazy, but that I have nothing to worry about because you have deposited the key to the safe, the magazine for the rifle – in my hands? So I don’t have to fear you? All that you have to tell me is not to worry, that you are a lunatic in control? I, the Israeli, the product of enlightenment, the new Israeli nation that removed the hunchback called God from its shoulders and created a civil sovereignty – Israeli instead of Jewish – you are asking me to trust you? You? A Temple dreamer?
So instead of just giving you the key to the safe, I would like to slowly and carefully open it with you. I also do not know exactly what is in there. I am also apprehensive. Like a boy who is being taught how to pet a dog, I feel desire and fear simultaneously. Allow me to share my feelings with you. Let us overcome the fear – together. Perhaps if we can chase the nightmare away, love will surface.
“Who needs this whole Vatican?” Moshe Dayan attempted to prevent the liberation of Jerusalem in 1967. He was preceded by Ben Gurion, who, in 1948, withdrew the Palmach forces from the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and abandoned the city and its Jews to Jordanian captivity. But Jerusalem did not despair of us. In the Six Day War it forced itself upon us and Dayan hurriedly gave the keys to the Temple Mount to the Moslem wakf.
Just don’t keep the Temple Mount in our hands!
We will exchange it for the Western Wall, and turn it into a synagogue.
We must preserve Judaism in its religious, exile edition!
We will preserve our museum-like religion, the opiate of the masses.
We will remain normal at any price. We will cling to our new civil identity.
And recently, when two policemen were murdered at the entrance to the Temple Mount, Netanyahu removed the metal detectors because the Arabs threatened not to return to the Mount…
Just don’t leave us alone with this Mount, with this identity, with this destiny from which we fled to – of all places – the Land of Israel...
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The religious, of course, cooperated. Because there is nothing more anti-religious than the Temple. Without it, Jerusalem is the city of all faiths. But with it – religion is finished.
With the Temple, the Nation of Israel advances to itself, to the Third Temple culture and its universal message: The message of human liberty, the message of perfection of the world in the Kingdom of the One God Who we will worship exclusively – rather than mortal kings.
We have made aliyah as a nation and our language has also made aliyah. But our Torah is still in exile, in its contracted religious, community configuration – a configuration that befits a nation without a land and with no relevant message to herald. It is only natural that it was necessary to rebel against this religious configuration in order to return to proud sovereignty. This is why the religious don’t want the Mount. They prefer to cling to religion.
But I am not religious. I am a Jew – so I cannot manage to bury the Temple. And as much as I may try to hide it, it is always peeking out over my shoulder.
Ultimately, the secular will force the religious to build it. Like a romantic story about a young woman in love whose lover is completely maligned in order to prevent her from marrying him. At first, it works. But the young woman cannot find herself. There is no zest in her life. They try to fix her up with all the boys in the world – socialism, capitalism, high-tech, interchanges and hi-rises and Israeli drive for success. But inside, she remains empty. In the end, all the lies dissipate and the love bursts forth. At the very end, even the religious will join.
They are all busy with intimidation. “The Temple Mount is a barrel of explosives!” But just the opposite is true. The abandonment of the Mount and our identity is what draws the fire. Forgetting the Mount is the real barrel of explosives.
“I can get along with you,” said an Arab Knesset Member to me. “From the Nile to the Euphrates – no problem. But the Zionists? Even if they give me Tel Aviv, there will be war here!”
I have no words.
But I do have melodies. Because how do you explain the difference between blue and red to a person blind from birth?
I am also blind. I have a melody of love in my heart. But I am blind.
My Temple was destroyed 2000 years ago. What can I possibly remember?
So what is this constant longing?
True, I never saw the Temple. But it is preserved in our collective memory. It is not merely preserved. It is powerfully present! Until not very long ago, even leftist Haim Hefer and Yehoram Gaon, as well, fearlessly sang songs of longing for the Temple.
I have melodies that preserve the memory and produce longing in our collective soul. And this memory, this wondrous memory, is what preserved our identity. The longing for “that barrel of explosives” is really the reason why we remained as a nation on the stage of history and why we returned and built a state – which wants to avoid the Temple at all costs – but without it, loses the purpose and destiny that give reason and potency to existence.
When the Temple Mount is desolate, the State of Israel begins to implode. Like a heart, the Temple Mount pumps the blood that enlivens the entire body. When the heart is ill, the periphery becomes cold. Rockets begin to drizzle into Sderot and Ashkelon and sometimes into the heart, itself – Tel Aviv and Be’er Sheva. A nation that flees its message and abandons its heart will necessarily lose the rest of its body. Currently, it is legitimate for rockets to fall in southern Israel. Later, the disease will spread to the body’s center.
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When I think of the Temple, I think of the human brain. I have a strong connection to the brain, a strong connection to my son, David, who lay unconscious for three months following a severe brain injury - and with God’s lovingkindness woke once again to life. I have a strong connection to my Tzippy, who has Parkinson’s disease but lives and lives and lives. My life is intertwined with the brain and life – and that is where my imagination takes me.
The brain is the place where thought meets action, the place where the physical meets the metaphysical. The Temple Mount and the Temple are the brain of the world – the place where creation meets the Creator Who enlivens it, the place where the physical meets the metaphysical, the place where the body meets the soul. The Temple is the place where God’s finger touches us and awakens humanity to life.
The Temple is the royal palace of the King of Kings, the Creator of the world and its Master – His royal palace, here, with us, in our midst, in Jerusalem.
The Temple is the true message of liberty. Flesh and blood will not rule over us. We have a King!
From Pharaoh to Ahashverosh to Hitler, may his name be blotted out - and Stalin as well – the despots who dream of ruling the world all reach the conclusion that they must destroy all the Jews. Because it is impossible to really enslave us. In the camps and in the gulags, we, the Jews, will always remain free – simply because we already have a King. Our name, Israel, means “God will rule”. That is Israel’s intrinsic secret.
Our message of monotheism, of liberation from pagan enslavement, our message of liberty of the Exodus from Egypt has been soaring the skies for 3000 years. A statue of Moses adorns the entrance to the US Supreme Court. And just as we returned to our Land and our language - precisely as the prophets envisioned and counter to all the laws of history - so will we return and build the royal palace for our God, the King of the world on the Mount. And from there, we will herald the message of complete liberty to all of humanity - exactly as they prophesied.
The despots of history cannot bear it. That is why they must destroy us.
___
Our Sages say that since the Temple was destroyed, the sweetness of intimacy, the flavor of fruits and many other flavors have all disappeared. Simply put – the soul has departed from the body and the taste of life has vanished.
What does that mean? That today we are not living? Apparently, not so well. We are living with a severe brain injury, we are living with Parkinson’s disease, we struggle to taste the flavor of life.
How do I know? Perhaps what we are experiencing now is the ultimate goal of everything? I do not know. But my Jewish identity, the collective memory for which Yehoram Gaon longs - is knocking at my door. It doesn’t let up. It tells me that there is another horizon. There is red and there is blue. There are flavors. There is an experience that I don’t know. There is life and there is a message for which I long even though I personally never lived them. But the collective to which I belong preserved them in my memory.
That memory, that longing – continually knocks at my door.
And not only my door.
“Perhaps when the children of the prophets will return to their Land and the language of the Bible will once again be sung in their destroyed Temple, a message and a new song will ring forth from Zion for the redemption of the world.” That is likely what Lord Balfour said to himself on the backdrop of the millions of dead bodies of the First World War – and gave us the declaration that established our state.
Thanks to the Temple.
Thanks to Balfour’s longing, we received a state.
“If you don’t move the embassy to Jerusalem, we will not vote for you again,” said the Evangelists to their president, Donald Trump. And the embassy moved. Thanks to the Temple. Thanks to the longing.
Humanity longs for the Temple.
When it sees us returning after 2000 years, like a phoenix, like migrating birds with some powerful inner compass, it stands in amazement and anticipates an extraordinary message. And when we flee our message, that anticipation is replaced by anger, and antisemitism returns to haunt us.
“We dreamt of a place in which the new Book of Books would be written in anticipation of the redemption of the world, for you are, after all, the Chosen People…the world had expectations, and look what you have done.” This is how a group of British intellectuals described their disappointment in the Jews and the reason that they don’t see Israel as legitimate. [1]
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I have no words. Words are awkward. The Temple is trust and song. It is the ultimate nationalism and the ultimate universalism. The most personal and the most public. The Temple is what we are. It is the ultimate purpose. When we deny it and attempt to erase it from our hearts, when we stop dreaming – we lose our connection to the justice of our cause. We stumble in the darkness and waste our time on baseless hatred.
The message of liberty for humanity will not be built by coercion. Just as God infused us with a new spirit, and from the ashes of the furnaces we built a state, so will come the moment when we will be infused by spirit and we will build the Temple. Together.
All that I want is to free the nation from all coercion, from all intimidation.
All that I want is to make it possible to listen to one another.
From a place of liberty.
Let the spirit in.
Instead of a Foreword
“We stand here tonight
to safeguard our Identity,
to fight for our Liberty
and to blaze a trail and Purpose for the State of Israel.”
Winter, 2017. The thousands filing into the hall for ZEHUT’s first conference are all ages and types. I worked for hours on my speech, so that it would encapsulate the main points of our vision. The conference was set to endorse the platform and the vision – endorsement of the new, trailblazing operations manual that we would be setting at Israel’s doorstep.
For me, it was a tremendous moment of coming full circle.
The last time that I had gathered together crowds of this size was 22 years earlier, when I established the Zo Artzeinu movement in an attempt to prevent the transfer of Israel’s heartland to the PLO terror organization.
From a deep affinity to liberty and a truly democratic outlook, I led Israel’s Right at that time to a new kind of civil struggle - non-violent civil disobedience and a simple, heretofore unknown request in Israel – please take us to jail.
Many waters have coursed through the Yarkon River since tens of thousands of Zo Artzeinu protesters blocked traffic throughout Israel and filled the prisons in Israel out of their own free will. All the rightist parties then in Israel, from the Likud to Moledet, wanted to include the anonymous “Peter Pan”, who had come from nowhere and suddenly straightened the bowed back of the Right, in their Knesset rosters. But an internal voice prevented me from jumping on the political bandwagon and translating the public credit into political power, as is the norm.
Deep inside, I felt that I had nothing to offer…So what would I do in the Knesset? All that I knew how to say then was that the Left was leading us to catastrophe with the Oslo Accords.
How right I was!
But what was I proposing?
What was the Right proposing?
Even then, I understood that Binyamin Netanyahu could not propose a different direction. Sure enough, a short time after he was elected in the elections of 1996, Netanyahu also embraced Arafat and completely adopted the path that the Left had delineated.
Instead of jumping straight into politics, I established an ideological movement, and for twenty years, I carefully clarified and polished my ideas. I quickly realized that the territorial issue was just the symptom, not the illness – and that if I wanted to propose an alternative, it would have to come from an inclusive, broad perspective that encompasses all facets of life: economy and housing, cost of living and education, the legal system and homeland security. I understood that the issue is not the Land of Israel. The issue is identity and liberty.
The worldview that crystallized went through a long incubation period in the Likud, and when I was elected to the 19th Knesset, I discovered an interesting phenomenon: “Everybody in this building thinks that you belong to him,” said an opinionated MK from Yesh Atid.
The fact that I didn’t jump straight from the protests against the situation to the Knesset, but rather, waited until I was ready to present an alternative in favor of a different situation, created willingness to listen. The pure hatred between the rightist and leftist MKs did not apply to me. The best of the MKs came from both the Left and the Right. The world of content in whose name I was acting saved me from the necessity of defining myself by negating the other. I am not rightist because I oppose the Left, I am not leftist because I oppose the Right. I have my own identity and I don’t have to hate you in order to create it. When there is identity, peace reigns.
____
Here, in ZEHUT, is the place for all those who wish to be free Jews!
ZEHUT is the place for all those who are not willing to surrender to national life bereft of rhyme or reason.
ZEHUT is the place for all those who seek real change and rectification, rectification with purpose and not just public relations ploys.
ZEHUT is the place for all those who are not willing to kick onto the next generation – to their own children – all the things that we could have fixed in our generation!
ZEHUT is the place for all those who are willing to shoulder the task of our generation – to infuse the words of our national anthem, Hatikvah, “to be a free nation in our Land” with content and meaning.
Let us talk about that. What does it mean, “to be a free Jew?”
To be a free Jew is first, to be free to educate your own children!
A state with identity will not continue to take our money and force us to deposit our children’s education – in its hands!
A state with identity will do just the opposite! It will return our tax money in the form of schooling vouchers so that we can decide to whom we will entrust our children’s education. Who we trust to truly teach them – according to our beliefs!
ZEHUT will restore responsibility for education from the State to the parents. That is what we mean when we say “to be a free Jew.”
This does not only pertain to education. Education is the most important thing, but it is only the beginning.
With ZEHUT, we will all be free Jews. Free of the state’s intervention and coercion inside the family. We will not accept the horrible phenomenon of heightened suicide levels of divorced fathers who have been thrown into the streets.
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In order to be a free Jew, you need not only freedom of education and family. You also need economic freedom. An economy that drastically reduces housing prices. Not by means of manipulation, but by returning ownership of our national lands to the citizens!
An economy that reduces housing prices by replacing the Planning and Housing Committees with a method that does not include bureaucrats and corruption.
Economy that reduces housing prices by cancelling purchase and construction taxes.
And of course, an economy that reduces housing prices by opening up the entire country – from the Mediterranean to the Jordan River – to Jewish construction in the entire Land of Israel.
In order to be free Jews, we must lower the cost of living.
We will accomplish that by cancelling import tax, cancelling unnecessary standards and cancelling all the ‘tricks’ that are meant to make it easy for the insiders at the expense of the rest of the population.
A free Jew needs a truly free economy! An economy without state interference and minimal taxation.
Yes, dear friends, not only will ZEHUT make Israel one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but it will also make its citizens prosperous!
ZEHUT will see to it that the great abundance that our Father in Heaver showers upon us will not be absorbed and disappear into state mechanisms, cronyism, insiders’ circles and corruption. Instead, it will remain in the citizens’ pockets. It will remain in the true economy.
With ZEHUT, not only will the state be wealthy, but its citizens will be wealthy, too!
Is this our message? Money? Where is the ideology?
Dear friends, our message is Liberty! Liberty fosters abundance and abundance fosters liberty. When we fail to build a state of abundance, the Jewish doctor in France finds it very difficult to find work here and immigrates to Canada. There he will have a nice livelihood. But his children? They are not likely to remain Jewish…
If the great waves of immigration to Israel come only from economically failing states, that means that we have failed!
It doesn’t matter how much we have grown and how many interchanges and skyscrapers we have built. If Jews from prosperous countries do not come here, then our economy has failed!
If the state is rich, but the citizens cannot make ends meet, then millions of Jews – an entire generation that could have been here a long time ago, simply don’t come! They are not coming from Europe, they are not coming from North America and not from Australia. An entire generation is not coming and its descendants are forever lost to the Jewish Nation!
We have to turn our welfare state into a state of abundance!
We cannot continue to be an affluent state whose citizens are floundering.
We cannot continue to be a nation of high-tech and Nobel prizes whose students are at the bottom of the list of reading and math achievements.
We cannot continue to have our citizens
work the most in the West
earn the least
and pay the most!
Dear friends, being a free Jew pertains not only to civil issues: economy, education, housing and family. To be a free Jew also means security!
We are no longer willing to see our leaders transfer the responsibility for our security to the US, on the one hand, and to the legal counsels and the High Court – on the other.
It is not Obama who is responsible for the fact that our children will, God forbid, grow up in the shadow of a nuclear Iran! The person responsible for that is the person who transferred the responsibility for our security to the Americans, and then was left outside the room when the deal with Iran was signed.
It is not the legal counsels who are responsible for the fact that we do not deport families of terrorists! The person responsible for that is the person who transfers his own responsibility for the security of Israel’s citizens – to them!
It is not America.
It is not the High Court,
It is not the Left,
It is not the media –
who destroyed the homes in Amona and Ofra.
It is the authority that implements the decisions; it is the government of Israel – its leaders, ministers and advisors!
It is they who chose to ignore thousands of illegal buildings in the Negev, the Galil and triangle. Buildings for which demolition orders have been issued in all the court- but for some reason, it was impossible to forgo the honor of the legal system and its decisions.
It is not the High Court, friends, it is not the media – it is the government.
A government, which, without a clear road map, with no goal, compass and conscience, is vulnerable and allows any fleeting pressure to dictate its path.
It is the government – not the Left – that destroyed Amona!
It is the government – not the High Court – that destroyed Ofra!
It is the government – not the Americans. It is the government, which, without ZEHUT, will continue, God forbid, to destroy settlements.
ZEHUT will not sit for one moment is a government like the above. ZEHUT is building an alternative!
We did not establish a state in order to fear for our children’s’ safety in the mixed cities and southern Tel Aviv.
We did not establish a state so that we would constantly fear stabbing or car ramming attacks.
We did not establish a state in order to send our children to pointless wars, which we call, ‘rounds.’
Everybody is looking for the light at the end of the tunnel. But the problem is not the tunnels. Nobody is talking about the elephant in the room!
The government and the IDF sent our soldiers to the booby-trapped alleyways of Gaza during Operation Protective Edge – not to win! They sent them there in order NOT to win. The decision makers in both the government and the IDF were more concerned about the Hamas collapsing than about a missile slamming into the center of Tel Aviv.
I was in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Security Committee during Operation Protective Edge. When I asked the Chief of Staff to-be, “Who is the enemy?” he was not able to give me a clear answer!
He was not able to give me a clear answer because the meaning of the clear answer would have forced him to defeat the Hamas. But his task was not to defeat the Hamas, but to restrain it.
So we ended the war tied with a fly-by-night terror organization.
Sderot and Tel Aviv continued to be targeted.
The Jewish communities near Gaza continue to be targeted.
And our children will once again be sent to Gaza’s alleyways in the next round.
We did not establish a state in order to be conquerors in our own Land, to be the last colonialists in the world.
This is our Land!
This is our Land and only our Land, the Land given to us by the Creator of the world!
This has been our Land for more than 3000 years.
This is the Land to which we never lost connection, and for which we always longed.
For Jerusalem.
For the destroyed Temple.
This is the Land to which we returned after 2000 years of exile.
We will never betray it!
We will end the state of occupation that beckons every nation on earth to interfere with our internal matters. We will impose sovereignty over our entire Land. We will safeguard it and develop it for the generations to come.
We will safeguard all the human rights of the non-Jewish residents of our heartland – Judea and Samaria, and we will offer them the following options:
Those who wish to live with us as permanent residents may do so.
Those who wish to emigrate – we will help them generously.
Those who wish to serve in the IDF, to prove their unequivocal loyalty and to be citizens, will have that path opened to them.
There is just one option that we will not offer. We will not offer anybody the option of robbing us of our Homeland.
The concepts, ‘territories’, ‘Intifada’, ‘Palestinian Authority’, ‘Separation Fence’ and the rest of the Oslo lexicon will be unrecognizable to our children and grandchildren. They will be free and secure Jews in the entire length and breadth of their Land.
Dear Friends,
In ZEHUT, we have the answers to the challenges of our generation. They are written in the most detailed and meaningful platform that was ever written in Israeli politics. We present it to the people of Israel.
This historical document is much more than a platform. It is the manifesto of the modern Jewish state. If you have joined ZEHUT and you have this platform in your hands, nobody will ever ask you, “What is your alternative?”
Here is your plan!
Here is the direction!
This is the way!
And you are here!
You are the people who will turn Israel into a wealthy, healthy state.
A state abundant in knowledge, education, self-confidence and vitality.
A state that is just, triumphant, secure and deterrent.
And from that place and only from that place:
A state of peace.
Dear friends, as you have already understood, we are no longer leaving the attention to the details of our daily existence to anyone else. But in ZEHUT we also understand that there cannot be existence without destiny, and without vision, everything frays.
It doesn’t matter how rich and strong we will be. A Jewish state cannot exist without identity, purpose, a message and a vision.
The scissors in the hands of a girl from Shchem will always defeat the F-35 pilot or the submarine commander of a nation whose leadership does not understand what it is doing here and where we are supposed to be going…
Dear friends, this year we will celebrate 100 years since the Balfour Declaration. Exactly 100 years ago, with the decision of the Council of Nations, humanity decided that the Nation of Israel must return to its Land – on both sides of the Jordan River.
On the backdrop of the horrors of the First World War, Lord Balfour explained the reason for his strange decision: “The British Empire expects,” said Balfour, “that from Zion, a new message will be heralded for humanity.”
Initially, England enthusiastically joined forces to accomplish the task. But today British intellectuals explain why the State of Israel has lost its legitimacy to exist:
“We dreamt of a place in which the new Book of Books would be written in anticipation of the redemption of the world, for you are, after all, the Chosen People…the world had expectations, and look what you have done.”
And today?
Today in the age of ISIS the world doesn’t have expectations of us?
Has our world been rectified? Is its path paved and clear?
Today, when Western civilization and culture are collapsing, is there no more need for an exemplary society that is the standard-bearer of liberty and truth for humanity?
Today, as well, friends, also today, the world has expectations of us different from any other nation.
Humanity knows that we are the nation that testifies by its very eternal existence to the existence of God.
We are the nation that holds in its hands the keys to morality and justice.
Thus, the forces of evil always attempt to destroy us, while we remain a “nation that flees its message.”
But it does not matter how much we flee our message.
It will chase us and not leave us alone.
It does not matter how democratic and technological we will be. How humane, enlightened and progressive. The free world will always turn against us if we continue to disappoint it and continue to ignore our message.
ZEHUT is finally presenting a clear vision for the State of Israel. A vision that not only answers the question, “How will we live here?”, but also answers, “Why?” and “Where are we going?”
We are a nation with vision and a message that have enlivened us – against all the laws of nature – for 3000 years!.
We are the eternal nation whose collective DNA holds the culture and message of perfection of the world.
You will always find Jews at the head of all religions and ideologies.
We perfect the world with socialism.
We perfect the world with capitalism.
Here in Israel, we are perfecting the world with high-tech…
But when all is said and done, we are the nation that heralds a new message to the world:
The message of human liberty under the wings of the One God.
And the all-out war against pagan servitude.
We are the nation that for 3000 years daily repeats in its prayers that our task is to perfect the world in the Kingdom of Heaven.
That is why we, the Jews, are always targeted by the major dictators. Because it really is impossible to enslave us.
It makes no difference how miserable our situation will be.
At the root, we will always remain free.
After all, we already have a king!
Dear friends, how does a Jewish society in a modern state that heralds this amazing message of liberty look?
The parts of this puzzle are not exclusively in my pocket or in the pockets of anyone among us.
The complete picture is not only with the religious or only with the secular. The complete picture is not only with the Jerusalemites and the settlers, or just with the Tel Avivians and the kibbutz dwellers.
Part of the puzzle of the Jewish state – the state that will herald our message – is in the pocket of every Jew. The message is in the ancient DNA that is embedded in the blood of each and every one of us.
Our job is to simply remove the state from our lives and to stop all cultural, religious or secular coercion. To distance all coercion that gets in the way of free dialogue and mutual enrichment of all parts of society. We have to let our DNA freely have its word.
A tender sapling does not grow by force. All that we have to do is protect it and expose it to sunlight - and believe me, it will grow gloriously. We will let our culture develop freely, and we will perfect the world.
In ZEHUT, we don’t flee our message.
We are committed to the strongest, wealthiest, most liberty-filled and free state.
We are going to create a just state and society, abundant in livelihood and health for every young couple and for every Jew who lives in it and will hurry to make aliyah to it.
We will kindle the spark of the challenge of perfection of the world in the eyes of the young people! Our young people will grow up with great pride in their nation and their state – a state that gives content and tremendous purpose to their lives.
No more excuses. Friends, it is in our hands! Let’s do it!
I looked at the cheering crowd. Did they really understand what I was saying? Is there an entire body of people that is really beginning to dream my dream? It was an uplifting moment. I thanked all the industrious activists, I thanked our party executive officer Shai Malkah, I thanked my wife, Tzippy, without whose support over all these years, none of this would be happening. And I thanked the Good Lord.
“Thank you, God, for giving us life and bringing us to this joyous event!
I rejoice that we have the merit to act and set true change into motion, a change in the direction of history in Israeli society and in the state of Israel. Change that brings Israel from Zionism of existence alone to Zionism of message and destiny.”
I invite you to turn the page and dive deep into our platform, into the vision and the message, into the new operational instructions for the State of Israel.
Moshe Feiglin
Winter, 5779/2019
[1] Ze’ev Tzachor in an interview to the Makor Rishon newspaper, Adar Alef 5768