Zionism Is Not Politics. Zionism Is the Return Home.

My brothers and sisters, I want to say something clearly, because too many people are speaking past one another.

Zionism is not a prime minister, a coalition, the Knesset, or the Supreme Court. Governments come and go. Israel has faults. There is corruption, division, and ugly fights between Jews who should know better. I am not blind to any of it.

Governments are temporary. Eretz Yisrael is not. You can criticize an Israeli government and still love Israel. Do not confuse politics with covenant. The covenant came first.

Hashem said to Avraham, “Go forth from your land… to the land that I will show you,” and “To your descendants I will give this land.” That is where it began. Not in Basel. In the Torah.

For two thousand years, when Jews faced Jerusalem in prayer, when they said “Next year in Jerusalem,” when a groom broke the glass, that was not theatre. It was the heartbeat of exile. The body was in exile. The soul was looking toward Jerusalem.

Chazal teach that a person should always live in Eretz Yisrael, and that dwelling in the Land is weighed with the mitzvot of the Torah. That is not a permission to eat treif in Tel Aviv and call it fine. The point is that Torah was given to a people, and the Land gives Torah a national address. Sovereignty is a test: what will you do with power?

Aliyah did not begin in the nineteenth century. The Rambam and the Shulchan Aruch already gave the return halachic weight. Devarim 30 speaks of gathering from the peoples among whom we were scattered. You may debate what stage of geulah this is. Do not say it has no religious meaning.

Rav Kook taught that Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael are connected at the level of the soul. A Jew does not have to understand the Divine plan in order to participate in it. Sometimes the body returns before the soul catches up. That happens to individuals. It can happen to a nation too.