Life.

The clash of civilizations centered around Israel has been boiling since Israel's inception, with agendas and beliefs both ancient and modern contributing to violence, bloodshed, and argument.

The Islamic culture and the Western culture have been locked in a millennia-long war, since the original Muslim conquests and crusades. Both claim the moral high ground of G-d Given legitimacy to inflict their worldview on the Other, and both have been borrowing concepts from each other to suit their needs; justice, individual rights, worship, modernity, and imperialist drives have been invoked and denied by both sides as they wage their battle over what Man is meant to look like, be like, how he is meant to live. To hear agenda-pushers on both sides, Christianity/Western secular Individualism, or Islam/Eastern submissive spirituality is the paragons of humanity. To one side, Israel is a democracy, a humanist country, and a friend. To the other, Israel is a travesty, a catastrophe, and an enemy.

The whole world has an insane interest in Israel - the UN practically exists for no other reason other than to debate Israel's existence.

Israel stands at a crossroads of the world, physically and existentially. We have two distinct cultures within our society (Ashkenaz and Sfard) each having lived in a host culture for thousands of years and absorbed their ideas, their mannerisms, their worldviews. And as all who have visited her know, Israel is a land of the ancient and the modern, of the religious and secular, of the sacred and profane. Small wonder it stands at the center of the disparate forces of the world's debate of Humanity!

And yet...
There is no distinct Jewish philosophy advocated for, or argued, in that worldwide debate. In a people barely 15 million strong (and that number is based on self-identification, a completely arbitrary measurement) there are literally millions of opinions as to what it means to be jewish in the first place. Is it a religion, a nation, a movement, a matrilineally defined identity, a tradition, a philosophy...or something else, completely.

The existence of the State of Israel has brought these questions to the foreground of modern Jewish consciousness. The State has linked citizenship to being Jewish, and this has raised a plethora of uncomfortable questions - conversion, divorce, marriage, secular vs. religious law, Halacha vs. Individual rights...and every movement within the umbrella of Judaism weighs in with their arguments and opinions. Each claims to hold the Truth in their hands, bringing proofs and arguments from varied secular and religious sources (Rambam to Locke, Moses to Madonna, Torah to Magna Carta, and everything in between).

The religious posit the answer is a theocracy, granted by G-d alone, with a legal system of Halacha. They believe so strongly in this that some of the more literally minded (Satmar, Neturei Karta) advocate the dismantling of the State of Israel, regardless of cost to human life and its inhabitants, because no man dressed in white on a donkey declared himself the Messiah, and therefore the State is not G-d's Will.

The secular insist the answer is democracy, founded in humanist Western principals, that makes no distinction between religion, nationality, or anything else. The Torah is a nice source of morals, some outdated and some still relevant. Israel and its nationalist tendencies are an embarrassment to those Enlightened to the Truths of humanity being its own goal and reward. They insist Israel not have an official religion, much the same as it shouldn't have an official people - we are all human, and that is enough.

The National Religious camp and its overseas supporters insist it is precisely this nationalism that is the answer. We are a nation, a people like any other, only in possession of the Truth as given by G-d to Moses. After a period of Exile, we have been returned to our land. Our society is supposed to be based on Halacha while allowing individual choice in level of observance, with no judgement for anyone's actions. Some go as far as to grant the current incarnation of Israel with the same level of holiness as the G-d Sanctioned Kingdoms of old (insisting the government has the halachic status of a Malchut), while others admit, pragmatically, it is a work in progress.

The Reform and Conservative each insist that Judaism is a personal identity based on religious truths, and demand a pluralistic State, with no interference in its official Religion.

I alone posit a new opinion, a perhaps oversimplified view of things, in which every last one of them is right, and every last one of them is wrong. My view has the added benefit of being supported by the only facts that can be proven empirically - that of simple history.

Our G-d is the G-d of Life, our Torah the Torah of Life, standing in for a Tree of Life. You see, Adam did not pick between Good and Evil, but between Life and Knowledge. To paraphrase Byron how famously put it, we continuously mourn the fact we constantly and consistently discover that the Tree of Knowledge is NOT the Tree of Life.

It isn't Truth we are meant to chase, but Life.
And I dare anyone to find a culture, a society, so intent on living Life in its totality - its lows and highs, truths and falsehoods, sacred and profane, sensual and ascetic, with G-d and without Him, than the modern State of Israel.

There is no jewish answer to what it means to be Man because Life is not a question meant to be "answered" in logic, or even definably. None of us can sum up their life, its richness and paradoxical nature, in ANY words. We aren't meant to. The Jewish answer is to Live - a mother's choice to die covering her child in a bombing is a bigger choice of Life than the idiot mother who sends her child strapped with TNT for the sake of Truth. It is Life itself we live for, the constant search and struggle to improve, learn, grow, FLOWER into human beings that is what we stand for, and always have.

That which Is, speaks for itself as the Will of G-d. The continued growth of the State, its march of progress, its people's advance from simplistic farmer ideologues to sophisticated and well educated cosmopolitan philosophers (in the true sense of the word - lovers of knowledge) who insist it is Life that is most important of all and so insist at being at the forefront if its propagation - be it humanitarian works, technological advancement, taking care of the less fortunate, or simply engaged in the human struggle of raising children to be healthy, happy, balanced and well adjusted adults - this is G-d's Will, and history has borne this out. What exists, exists as the word of G-d, as we all know - and it is not a stretch to declare the אלקים חיים Who Gave a תורת חיים Wants a people dedicated to Life.

It is simply this that the Jewish people, with all its groups, all its factions, all its political parties, all its differences in opinion in Halacha and philosophy, all its movements and sects and individuals, is meant to be.

As the Zohar puts it so succinctly, and powerfully, מי כעמך ישראל גוי אחד בארץ - אימתי ישראל אחד? בארץ.

We are meant to live, in constant and open debate about ourselves, our תורה, our future, and meant to do so as one - united by the Life we live, stand for, and intimately share with the G-d of Life Himself.