This is an AI-based translation of the editorial introduction to the Mattot-Massei 5786 issue of Niflaot. It is based on the issue’s main class titled, “The State of Israel, the State of Jacob, and the State of Esau.” Lightly edited for clarity.
Some intellectuals have defined the cultural war being fought among the Jews in the Land of Israel as a war between the "Jews" and the "Israelis." This division echoes the lines of the division between the two ancient kingdoms — the religious Kingdom of Judah in the south and the secular Kingdom of Israel in the north. The "Jews" are traditional, loyal to the Judaism that shaped us and sustained us throughout all the generations, with all the travails of the exile, while the "Israelis" attempt to create a new type of Jew who is liberated from exilic-ness and from the traditions of our grandparents, God save us.
But, in truth, there is no longer any place for this division, as the prophet states, "and they shall never again be divided into two kingdoms" (וְלֹא יֵחָצוּ עוֹד לִשְׁתֵּי מַמְלָכוֹת). The leadership indeed must belong to the House of David, of Judah, but in the Land of Israel there must be one state only, "the tribes of Israel together" (יַחַד שִׁבְטֵי יִשְׂרָאֵל).
The appellation "State of Israel" was "hijacked" by the state that was established out of a pretension to fashion a secular nationalism, and therefore the Lubavitcher Rebbe preferred the use of the term "Land of Israel." Nevertheless, since “Israel” is the superior name of our people, we should contemplate what the true essence of a state that genuinely merits the title "State of Israel” is, so as to actualize it in reality:
Jacob our father merited the name Israel (יִשְׂרָאֵל) on account of the mastery (שְׂרָרָה) he attained through victory in the struggle with the archangel of Esau, as the Torah testifies, "for you have striven (שָׂרִיתָ) with God and with men, and you have prevailed." Before that victory, from the day of his birth, he was called Jacob (יַעֲקֹב), because he was born "with his hand grasping Esau's heel (עָקֵב)." Jacob is Esau's twin; they jostle together in the same womb and are locked in constant struggle from birth — just as Jacob's hand grasps Esau's heel, so Esau is a serpent coiled around Jacob's heel, and they have no separate existence. Between these three names (Jacob, Esau, and Israel), the name Israel expresses the Divine thought with which God planned the world — "In thought, Israel preceded all " (יִשְׂרָאֵל עָלוּ בְמַחֲשָׁבָה); the name Jacob, which remained his name even after God gave him the name Israel, expresses the appearance of the Jewish people within a limited world, straining to survive within it and to reveal-and-speak Godliness into it, like a soul within a body; Esau belongs to the practical domain of the world. He is the body-reality within which we must act, while he attempts to strangle the spirit within the corporeal world of matter.
There are those who attempt to blur the Jewish uniqueness, and to say that in order to establish and govern a "normal" state, which would be part of the family of nations, one must focus on the practical domain ("the deed is the essential thing," הַמַּעֲשֶׂה הוּא הָעִקָּר) — in academia, in the military, in the economy, etc. To this end, they argue, we must establish an egalitarian state, "a state of all its citizens." This state is, in fact, not the Jewish State, but the State of Esau — a state in which the Jews find themselves devoted to the Esau coiled around their heel, their lower reality, without providing a space for their Jewish identity, which is not a personal, individual preference, but a national essence. By contrast, those who understand that Israel must be the state of the Jews, focused on our national identity and destiny, yet continue to demand that it remain bound to the constricted parameters of the world, the twists of diplomacy and the constraints of reality, can establish at most the State of Jacob — a state with positive aspirations, but with a spiritual horizon that will always remain limited.
Our aspiration is to establish a new state, the State of Israel, whose entire purpose is to express God's will and His primordial thought in creating the world, without any limits. The true State of Israel, the "New Israel," aspires to deliver a decisive victory over its enemies both in the physical dimension and in the ideological dimension — "for you have striven with God [an ideological-spiritual enemy] and with men [a tangible-physical enemy], and you have prevailed"!
