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Yom Yerushalayim: On Not Yet, Always Already, and the [Im]possibility of Crossing Over

Summarizing Aton Holzer in Lehrhaus · Published Monday, May 26, 2025
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JL;DR SUMMARY Aton Holzer's essay explores the complex relationship between Jewish spirituality, Zionism, and the continuous longing for Eretz Yisrael. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Zionism  Diaspora  Eretz Yisrael  Shaul Magid  Jewish Prayer  Religious Upbringing  Judah Ha Levi  Kuzari  Jewish Longing  Messianic Expectation 

Places mentioned

Jerusalem, Israel
"The touchstone of my memories of childhood longing for the land was one specific place: the balcony of the executive suite of the King Solomon Hotel."
Kiryat Shemona, Northern District, Israel
"When we arrived at the dining room, passing children who appeared very much at home in every nook and cranny, it became clear very quickly that we were the lone outside guests in a hotel of mefunim, evacuees, from Kiryat Shemona the development town way up north that absorbs missiles in every Lebanon conflict."
United States
"Having been raised as a religiously observant Jew in the United States, in a family with a rabbi and rebbitzen for patriarch and matriarch whose lodestar was Jewish literacy, liturgy and learning, who went on all fours with two year-old me to teach me the alef-bais I was blessed to inhabit a feeling of continuity with the civilization of my forefathers unselfconsciously for all my childhood."
Safed, Northern District, Israel
"Before Spanish and French Jewry, this was no deterrent. Judah Ha-Levi abandoned Andalusia, acclaim, and Aristotelianism to act upon the ideals of his Sefer Kuzari; Nahmanides favored asceticism and saw in it, and aliyah, a way to cleave unto the Source of prophecy. The motive of the three hundred Rabbis, French Tosafists, to establish a pious (cenobitic monastic?) elite to stimulate messianic warfare, was a product of cultural coproduction with Crusader ideology. Even prior to the renaissance in Safed, that city became a focus for burial of diaspora Jews, as well as elderly Jews who left their families to come die in the Holy Land perhaps not quite so different from their Christian neighbors who took monastic vows on their deathbeds."
Beit Shemesh, Jerusalem, Israel
"When I ultimately made aliyah, at the suggestion of my visionary wife, I came clear-eyed, with a career in Tel Aviv and plenty of possessions, living in the anglo preserve of Beit Shemesh, in the space between always already and not yet."

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Retrieved 2025-05-27 05:30:43 UTC
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