I Want To Be on the Side of Light

“You can’t imagine what joy I felt when I finally fully grasped the idea that we Jews have a mission to perform a duty toward the rest of the world. Suddenly everything looked different as if I were seeing the world through a lens that made everything clearer. It was like a flash of lightning in the darkness that suddenly shows you a path when just a moment ago you didn’t know where you were going.” It was time for a little personal disclosure. My American friend and I had been going at it over the Internet question for some time and although this wasn’t the answer it was in fact   the path to find the right balance.

“You know” I continued “it was Rav Hirsch who first ignited this feeling in me. In his commentary on the Torah he refers again and again to our legacy and mission among the nations. I was a kollel yungerman at the time with the world of Yiddishkeit more or less open before me. And now all at once Yiddishkeit had a whole new dimension. It wasn’t only about learning Torah and doing mitzvos in This World in order to get to the Next World. I had a tremendously important mission to perform in the world here and now. That mission was no less than lesakein olam b’Malchus Shakai to bring the nations of the world back to HaKadosh Baruch Hu.”

It was an amazing revelation. Am Yisrael’s position relative to the gentile nations had a deeper significance than I’d ever imagined. It had just hit me that I as a Jew was directly responsible for the entire world. There I was learning the Torah that HaKadosh Baruch Hu gave to us and in that Torah was a demand to fulfill a mission in this wild jungle of a world.

This demand in fact was a precondition before the Giving of the Torah as evidenced by these psukim: “And now if you will hear My voice and keep My covenant and be chosen to Me from all the peoples for all the earth is Mine. And you shall be for Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation.”