Between last night's lesson on the Eretz/Am/Medinah aspects of Israel at my Introduction to Judaism class at Temple Israel, Boston and Leon Uris' Exodus, which I am currently in the middle of, one word keeps surfacing: redemption, as in to redeem.
Merriam/Webster Online has some interesting definitions for redeem , including but not limited to: "to buy back", "to get or win back", "to free from what distresses or harms", and "to change for the better". All of which makes for an intense focal point, especially from a religious point-of-view and a historical context. (For as many have pointed out, and rightly so IMO, you cannot contemplate the current nation-state of Israel or its founding in 1948 without taking into account the millennium old persecution of the Jews, right through the Balfour Declaration and the Holocaust. And, I would add, the legal purchasing of the land in Palestine during the early days of Zionism.)
How much does this concept in all its meanings actually define and ultimately justify in the end? An ongoing discussion that needs to continue.
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