If, as Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi says, the Holy Land is the axis of all spiritual experience, then to spurn the Holy Land is the root of all evil.

Indeed, this idea lies at the heart of the Meraglim story. Commissioned not merely to see the land, but to see what a land could be, the Meraglim were on a mission to determine if it's possible to replicate Heaven on Earth. They erred, and that original error is the root of all the Jewish nation’s shortcomings.

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