Parting: The eternal journey from oneself to oneself

Source: The unforgettable pull of home

"For indeed, there is nothing sweeter than a person's homeland... and he (Odysseus), even over immortality itself, preferred his homeland and the smoke rising from Ithaca."

(Lucian of Samosata, "On the Fatherland", 2nd century CE)

Explanation: Parting as the uprooting of identity

The Greek-Syrian writer Lucian describes the irrational pull of one's homeland. Parting from the land is not merely geographic distance; it is an uprooting of identity. Odysseus, the wandering hero, defines himself through his parting from home—a parting that turns his entire journey into a voyage of return. The homeland is the "center" without which a person is merely a wandering shadow.

Perspective: No person without roots

A well-known joke goes:

At morning roll call in the Austro-Hungarian army, the drill sergeant barks: "Austrians to the right! Hungarians to the left! Jews to the back!" One soldier remains standing in the middle and proudly declares: "I am a universalist cosmopolitan!" The sergeant replies dryly: "In that case, go stand with the rest of the Jews and stop giving me a headache."

We like to think of ourselves as "citizens of the world," but it is hard for a Jew to shed his skin: a person without a homeland is a person without context. Exile is not a "living arrangement"; it is a chronic parting from oneself. Look at Odysseus: he refuses divinity and immortality just to return to a small, rocky island. Why? Because his identity is rooted in that soil. Parting from the land is parting from collective memory. Anyone who thinks they can part from their roots without withering simply hasn't read enough history. Exile is not a geographic punishment; it is the surgery in which a nation discovers whether it has a spine that can survive even without territory.

Going Deeper: Exile as a departure from the natural order

The Maharal of Prague (Netzakh Yisrael, Chapter 1) frames this with logic: exile is "a change and a departure from the [natural] order." God arranged each nation in its place, and Israel in their land. "And when all things depart from their natural place... they cannot endure in a place that is unnatural to them, but rather return to their natural place." The Maharal explains that the dispersal of something that is "one" (the people of Israel) is an unnatural state. Just as a part of fire striving upward will return upward, so the people's parting from their land is a state of inner tension that necessitates redemption. Exile is absolute proof that the true place exists.

Culture: Odysseus's tears on the seashore

The painting Odysseus Taking Leave of Calypso, 1864. Odysseus sits on the seashore of Calypso's island and weeps. He has everything—beauty, food, immortality—yet he is parted from himself because he is parted from Ithaca. The artwork demonstrates that there is no substitute for "place," and that the entire human journey is one long parting on the way home.