Remembering Why We Are In Israel on the 72nd Independence Day
Dvora Waysman
Jerusalem Post, Apr. 27, 2020Jews all over the world celebrate Israel’s Independence Day – even those who have no intention of ever making aliyah, moving to Israel, and many of whom have never even visited Israel. “It’s a kind of insurance policy,” one overseas friend told me.“By supporting Israel financially and emotionally, I know that its sanctuary is available to me or my children or grandchildren should the need ever arise.”I find this kind of thinking very sad, because Israel is so much more than a place of refuge for persecuted Jews. Not every immigrant who has built a life here was escaping from the horror of the Holocaust, the tyranny behind the Iron Curtain or the cruelty of life in an Arab country. Many of us lowered our standard of living significantly when we settled in Israel, yet found something here that enhanced their quality of life even as they struggled with inflation, mortgages and trying to make miniscule salaries stretch to the end of the month.We found here a family – our own people. Of course, just like any family, we fight… about religion, politics, the settlements – and the fights can be very bitter. Yet at our core we care about each other and bond together when we face a common enemy. We celebrate together and sometimes even have to grieve together. Basically, when the going gets rough, we are on the same side. We express our identity as Jews in different ways, but it is the same identity.We found here a beautiful country, unique in the variety of its scenery and climate. Mediterranean beaches banded by azure and indigo water and pure white sand; coral reefs; dense forests; wooded mountains; deserts and rivers and waterfalls; the shimmering mirrored glass of the Dead Sea; fields carpeted with wildflowers and Jerusalem, the priceless jewel.
Some of us found here a spirituality that we’d never been able to achieve abroad. Anyone who has been in Israel on Yom Kippur when the whole country comes to a standstill for one day, cannot doubt the kedusha, the holiness of the Land of Israel. It is intangible, yet it is an undeniable presence.
We found here a pride in the remarkable achievements of this tiny country. We can match, and surpass, the hi-tech of much bigger, richer and better developed nations. We teach agriculture to the world. We are rich in poets, writers, musicians, actors and artists. We can boast of industrial entrepreneurs and brilliant scientists. When any new Israeli invention captures the world’s imagination, somehow we all bask in the reflected glory.
Israelis have always been compared to the sabra – the cactus with the thorny exterior but the soft heart. We celebrate Independence Day in many ways – campfires and singing, picnics, a Bible Quiz, concerts, music and dancing in the streets. We spend the day with family and friends and relish every moment of it. But it is more than just enjoyment. On every building, the Israeli flag flies. Almost every balcony in every city flies the white flag with the blue Star of David. And for days beforehand and a week afterward, the Israeli flag flies from every car on the road.
Every ceremony opens with the singing of Hatikvah – Israel’s national anthem. We sing it standing straight and proud, and usually with tears in our eyes as we remember the broken people who found a safe haven here, and those who never managed to reach its shores and died with the dream of Zion in their hearts. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.[
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Theodor Herzl vs. Ahad Ha’am Today
Gol Kalev
Jerusalem Post, Apr. 16, 2018
At Zionism’s inception, a debate ensued between Theodor Herzl and Ahad Ha’am – commonly summarized as Herzl wishing to save the Jews, while Ahad Ha’am wished to save Judaism and create a spiritual center in Palestine which would serve as a point of orientation for all Jews.
Today, 120 years later, we’re seeing the repercussions of this feud develop, most notably in the de-nationalization of American Jews. The seeds for such de-nationalization were planted earlier in Western Europe, but affected only a small minority of Jews, most of whom lived in closed Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. It was not until the mass Jewish migration to America in the late 19th/early 20th century that Judaism, a nation-religion since its inception, was reduced to a mere religion.
But de-nationalization has failed. The majority of American Jews have since secularized and to one extent or another disaffiliated.
American Jews are safe, but American Judaism is not.
Israel and Zionism address this. Just as Ahad Ha’am envisioned, Israel provides a Jewish point of orientation for Diaspora Jews. This is fortified by Israel’s astonishing success. It is more appealing for a young American Jew to connect through happiness and the vibrant present than through despair and a checkered past. In addition, a Jew can now choose from a range of relationships with the Jewish homeland. That includes a connection through Israel without ever visiting the country.
Israel’s desirability and accessibility is a celebration of Ahad Ha’am’s Spiritual Zionism, but Herzl promoted similar concepts as well. Shortly after publishing The Jewish State, he told a group of enthused students in Vienna, “Perhaps we will never get to Zion and then we must strive for an inner Zion.”
Ahad Ha’am is also strongly associated with advocating the need to condition Jewish hearts to a new state to freedom. Some 19 centuries of oppression and persecution had taken their toll. One cannot just lift the Jews out of slavery into the Promised Land without such conditioning. “This is not the way,” he proclaimed in 1892.
But Herzl, too, made similar arguments. For example, in a letter to German chancellor Otto von Bismarck, Herzl criticized the emancipation. “There is no use in suddenly announcing in the newspaper that starting tomorrow all people are equal.” He reiterated such views in his writings and plays. The exit from the ghetto is a process, not an event. … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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Book Review | A State At Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion
Azriel Bermant
Fathom Journal, April 2020
In a recent interview with Fathom, Tom Segev, the distinguished journalist and historian and author of A State At Any Cost: The Life of David Ben-Gurion, noted that four books had been published in Israel alone on the topic of Ben-Gurion since he first started working on his biography. Although Benjamin Netanyahu made history In July 2019 by becoming Israel’s longest-serving leader, overtaking Ben-Gurion, Segev suggested to Fathom readers that Israel’s renewed fascination with Ben-Gurion illustrates a yearning for vision and statesmanship, qualities they associate with Israel’s founding father and not with the present occupant of the prime minister’s office.
Segev pays tribute to Ben-Gurion’s pragmatism and achievements in overseeing the establishment of the State of Israel and his impressive record during his 15 years in office as Israel’s first prime minister. Ben-Gurion’s determination to ‘pay nearly any price’ to accomplish his Zionist vision on occasion required immense sacrifice. As the author writes, ‘In Ben-Gurion, Zionism and ego blended into a single entity. It was not easy to live in the country he led: Israelis were expected to place the needs of the collective before their individual expectations and desires. Every citizen was a soldier in the service of history, and Ben Gurion was history’s commander.’
One of Ben-Gurion’s early accomplishments was his key role in establishing Mapai (the United Party of the Workers of Palestine). The author describes this as one of the most significant political developments in Palestine’s Jewish community since the launch of the Zionist movement. Mapai would go on to become the dominant political force in Israel during the first three decades of its existence. Also significant was Ben-Gurion’s role in 1920 in establishing the Histadrut, Israel’s Labour federation, which would become an essential component of the future State of Israel. His arms procurement in the months leading up to Israel’s establishment was critical for the Jewish’s state survival.
Following the war for Israel’s independence, the country’s territory was about 40 per cent larger than that awarded to the Jewish State under the UN partition resolution of November 1947. Segev maintains that Ben-Gurion took ‘a calculated risk’ in improving the state’s boundaries. While Israel’s leader ultimately succeeded in his objective, this came at a very high cost with nearly one per cent of the population losing their lives during the war. In a similar vein, Ben-Gurion could claim credit for his vision of bringing masses of Jews to Israel from the ravaged communities of Europe and the Arab world. Yet, this policy created grave social upheaval and economic problems for the fledgling State of Israel and for the immigrants themselves.… [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.’
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On the Making of Constitutional Arrangements
Raphael Davidovich
Cross-Currents, Feb. 24, 2014
In the latest attempt to quell the ongoing culture wars in Israel, Israeli Justice Minister Tzipi Livni last year gave Law Professor Ruth Gavison a formidable task. Gavison was asked to help prepare “a constitutional arrangement dealing with Israel’s identity” as “a Jewish and Democratic state.” The task is a fascinating one, one I love discussing because it is an area of personal interest for me. But it is a task that should not be fulfilled.
Whenever someone in the Israeli Leadership advocates a new constitutional arrangement, it should be mandatory to reread the history of why Israel presently has no formal constitutional arrangement as most other countries do. The brief history is as follows: The Constituent Assembly charged with the writing of a Constitution for the State of Israel ended its task in 1949, its job undone, and instead became the newborn State’s first Parliament. It would be simple to conclude that the document wasn’t written because of the machinations and political ploys of Ben-Gurion, or this group or that power-hungry faction. It would also be simple to argue that the group couldn’t come to agreement because of the old truism that Jews are argumentative, like that old joke about Ben-Gurion being the Prime Minister of two million prime ministers. But these arguments would be wrong. We need to properly understand what happened, and it says something about Jewry in Israel and throughout the world.
The constituent assembly could not write a constitution because a true constitution can only be a viable document when applied to a group that has certain basic outlooks and principles in common that they wish to codify and establish as axiomatic, virtually unarguable, to future generations of leaders who might be tempted by the need for political expedience to ignore those principles.
To be clear, what Israelis who say they want a Constitutional Arrangement really mean is that they want a two-tier system of laws: One set of Supreme Laws, which usually includes a Bill of Individual Rights, and one set of all other laws passed by the Knesset which would be subservient to that first set. This concept originated in our times with the American Constitution.
The American Constitutional experiment contained a feature that was novel to the world of political realism at the time, even though nowadays it’s so common that it’s taken for granted; that a State should have an upper tier of Law and a lower tier of law. The higher level of law, with fewer words, usually loftier, dominates; it insists that all other laws passed by the legislature conform to it or be declared null and void. This is specifically what is meant nowadays by people when they speak of a country having a Written Constitution. This is actually sloppy wording, as it leads to such sentences as “England does not have a written constitution”, or “Israel does not have a written constitution.” … [To read the full article, click the following LINK – Ed.]
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For Further Reference:
On Independence Day Eve Israel’s Population Nearly 9.2m: Amiram Barkat, Globes, Apr. 26, 2020 — Israel’s population has reached 9.19 million on the eve of Israel’s 72nd Independence Day, the Central Bureau of Statistics reports.
An Unusually Painful Memorial Day: Benny Gantz, Algemeiner, Apr. 27, 2020 — Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism is the most personal of all national days. In tens of thousands of Israeli homes, families spend time with the memories of their loved ones, and Israel Defense Forces soldiers and commanders, past and present, salute their brothers who fell in battle.
What Would the World Be Like With No State of Israel?: Jonathan S. Tobin, JNS, Apr. 27, 2020 — What scholars like to call counterfactual history is science fiction for those who prefer to ponder the implications of things turning out differently in the past rather than speculating on the future.
Israeli Air Force Pilot Lt A had an important call to make before takeoff: YouTube.
The Legacy of San Remo and Balfour: Dore Gold, Algemeiner, Apr. 27, 2020 — In April 2020, the Jewish people are commemorating the 100th anniversary of the San Remo Conference, convened in Italy from April 19 until April 26, 1920 in the aftermath of World War I. British prime minister Lloyd George and his minister of foreign affairs, Lord Curzon, attended along with the prime ministers of France and Italy.
