Our Parsha takes us on a tour of the major festivals of the year from Pesach in the spring through Sukkot in the fall. The great holiday we celebrated and the somber day we observed this past week are not listed in the Torah text. The Torah did not know about Yom Ha-atzmaut - Israel's Independence Day and sixtieth anniversary and the day prior to this, Israel's Memorial Day, Yom HaZikaron. The Torah could not know about a holiday based on an event taking place in 1948 or maybe in a way it did.
On an Israeli TV station that I receive via internet, Janie and I watched with friends Wednesday evening the ceremony at Mt. Hertzl, Israel's main military cemetery which concluded Memorial Day and immediately began Independence Day. The psalmist says "Those who plant with tears will reap with joy" and that happens all in the span of 48 hours in Israel. The change of emotion turns on a dime. The main speaker was the Speaker of the Keneset. Similar to our Speaker of the House of Representatives, the Speaker of the Keneset is a woman, Dahlia Yitzchak. I found myself moved by her words but disagreeing with one phrase in her speech. As she spoke about Israel celebrating its 60th anniversary and all that has been accomplished in the State of Israel in the last 60 years and the land of Israel in the last 100 years she said "this is not a miracle but it is the work of our hands." I don't know if she was purposely making a theological statement. If so, she surely wasn't after the religious vote in the next election. Maybe her point was more that this was not handed to us on a silver platter. Much work, sweat, tears and lives went into accomplishing all that we have. I would surely agree with that but if her intention was the former, I would still disagree. It is a miracle.
The Zionist dream and its realization in the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 is surely the work of our hands. For hundreds of years, we prayed Next Year in Jerusalem and believed that we would return to the Land when Messiah comes. Well, it never happened. In the late 19th century, with nationalism growing all around, European Jews began to consider taking matters into their own hands and begin a political movement to return to Zion. The father of this movement was the assimilated Viennese Jew Theodore Herzl. Herzl covered the Alfred Dreyfus case in France and saw how an innocent Jew, a Captain in the French Army was being framed out of blatant anti-Semitism in the land of equality and fraternity. If this could happen in France, where could Jews be safe he thought. Herzl, who probably could not recite the prayer for a return to Zion, began to work in real time for a Jewish homeland. With all that followed, one might say this was not a miracle, it is the work of our hands. Israel is the work of our hands. At the same time, I could never say, it is not a miracle. It is. I feel it. I believe it.
What other people in human history has been dispersed for 2000 years throughout the world and has gone home. Only we have. Israel is the work of our hands. The early Halutzim-pioneers worked the land. Jews the world over donated money to purchase land in Palestine. They built the first all Jewish city from the sand and called it Tel Aviv. They defended themselves and defeated seven Arab armies after they declared Statehood in 1948. An Israeli has every right to say this is the work of our hands but is not right to say it is not a miracle. The two are not mutually exclusive. Israel is the work of our hands and a miracle at the same time. Perhaps the first sets the stage for the second. The Midrash teaches that the waters didn't part until the heroic Nachshon entered the waters up to his neck. When the early pioneers, as secular and even anti-religious as they were went home, heaven had no choice but to make a miracle happen. The miracle continues 60 years later and continues as long as Zionists in Israel and the world over continue the work of our hands. If we let our hands rest, the miracle ends as well.
The most religious Jews bitterly opposed Zionism. They found it to be an abomination to take G d's work into our own hands. They also fought against the sacred language of Hebrew, the language of study and prayer being spoken in the streets as a modern tongue. In a ceremony beginning Independence Day which honored Israel's youth, what a beautiful site it was to see an aged Rabbi with a long white beard and Peyos participate in a moving ceremony of lighting twelve torches and speak in Hebrew for what he said was for the glory of the State of Israel. Some of those who believe in miracles most have come to accept this work of our hands, the State of Israel, so why not meet them half way?
We American Jews who love Israel can join our Israeli brothers and sisters in performing all the work of our hands possible to ensure Israel's future. That means giving, investing, visiting, supporting. The State never came with a guarantee. On Israel's anniversary, Iran's president called Israel a putrid body and pledged that all countries that support the Zionist State will burn. Israel will defend itself by the work of her hands. She has one of the greatest air forces known today but we have not reached the point yet that we are not in need of the miracle to continue.
Presidential candidate Senator Barack Obama said in an interview with Wolf Blitzer on CNN on Yom Ha-atzmaut that he hopes Israel will celebrate not only its 60th but its 600th anniversary. To that I can only say Amen. With the ongoing work of our hands, may the miracle survive for the next and the next and the next generation to ten times sixty and beyond.
Shabbat
Shalom
