Yom Haatzmaut
64 years of independence deserves celebration! 64 years of Jewish sovereignty is cause for
us to fill our sanctuary with music and song!
Israel
represents the beginnings of our redemption because it signifies the Jewish
return to our sacred land. There we have
reestablished Jewish sovereignty. His
prayer captures this tenant of our modern Jewish faith, the centrality of the
State of Israel. It is certainly not a
perfect place, but Agnon reminds us that the chain of history was reclaimed by
the modern state and there our faith restored.
The Prayer for the State of Israel opens with the words:
“Our Father in heaven, Rock of Israel and its Redeemer, bless the State of
Israel, the first flowering of our redemption…”
This prayer was composed soon after the State of Israel was established
in 1948. Although its original version
is attributed to the chief rabbis of the time, Rabbis Yitzhak Herzog and Ben
Zion Uziel, it is widely believed that the Nobel Laureate, Shai Agnon, actually
authored the prayer, especially this opening line.
Agnon remains the only Israeli author to be recognized by
the Nobel committee for his achievements in literature and thus the only author
recognized by them for his mastery of Hebrew.
In his 1966 acceptance speech he proclaimed in this reborn language: “As a result of the historic catastrophe in
which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was
exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile. But always
I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem .”
All Jews are bound
to the city of Jerusalem . All remain connected to the State of Israel.
Agnon continued: “In
a dream, in a vision of the night, I saw myself standing with my
brother-Levites in the Holy Temple, singing with them the songs of David, King
of Israel, melodies such as no ear has heard since the day our city was
destroyed and its people went into exile. I suspect that the angels in charge
of the Shrine of Music, fearful lest I sing in wakefulness what I had sung in
dream, made me forget by day what I had sung at night; for if my brethren, the
sons of my people, were to hear, they would be unable to bear their grief over
the happiness they have lost. To console me for having prevented me from
singing with my mouth, they enable me to compose songs in writing.”
And thus Agnon
reclaimed the power of the Hebrew language, weaving Jewish history and a
mastery of biblical and rabbinic images with the modern experience. He reminds us that our return to the land of Israel
The Palestinians’ denial of the Jewish historical connection
to the land of Israel Israel represents a
foreign, European transplant in the Arab Middle East, that Israel is only
about recompense for the Holocaust, stands in the way of many efforts to
establish peace between two peoples who both have legitimate claims to the same
land. Denying the other’s claims will
never lead to peace! We must therefore
never do likewise.
It is true that there are many things that are new about the
modern State of Israel. Yet it is also a
fundamental truth that its meaning hearkens back to ancient days. It represents not a rupture in history but an
unbroken chain, stretching from God’s promise to Abraham to the modern day
Knesset. Some might become uncomfortable
when ascribing such religious meaning to a modern state. But the danger is only when we begin to see
modern events as a reenactment of ancient days.
Then we begin to erode the democratic character of the State of
Israel. Israel must forever remain both
democratic and Jewish.
One can derive great meaning from standing in the very city
that King David proclaimed as his capital.
But we are not King David. And
these are not messianic days.
They are only the beginning of our redemption. And that is a great start, and one worthy of
great fanfare and celebration.