12 May 2005 @ 18:51, by Bruce Kodish
Happy Israel Independence Day! Even though the official date is on the 5th of the Jewish month of Iyar, it gets celebrated today, I guess because the 5th falls on Shabbat this year. Today (Thurs.) in honor of the holiday we have a special Torah reading from the book of Deuteronomy, wherein the beauties of the land of Israel are described. The Haftorah reading is from the book of Isaiah, the passage which describes the time of Moshiach when the lion will lie down with the lamb. We have some ways to go til that happens. Have a happy holiday!
--Bruce Kodish
I've excerpted the following entry on Israel's Independence from Joseph Telushkin's wonderful book Jewish Literacy: pp.311-312
"Proclamation of Israel's Independence, May 14, 1948/The Fifth of Iyyar [,] Medinat Yisrael/The State of Israel
On May 14, 1948, British Rule Over Palestine Ended, At 8:00 A.M., the Union Jack was lowered in Jerusalem. Hours later, the armies of six Arab nations launched an invasion of the Jewish state. At 4:00 P.M., David Ben-Gurion read over the radio the new nation's Proclamation of Independence. In Jerusalem the citizens of the new state could not hear the broadcast; their beseiged city was without electricity.
The proclamation was a forthright statement of the new country's Jewish identity: "The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people....," it began. "Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world."
The proclamation went on to recount the Jew's fierce loyalty to the land of Israel during two thousand years of exile, and spoke to the herculean efforts by Jewish settlers during the preceding century; "The brought the blessings of progress to all inhabitants of the country."
The raison d'etre of Israel, to provide a homeland for all Jews, was underscored in yet another paragraph: "The State of Israel will be open to the immigration of Jews from all the countries of their dispersion."
In another passage that rarely is cited, the proclamation announced that the state's values "will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew prophets." Non-Jewish citizens were promised full freedom of conscience, and offered a guarantee that the sanctity and inviolability of all sacred places would be maintained.
God was not mentioned in the proclamation, which struck many as odd, since the major Jewish contribution to mankind was the notion of one God. Some of Israel's secular leaders had informed Ben-Gurion that they would not sign a document mentioning God, while the religious leaders would not sign a document ignoring Him. A compromise was achieved through use of an ambiguous phrase. The final paragraph of the Proclamation speaks of "...trust in the Rock of Israel," a term the religious delegates understood as referring to God, and which the secular delegates understood as referring to God-knows-what.
The proclamation officially named the new country the State of Israel, Medinat Yisrael. Prior to the proclamation, it was uncertain what the state's name would be. Some people suggested "Judea," the name of the Jewish state ruled by the descendants of the House of David. The State of Israel in the Bible, however, was a renegade nation that was dispersed and destroyed in 722 B.C.E. Nonetheless, because Eretz Yisrael (The Land of Israel) had been for so long the name Jews applied to the country the rest of the world called Palestine, the name "Israel" was chosen."
|
|
