10 | FEBRUARY 23 • 2023 

PURELY COMMENTARY

guest column
The Story of Israel

continued on page 12

T

hese are difficult days 
in Israel. Leaders and 
citizens are deeply divid-
ed on the issue of the proposed 
judicial reform, some saying it 
is long overdue, 
others saying 
that it portends 
the end of Israeli 
democracy. Much 
has been written 
about the pro-
posals, and much 
more will be. 
There is much that is troubling 
about the current situation, not 
the least of which is the potential 
for violence in a society that has 
already known its share of politi-
cal violence. 
Yet there is another possible 
impact of the current situation, 
which though less momentous, 
also deserves our attention. In 
just a few months, Israel will cel-
ebrate its 75th anniversary. That 
would be an important mile-
stone no matter what; but given 
the challenges that Israel has 
faced over the past three-quar-
ters of a century, it is nothing 
less than extraordinary, if not 
miraculous. 
So, at this moment of turmoil, 
worry and even dread, it is worth 
taking a moment to review, even 
very briefly, what the Jewish state 
has accomplished. Or to put 
matters slightly differently, how 
has the Jewish people changed 
because of the Jewish state? 
First, and perhaps most 
importantly, the existential phys-
ical condition of the Jews has 
changed. There are no longer 
defenseless Jews anywhere in 
the world. Though Israel was 
certainly not created primarily 
to be a refuge, the Law of Return 
welcomes every Jew who does 
not feel safe where s/he lives. For 
any who Jew who seeks it, there 

is now a homeland in which they 
are welcomed, a homeland in 
which they are safe. 
The rebirth of a people, 
though, is made manifest in 
many ways far beyond physical 
security. Zionism and Israel have 
breathed new life into Hebrew, a 
language that was long dormant. 
Only in Israel (except for a few 
haredi enclaves in the diaspora 
which speak Yiddish) is there 
an entire society that speaks a 
distinctly Jewish language. And 
how real could culture be with-
out its distinct language? Could 
there be great French culture 
without French? Russian litera-
ture written the same way with-
out Russian? The thousands and 
thousands of books published, 
plays written and performed, 
concerts stages and much more 
in many hundreds of venues 
across Israel are testimony to 
more than a vibrant cultural 
scene. They are the markings of 
a people brought back to life. 
Peoples also have rhythms of 
life. In Israel, the rhythm of life 
is a Jewish rhythm. There are 
entire swathes of cities in Israel 
in which, on a Friday afternoon, 
the nation transforms itself. 
Streets become much more still, 
people are home preparing for 
Shabbat, whether or not they 
are punctiliously religious. On 
Yom Kippur, one can walk in the 
middle of the highways, because 
not a car moves. When air 
raid sirens go off on Holocaust 
Memorial Day or Memorial 
Day for Fallen Soldiers, an 
entire nation comes to an utter 
standstill. That cannot happen 
anywhere else. Nowhere else 
can both joy and sadness bring 
millions of people together for 
intense moments of connected-
ness across racial, denomination-
al, ethnic, socio-economic lines 

and more. 
Israel has even made us 
rethink what a Jew looks like; 
that, too, is a dimension of a 
people reborn. Before there was 
an Israel, most North American 
Jews assumed that Jews looked 
like most of the people reading 
this column. But once the Jews 
from the Levant came to Israel 
in large numbers and then 
Jews from Ethiopia, and others 
began to stream in, we began 
to understand that “what a Jew 
looks like” is far more complex 
and nuanced than we could ever 
have imagined.

THE FOUNDERS OF ISRAEL
There is much more to point 
to, but instead, let’s go back 
in history, to that momentous 
meeting on May 12, 1948, 
when 10 men had to vote 
whether or not to declare inde-
pendence. Yigal Yadin, who 
would become a great Israeli 
archaeologist but at that time 
commanded the pre-State 
Jewish military forces, was 
asked how much of a chance 
the Jews had of surviving the 
onslaught that was sure to fol-
low. Said Yadin, “50/50 — the 
Arabs have a lot of power to 
bring to the battle.”
Still, in a vote of six to four, 
which means that it could not 
have been closer, those 10 men 
voted to create a state, hoping 
against hope that it might be able 
to somehow hold out. 
They didn’t know if the United 
States would recognize Israel 
(the State Department was 

vehemently opposed, whether 
enough Jews would move to 
Israel to make the state viable, 
whether there would be enough 
food (Israel had to institute strict 
food rationing of even basics like 
flour and fruit). They certainly 
didn’t imagine that the Arab 
world would embrace them. 
Had someone asked them, 
back then in May 1948, what 
they imagined the state they 
were creating would look like in 
2023, could they have imagined 
a world-class military so pow-
erful that no nation-state dares 
attack it any longer? When Israel 
almost ran out of money in the 
1950s and had 445% inflation 
in the 1980s, could they have 
imagined the economic engine 
that Israel is today? When Israel 
was attacked on all sides in 1948, 
1973, could they have imagined 
that Egypt (1979), Jordan (1994) 
the UAE and Bahrain, then 
Morocco and then Sudan would 
make peace? That the Saudis 
would be in the on-deck circle? 
That the Arab world would be 
reaching out to the Jewish State? 
Could they have imagined not 
only an end to the hunger, but 
a country so overflowing with 
food that it’s actually a “foodie” 
country? Could they have imag-
ined the bounty, the confidence, 
the cultural output, a country 
with more nonprofits per capita 
than any other country in the 
world, a country with a birthrate 
among secular Jews higher than 
that of any other OECD country, 
a country that ranks higher on 
the World’s Happiness Scale than 

Daniel 
Gordis

DMITRY ROZHKOV

