Israel’s Independence Day is still some three months away. But the anniversary is so especially significant this year, The CJN decided to focus attention on the occasion well in advance.
Thus, we invited a number of scholars, teachers and writers renowned throughout the world to share their thoughts on Israel’s 60 years of independence.
We also invited one of Israel’s most talented and exciting artists, Avi Katz, to draw a unique cover illustration for the anthology that is included as a supplement to this issue of the paper.
Katz’s work is masterful. A perfect blue sky frames a cottony-white cloud that is also a Magen David, which frames the blue and white ribbon of the Israeli flag, which in turn frames three key historical snapshots from the past 60 years. He also includes a golden-hued pastiche of some of the geographic, industrial and sociological contrasts that characterize the tiny, wonderful country.
Perhaps most impressively, he quickly grabs and holds on to our eye and our heart with the familiar but deeply comforting blue-and-white of the Jewish state that, in many respects, has come to symbolize for us the high-minded ideals that accompanied the country’s difficult birth and for which it still stands uncompromising and resolute, even today, against brazen forces of anti-Israel hatred.
This more than anything, then, is the main purpose of publishing the supplement ahead of the holiday. It is to remind those readers who may have forgotten and to tell afresh those readers who may never have known of the life-and-death struggle for Israel’s birth and of the deliberate interlacing of the country’s birth and its very existence with humankind’s highest ideals.
The perverse calumny that Israel is an apartheid state, which blew like an ill wind across a number of campuses this month, simply makes more relevant and, one can add, more urgent, the suggestion that robust individual and communal celebration of the upcoming anniversary is very important.
Britain’s chief rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, urges us all “to challenge the blatant falsehoods” about Israel being spread by its enemies. Sir Martin Gilbert reminds us that “there have been many miracles at work in Israel in the past 60 years.” And, in an uncanny echo of Gilbert’s observation, Elie Wiesel refers to Israel “as a miracle that renews itself every day.”
Irving Abella recounts Canadian Jewry’s determined, steadfast response to the founding of the Jewish state.
David Bercuson tells the stirring story of how a handful of volunteers – Jews and non-Jews – from overseas helped establish the State of Israel, many, alas, at the cost of their own lives.
And there is much more in the supplement to help take up the chief rabbi’s call to challenge the blatant falsehoods about the Jewish state.
Forty years ago, from the bimah of Holy Blossom Temple during the High Holy Days, Rabbi Gunther Plaut, our former columnist and the venerated sage of the Jews of Canada, uttered a different, but related, challenge to Canadian Jewry:
“If you want to be a Jew,” he exhorted, “then you must do something about it. Somewhere in your existence, you must become a partner in the enterprise of Jewish history.”
For every Jew who witnessed the founding of the State of Israel or who was born in the past 60 years, the “enterprise of Jewish history” must, perforce, include, in some significant way, the only Jewish state on earth.
One need only read or hear the news of this day to know that there are many people and some states committed to harming Israel, and indeed, Jews around the world.
Our contrary commitment – to the permanence and well-being of the Jewish state – must always be stronger than theirs.
“It is time to say clearly to ourselves and to the world,” as Rabbi Plaut did, “we want to protect Israel not only because she is attacked and surrounded and isolated. Yes, that, too, of course. We want it above all, as a force for compassion and humanity, as a future seedbed of culture, religion, the arts and music… For the sake of man as well as for the sake of the Jews, Israel is necessary.”
In his typically insightful and incisive manner, Rabbi Plaut added: “In finding Israel, we find ourselves and, finding ourselves, we are also serving mankind.”
Rabbi Plaut’s voice is quiet now, alas. But his words ring as true to us as they did to our parents.
Israel is very young. Its institutions are still evolving. Indeed, it is still only at the early beginnings of its possibilities. Yet, its achievements soar in every sphere of human endeavour with magisterial innovation and excellence. The achievements are ever more marvellous considering the fact that the Jewish state has not known a single day of peace since it was born. It remains the only country at the United Nations that must still defend its very existence.
That is why we must teach Rabbi Plaut’s words to our young. Israel is necessary. For our sake and for the sake of the world.
Knowing this, they will also know, as Wiesel has so elegantly noted for us, that Israel is an ever-renewing miracle.
It is not too early to begin the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel.
