Israel is the Jewish home of hope, the place where our people was born in the age of Abraham and where, after the longest exile ever endured by a people, it was reborn in our time.
Proclaiming the State, on 14 May 1948, 5 Iyar 5708, David Ben Gurion said: “The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and national identity was formed. Here they achieved independence and created a culture of national and universal significance. Here they wrote and gave the Bible to the world. Exiled from the Land of Israel the Jewish people remained faithful to it in all the countries of their dispersion, never ceasing to pray and hope for their return and the restoration of their national freedom.”
We pray for it still, for there has hardly been a day in sixty years when the people of Israel have not lived without war or the fear of war, terror, or the fear of terror.
Israel, brought into being three years after the Jewish people stood eyeball to eyeball with the angel of death during the Holocaust, is the Jewish people’s collective affirmation of life. Its existence and achievements are living testimony to one of Judaism’s greatest messages to humankind: the principled defeat of tragedy by the power of hope. And though Israel was built by human hands, it is impossible not to sense beneath its history, the hand of heaven.
One sentence reverberated in my mind throughout this project, a line from Hallel: ‘This is the Lord’s doing. It is wondrous in our eyes.’ May these words and music open our minds and lift our hearts to the miracle of a land rebuilt, a people reborn, a promise fulfilled, a destiny regained.
