1.
The poet Abba Kovner remarking on the difference between Jewish existence at the time of the Holocaust and at the time when the State of Israel was fighting for its independence observed disintegration versus crystallization. The blows systematically rained down on Jewish communities in the Holocaust caused what he labeled "atomization of the collective." Everyone was equal before the Nazi monster with no discrimination between class or ideology, but the Jews were fragmented in the face of this threat. Ultimately, the individual sank into his fears and sought his shadow of safety. Concern for the collective dissipated with the smoke from the crematoriums.
When he made Aliyah and joined the Yishuv that was fighting for its independence, Kovner found a world in stark contrast to that he left behind. Here too, "togetherness" was not to be taken for granted. "But here in the Land of Israel," he wrote, "I felt that an opposite process was taking place… here the collective was taking shape in suffering, in tears and protest, all amid the blows of war." One could say that under the shock of an ever-intensifying war "a community was being formed and the understanding of the needs of the collective became deeper and egoism was pushed aside for the meantime."
2.
An interesting observation by Kovner explained the source of inspiration for the partisans and uprisings against the Nazis: "The Zionist youth was shaped out of the fact that we were a portion of the Land of Israel amid the experience of exile." Its inspiration was not the Yishuv in the Land of Israel back then, but "the Land of Israel that was yearned for, revered in poems, in ideas and ideologies, the Land of Israel that was to be."
This is a testimony to the place that the Land of Israel took among Jews in the Diaspora throughout history; it was not only a geographical location where we once lived but a living dream that brought us together and sparked our collective imagination to transcend the troubles of time and place. I saw this when I was an ambassador among the Jews of Europe. Israel is their insurance policy, and they know they are living on borrowed time. They struggle to hold on to a world that no longer exists and despite rampant antisemitism and the approaching pogroms, they refrain from making Aliyah; after all, they know our gates are always open for them.
3.
The first time I celebrated Sukkot in Rome I told the Jews there that the holiday is alien to the Diaspora. It is only in autumn in Israel that one can leave one's stone house to reside in the Sukkah. Where can one find safety in a Sukkah outside of our land; doing so would be a mortal peril! It is only in the State of Israel, defended by our soldiers that we can live in a fragile Sukkah for a whole week. Do you understand, I asked them, that when you enter a Sukkah in Rome, you enter the Land of Israel? Without intending to, I echoed Kovner's words about a "portion of the Land of Israel amid the experience of the exile."
4.
Ever since the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple and the dispersion of our people into exile, we have disintegrated into communities dispersed around the world. The national element of our identity went into a long hibernation, while the "religious" component is what kept us going. I place the word "religious" in quotation marks because within the national element too lay dormant the religious element. In other religions, for the most part, the individual stands alone against God. With us however, in almost every blessing, prayer, and ceremony, we employ the plural: "Who has sanctified us with his commandments and commanded us…", "Sound the great shofar for our freedom…", "Hear our voice… have mercy and compassion on us." We must remember that we left Egypt as a people even before we received the Torah. Only a people could have received the Torah, while as individuals we could not have it.
But in exile, the national element was somewhat "theoretical." It reminded us of where we had been exiled from and where we wanted to return to. It showed us that we could not reconcile with being a people living outside of our land and that we must not forget the dream of returning to Zion. In the meantime, we were divided and fragmented, we spoke different tongues and adopted foreign national identities. So much so that toward the end of the 18th century, the Vilna Gaon wrote in his commentary on the Sifra DeTzniuta: "From the time of the destruction of the Temple, our crowning glory as gone and we were left just us … the body… without the soul… until the flesh rotted and the bones were scattered… and all that was left was a ladle that had rotted and become dust…"
It was only when we started to engage with returning home and realizing the dream of a Hebrew state, that the national idea began to be implemented and that we established ourselves anew as a people in our land. The dispersed dry bones that Ezekiel saw in his vision (chapter 2024) in the sixth century BCE, have now joined, one bone to the next, to become a body, and a great spirit has emerged from the depths of history to breathe life into the national body and recreate us as a people.
5.
The great historical innovation in the establishment of the Jewish state – especially after the Holocaust – was the formation of a military force that could keep the vow of "Never Again!" This defensive force is a means, not a goal. Zechariah, the prophet of the Second Temple taught us: "Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit, saith the Lord of hosts" (Zechariah 4:6) . When the prophet describes God as "the Lord of hosts" he makes sure to qualify, "Not by might, nor by power, but by My spirit." Nevertheless, hosts (armies) employ might and power so what spirit does the prophet refer to? Seven months of war have exposed us to acts of incredible, breathtaking heroism that shine a new light on the essence of the spirit the prophet spoke of – our soldiers' spirit of self-sacrifice for the sake of the land and the people. The historical innovation in the establishment of a defensive force for our independent state is that now devotion does not just relate to keeping the individual mitzvot – as it did in exile – but also to the national idea, in the other sense of the Hebrew word mesirut nefesh, self-sacrifice for the existence of the people as a collective and to maintain our hold on the land.
A people willing for self-sacrifice and devotion to these values over time builds a phenomenological iron wall of faith against our enemies. We are not guests in that land.; we are the rightful sons of this land which lay in waste waiting for us for generations, and only with our return over the past generations began to bloom once again. The spirit that the prophet spoke of breathed life into us in the War of Independence in 1948 and has done so once more in the current war with the unimaginable acts of heroism of our soldiers and the profound words of prophecy spoken by bereaved mothers on their sons' graves as they address the people and lift its spirits to give it strength to continue the war and expunge all evil from the world "until the people had avenged themselves on their enemies "(Joshua 10:13)
