Israel And I Are 59

We grew up together. Israelis are my brothers and sisters.
America is my strength. Israel is my soul.
The spirit of each are one.

Israel’s birth was difficult. Its roots stretch back thousands of years.

But, in its first words to the world, Israel borrowed from America’s birth, and at the same time stayed true to its own.

"The first moment someone put pen to paper to formulate the Israeli Declaration of Independence was when Mordechai Beham [then only recently appointed to the People's Administration's Justice Department, later the nascent state's Justice Ministry] sat in a small house on Rehov Arnon 5 in Tel Aviv and copied the American Declaration word for word," Shachar explains. "Our document developed out of that Declaration," he notes, offering another symbolic connection to "the historical connection that is today very strong between the two peoples."

Some of the issues can be controversial, he added. For example, "every schoolchild knows that the state of Israel is Jewish and democratic, and says this is anchored in the Declaration of Independence. But this is not true. After Tzvi Berinson [later a Supreme Court justice], in a draft from around May 7, characterized the state as 'Jewish and democratic,' the word 'democratic' was removed.

"It's important to know that when the state's founder sat down to decide what the principles of the state would be, they made a conscious decision to erase the word 'democratic' and to settle for 'Jewish.'"

Israel did not have to be redundant. Judaism is justice.

Israel’s anthem, Hatikva, is “The Hope.” Hope sustained us across centuries of oppression and death.

As long as deep in the heart,
the soul of a Jew yearns,
and towards the east
an eye looks to Zion,

our hope is not yet lost,
the hope of thousand years,
to be a free people in our land,
the land of Zion and Jerusalem.
to be a free people in our land,
the land of Zion and Jerusalem.

People danced in the streets in 1948, even as surrounding countries attacked. The experience of one man represents the redemption found in Hatikva.

In Zion Square an old man with a trombone and a girl with a guitar were playing a spirited "Hava Nagilla" and, spying the violin case of one of our crowd called Leopold Mahler - a professional violinist and Holocaust survivor who never ever wanted to play again - persuaded him to unpack his instrument and join in. Picking up the rhythm, Mahler began reworking it into wildly spiraling variations, his notes fluttering this way and that, improvisation upon improvisation, as if man and instrument were rediscovering each other in shared delight after a long separation.

Justice is always in arguments with itself. That’s its nature. At birth, Israelis were divided but came together. At 59, disagreements continue. But, let no one doubt the unity, the strength, or the soul.