25 v. 60

Rabbi Melanie Aron

Saturday, May 10, 2008

This week we moved the Temple offices into classrooms in anticipation of our upcoming construction/remodel project. In the course of packing up, I found among my books, a Life Magazine Special Report: “The Spirit of Israel”, published in celebration of Israel’s 25th, in May of 1973. It still had the 50 cent price tag on it, from when I had purchased it in a used book store, sometime in the 1980’s.

In May of 1973 I was a high school senior, preparing for graduation, having rejected Brandeis University, because it would be too Jewish. Things change.

In May of 1973, Israel was presented as the wonder kid. Remember, this was before the Yom Kippur War, in October of 1973, before the attack which caught Israel unprepared and which upended Israeli politics, eventually leading to the end of 29 years of Labor Party domination. It was before the War in Lebanon, Israel’s Vietnam, the war which began as a small incursion to stop the shelling of Israel kibbutzim in the north, and lasted for almost 20 years.

It was before Intifada I and II, and in fact, though this magazine talks a lot about Israel’s Arab neighbors, and the refugees from 1948 and 1967, it doesn’t focus on the Palestinians as a people. It includes a two page photo-spread on Terrorism, and a few mentions of Israeli Arabs, but the Palestinians as a people barely appear. Fatah has already been organized, and introduced a series of airplane hijackings along with other terrorist attacks, but the idea of a national identity for those Arabs who happened to live in the old Mandate Palestine, a district of a larger empire, as Palestine had been since Roman times, has not yet caught on.

One focus of the magazine is contrasting Israel in 1973 with Israel in 1948. Israel is, as they note, 4 times as large in 1973, though much of that is due to the Sinai which will be exchanged with Egypt for a cold peace, with an agreement signed between Sadat and Begin in 1979. Israel in 1973 is 6 times as populous and its gross national product is 9 times as large. The struggles of the 1950’s are presented, the food shortages and lack of housing, and the significant role of American Jewish financial support ( an insignificant percentage of today’s Israeli economy, though still an important source of philanthropic dollars). The Eichman Trial is still a recent memory, and the Shrine of the Book, the museum dedicated to the Dead Sea Scrolls, has just been opened.

There is a lot that is different about Israel in 1973, but some significant things that remain the same.

The first is the role of immigration. In its first 25 years, Israel welcomed refugees from 102 different countries, European survivors of the death camps, as well as refugees from North African and Arab countries. Jews came from exotic places like India and China, where we barely knew there were Jewish communities, but also from the United States and Western Europe, especially in the very upbeat period just after the 1967 war. The Law of Return, the guarantee that a Jew in danger anywhere in the world would have a place to come, without struggling to get a visa, was a core aspect of Israel’s identity- and this continues still. In recent years we have seen refugees from drought stricken Ethiopia and from the former Soviet Union come to make their homes in Israel.

A second aspect of Israel that gets a fair amount of attention in this magazine and which continues until today, its Israel’s technical advancement. In 1973 the focus is on new technology in agriculture and the contribution this is making not only to Israel, but to the countries in Africa where Israelis act as agricultural advisors. New techniques of irrigation added more than 600,000 acres to Israel’s arable land. Today it is computer technology, cell phones, gps systems, and medical technology which are more of the focus, but Israel remains, like many of the power houses in Asia, a small country with few natural resources, dependent on its brain power and innovation to grow its economy.

Finally there is the role that Israel plays in the life of World Jewry. There is a difference between 25 and 60, and Israel is no longer the amazing kid over whom we just kvell. Though our relationship with Israeli governments, as they come and go, can sometimes be complicated, our attachment to the people of Israel remains and the benefit we receive from this center of Jewish life endures. Bashanah habaah beyerushalayim, bashanah habaah beyerushalayim habnuyah. Next year in Jerusalem, we pray at our holiest moments, next year in Jerusalem restored, the land at peace.