We Have Returned Home

After nearly three years of war with Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, as well as the battles against those who deny Israel’s legitimacy, it is sometimes difficult to recall Israel’s founding vision.  On May 14, 1948, when the state was founded, David Ben Gurion declared,

The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people – the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe – was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz Yisrael the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the community of nations. (Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel)

We wander no more.  The Jewish people have a home. 

There is no better expression of this return to our home and our language than Israeli poetry.  Among my favorite poets is Yehuda Amichai.  His poem, “Tourists,” captures the essence of this vision.

Visits of condolence is all we get from them.
They squat at Yad Vashem,
They put on grave faces at the Western Wall
And they laugh behind heavy curtains
In their hotels.
They have their pictures taken
Together with our famous dead
At Rachel's Tomb and Herzl's Tomb
And on Ammunition Hill.
They weep over our sweet boys
And lust after our tough girls
And hang up their underwear
To dry quickly
In cool, blue bathrooms.

Once I sat on the steps by a gate at David's Tower, I placed my two heavy baskets at my side. A group of tourists was standing around their guide, and I became their target marker. "You see that man with the baskets? Just right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. Just right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!" I said to myself: redemption will come only if their guide tells them, "You see that arch from the Roman period? It's not important: but next to it, left and down a bit, there sits a man who's bought fruit and vegetables for his family."

Redemption is not the stuff of poetry.  It is constituted by prose. 

We have returned home!

On this year’s Yom Haatzmaut this is what I affirm and celebrate.