Key Theme for 5757 and 5758:

"The Centenary of the first Zionist Congress
&
Fifty Years since the Establishment of the State of Israel"

Director-General Circular

Goals and Objectives / II. The Theme of Eretz Yisrael and the State of Israel

1. In the Sources

The longing for Zion, the dream of the Return to Zion, the dream that the Lord would return us to Zion - all these accompanied the Jewish people from the very first day of their exile. Prayers, songs, stories about yearnings to return to Zion fill the Jewish bookcase.

* "By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, yea, we wept, when we remembered Zion" (Psalms 137, 1)

* "When the Lord brought back those that returned to Zion, we were like unto them that dream" (Psalms 126, 1)

* "And let our eyes behold Thy return in mercy to Zion. Blessed art Thou, O Lord, who restorest Thy divine presence unto Zion" (from the Amidah prayer)

* "My heart is in the East, and I am in the ends of the West. How then can I taste what I eat, and how can food to me be sweet?" (Yehudah Halevi)

* "As long as in our heart of hearts there throbs a Jewish soul, and as long as we gaze towards the East, to Zion, so long our hope is not yet lost " ("Hatikvah" - Naphtali Herz Imber)

* "Eretz Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped.." (Israel Declaration of Independence)

And so the question to be asked is:

* Why did Jews not immigrate to Israel throughout the thousands of years, during those periods when immigration to Eretz Israel was possible?

In other words:

* What was special about modern Zionism?
* What happened a hundred years ago which changed the position of the Jewish people, compared with the centuries prior to 1897, the year the First Zionist Congress met?

2. The special nature of the Zionist movement finds its expression in a number of ways:

1. This was a group of people who viewed Zionism, the Return to Zion, as a political and practical solution to the national problem of the Jewish people.

   This was a conclusion that they reached after analyzing the Jewish people's situation, against the background of events in the mid- to late 19th century and the early 20th century (a national awakening in Europe, pogroms, blood libels, antisemitism), and its origins were neither religious nor messianic. Religious Zionism combined a religious outlook with the political, practical approach of the Zionist movement.

2. This was a very small group of people in relative terms: most of its members had no special status among the Jewish people, nor even in the Jewish communities from which they came.

   It was a group which was at the time and continued to be marginal in terms of numbers, and which -- on the whole -- was treated as a transient episode.

   This same group brought about a phenomenon unprecedented in human history: a people which had been exiled from its land and scattered to the four corners of the world succeeded not only in preserving its national identity, but also in returning -- after close on 2,000 years -- to its own country, and establishing an independent, sovereign state.

3. The revival of the Hebrew language is a phenomenon which has excited much envy and which is greatly admired.This is a language whose foundations lie in the Bible, and which acquired new form with the people's return to its country.

   Do Israelis themselves fully appreciate the greatness of the achievement which enables them today to speak and understand the language in which our Holy Scriptures were written thousands of years ago, a language which was not spoken as a day-to-day language for thousands of years of exile?

4. This was a small group of people, which in addition to struggling to spread the Zionist idea, also had to contend with various other antagonistic forces:
   • The first Zionists had to combat attitudes that insisted on waiting for the coming of the Messiah, and not hastening redemption.
   • They also had to contend with the widely-held opinion that Jews should integrate within the European nations, particularly in Western Europe, where the awakening of Jewish nationalism sabotaged the process of integration in the midst of the people amongst whom the Jews lived.
   • The first Zionists also had to do battle with the school of thought which maintained that the solution of the Jewish people's problems would come with the acceptance of the social and economic ideologies which were developing in that period.

3. The special nature of the Zionist movement

is also reflected in the processes that it has undergone over the years since the First Zionist Congress in 1897, through the horrors of the Shoah and the founding of the State in 1948, to the present.

1. The political processes that eventually culminated in an international recognition of the need to establish a state for the Jewish people in Eretz Israel -- and the processes of redeeming land and developing the various forms of settlement -- were delicate, long, drawn-out and complex, requiring much faith, unswerving devotion to the goal, great patience -- and a considerable degree of naivete.
2. The Zionist movement has come a very long way. At its outset, there were different trends within it, advocating different ways of achieving a solution that would be acceptable to all -- a sovereign state for the Jewish people in Zion. Some insisted, first and foremost, on obtaining international recognition. Others contended that it was necessary to create facts, and at the same time to make efforts to obtain diplomatic recognition through diplomatic channels. [There were many other views and ways of interpreting the significance of the aspiration to establish a Jewish state.]
3. In terms of the interpretation of this aspiration in a physical expression, even up to the establishment of the State, there were differing opinions, for example, about the borders of that state.

   The majority groups were prepared to make do with whatever territory would be approved for them, as long as they would have a sovereign state. The minority insisted on not making do with a minimalist solution, but on striving for the borders of the Promised Land -- and of course there was also the entire gamut of opinions between these two extremes.

   Today, in 1996, is there no political debate about
   

   • borders?
   • About the price to be paid?
   • About what should or must or may be given up?
   • And in return for what?
     ...For peace?
     ...What peace?
     ...For recognition by the surrounding states of Israel's right to exist?
   
   And so on.

4. The relationship between the Jewish people and Eretz Israel, together with the need to be in Israel lead to the concept of "aliya" (immigration, but also literally "ascension"), and by extension to the concept of "yerida" (emigration, but literally "going down").

A worthwhile project would be to examine the term "aliya," and its emotive, ideological, and educational connotations, over one hundred years of Zionism.

These concepts already appear in the Bible:

"And there was a famine in the country, and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there, for the famine was sore in the land" (Genesis 12:10).

The fact that instead of the neutral expression describing the action of moving from one country to the other - the term "migration" (hagira) - the terms "aliya" and "yerida" have been chosen, attests to the significance attached by Israelis to living in the State of Israel and to the status of Eretz Israel.

Each of the points and questions raised here could provide an angle from which to investigate and relate to the content matter.

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