Sixty-eight years ago, David Ben Gurion, Israel's first Prime Minister, read Israel's Declaration of Independence at a semi-secret meeting that took place in Tel Aviv, a mere few hours before the termination of the British Mandate over Palestine.
He concluded the recitation of those momentous words with the following declaration: "I hereby proclaim the establishment of a Jewish state in the land of Israel, to be known as מדינת ישראל - the State of Israel." At that moment, we, the Jewish people, regained our independence.
The establishment of Israel brought to an end 2,000 years of exile, in which our forefathers and foremothers, going generations back, had been scattered to the four corners of the earth. They yearned and prayed daily for a return to the land of Israel, to Jerusalem; for a return to their home.
The holiday of Passover has just passed, the time when we celebrated attaining our freedom from Egyptian bondage. We gained our freedom about 3,000 years ago when we left Egypt and we regained our independence 68 years ago when we reaffirmed Jewish sovereignty over our ancestral homeland.
That is the significance of this moment in our Jewish history; a moment that we are all extremely fortunate to be living; It is that moment which we are now celebrating.
It took us thousands of years to become free and it took us thousands of years more to re-attain our independence. Now that we are both a free and an independent people, we must be sure to never take neither of those gifts for granted. It behooves us all to work hard so that 2,000 years down the road there will still be a free Jewish people celebrating its independence as a sovereign people in the land of Israel, in a state that will continue, in Ben Gurion’s words “…to be known as ארץ ישראל, as the State of Israel…” Happy Independence Day!
חג עצמאות שמח!