As a religious Jew, I see/recognize the Hand of G-d in everything. Most religious people have the same attitude, unless they're just going throught the motions.
To me there's a fundamental irony, or even hypocrasy in the attitude of Chareidi Jews who refuse to thank G-d and celebrate the fact that Sixty One Years ago, the Zionist leadership dared to declare a Jewish State.
You may notice that I put "Jewish" in italics. Because, yes, I recognize that the state is imperfect, far from authentically Jewish. But that's the fault of the religious establishment in 1948 and to this day, both the Mizrachi (NRP) and Agudat Yisrael, because they relegated themselves, ghettoized, restricted their government involvement to their separate school systems and the religious establishment. They should have made efforts to be involved in every aspect of the country's development including, agriculture, military, entertainment and televison when it came to Israel.
Judaism demands constant striving for improvement, for Tshuva, Repentance. We must never accept status quo as permanent, engraved in stone. And we must never give up our struggles to make our country, better, stronger, more self-reliant and independent.
The Declaration signed sixty-one years ago just heralded a new begining, not an end.
We must thank G-d for it and ask Him for the strength we need to continue and make Israel a more Jewish State.
2 comments:
I am posting this with more than a bit of trepidation. I am happy that as Jews we live here, and recognize that there were miracles involved. But I have to, at the same time, see a bit of the logic in a statement my oldest son said:
"Mom, how can you watch fireworks of independence day!? If it was the church making them, would you watch?!? And here this government, which tore as many immigrants (Yaldei Teman, etc)as they could from their culture and religion, who sent ghetto survivors to non-relious kibbutzim, who are anti-religious in every way (Just LOOK at how they treated the national religious during the disengadgement!!) -this government who have made a terrible shmad on the Jewish religion--- how can one celebrate that???"
This is what we have. Rav Elchanan Bin Nun, our Shiloh chief rabbi has spoken about it many times.
Our aim must be to correct it, not to ignore it. We must be more involved not less. You read my blog and you know that I have numerous complaints about the State of Israel, from its predecessor the Haganah/Palmach to the most recent laws. As Jews and citizens we must correct it.
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