Sound the great shofar for our freedom,

Raise high the banner to gather our exiles,

And gather us together

from the four quarters of the earth

(From the Amida prayer)

It is impossible to avoid a clear

decision regarding Yom Ha'atzmaut. This day cannot be

given a partial evaluation. One view has it that it is not a holiday, but

rather a day of mourning: the day the Jewish People rebelled against the Torah.

Another view holds that it is particularly apt for us to recite the she'hechiyanu blessing and the Hallel

and mark Yom Ha'atzmaut as a holiday, for it is the

day when the Jewish People opened the door to the possibility of fulfilling the

Torah – a gate that it may enter, if the people decide to apply themselves to

observance of the Torah. This view is not subverted by the fact that the

majority of the present generation does not seek observance of the Torah.

(Y. Leibowitz, Yahadut, Am Yehudi U'midinat Yisrael pp. 90, 91,

96, 97)

Certainly we view the State of

Israel as a healing process. I cannot imagine what would have happened to the

Jewish People if the state had not arisen. It was so necessary for the

rehabilitation of the survivors! When I think of the refugees from destruction,

if they had to continue wandering from shore to shore, not finding a safe-haven

in the Land of Israel, what would have happened to the

Jewish People? In this sense, of course there is a connection…

The first expression of

independence was "bringing home the individuals." There is nothing

greater than a home… not only individuals who came and found a home after

years spent in concentration camps and death camps.

(HaRav Amital,

as quoted in M. Miyah, Olam

Banuy, Hareiv, U'Vanuy, pg. 68)

Understanding the prayer for the state of israel

Yoel Rappel

The Jewish prayer book is the

repository of the significant times – good and bad – which passed over the

Jewish people, both in the Land

of Israel and in the

Diaspora. Remembrance of historic events is not for its own sake – that they not disappear from the national consciousness; it

is rather for an educational purpose, to exemplify God's power and love for his

people, Israel,

as revealed through all the great events of the past and as they will be

revealed in the future. Recalling the major occurrences is intended to justify

the praise, the thanksgiving and the supplication which are the subject of our

prayers.

Perusal of the Prayer for the State

of Israel reveals a variety of requests relative to the state and its

inhabitants. Realization of these requests constitutes the identity card of the

Jewish State as optimistically envisioned by the prayer's primary drafter, Chief

Rabbi Herzog, his companion and partner Rabbi Uziel, and

the author S. Agnon who assisted in final formulation.

The prayer is composed of two

sections which unite into a single opus.

Part one – from "Heavenly

Father" through "everlasting joy to its inhabitants". This unit

is composed in contemporary style. It contains poetic literary configurations

not usually found in the prayer book ["send your light and your truth",

"shield it under the wings of your loving-kindness"]. The flavor of contemporary Hebrew flows not only from the vocabulary, but

also from the many requests expressed in the imperative [bless, shield, send,

strengthen, remember]. This is the aspect of the prayer which I shall try to

explain.

Most of part two, from "As for

our brothers, the whole house of Israel", consists of quotes

from the Bible [Book of Devarim] and from the Rosh

Hashanah liturgy.

The two parts differ stylistically.

The first consists of sentences which repeat themselves:

Heavenly Father [who is] Israel's Rock

and Redeemer

Bless the State of Israel" [which

is] the first flowering of our redemption

Shield it under the wings of Your loving-kindness" / "and spread it over the

Tabernacle of Your peace

Grant them deliverance, our God"

/ "and crown them with the crown of victory

Grant them peace in the land"

/ and everlasting joy to its inhabitants.

From this point onwards, the

composition shifts from poetry to prose.

Heavenly Father

The phrase "Heavenly Father"

(or "our Father in Heaven", etc.) is found not infrequently in the

Oral Torah. In the siddur it is found

in two prayers and at the beginning of "The Prayer for the State of Israel".

The Aramaic version appears frequently in the siddur;

it appears in the Kaddish prayer as: "Kadam avuhon di bi'shemaya" – " before

their Father in heaven".

It is written in Tractate Sotah (49a): "On whom is it for us to

rely – on our Father who is in Heaven". And we read in Berahot

(32b) "Rabbi Elazar

said: "Since the day the Temple was

destroyed, an iron wall separates between Israel and their Father in Heaven."

The connection between the two sentences which appear in different tractates

provides the background for the use of "Our Father in Heaven" as a

beginning for the prayer. The destruction of the Second Temple, to which Rabbi Elazar refers, spelled the end of the second geula that began in the period of Shivat Tsiyon (return

of/to Zion) (538 BCE). The repeated use of the phrase "Our

Father in Heaven" indicates that – as we shall soon see – the "Prayer

for the State of Israel" is a statement of faith; as the divisive iron

wall becomes lower, we are in the beginning of HaGeulah

HaShelishit – the Third Redemption. Is there a

chance that the wall will disappear entirely, enabling us to come closer to the

Holy One? Only if we remember "Upon whom we can rely", the one and

only "Our Father in Heaven"; that geula

can come from Him alone. Therefore, the phrase "Father in Heaven" is

unique in the Hebrew language. "Our Father – an expression of closeness; "in

Heaven" – an expression of distance. "Our

Father in Heaven – the close and the distance unite.

Rock of Israel

and its Redeemer

The names of the Holy One and the

order of their appearance in Scripture are the subject of an entire field of

study – the "Doctrine of Descriptions". In Parashat

Haazeinu, at the end of the Book of Devarim, a new title of the Master of the Universe is

revealed "Tsur'­ – Rock: "The Rock, His acts are perfect" (32:4); "… and abandoned the God who made him,

and despised the Rock of his rescue" (32:14);" The Rock your bearer you neglected, and forgot the God who

gave you birth" (32:18). The name "Rock" is

repeated seven times in the parasha.

The phrase "Rock of Israel"

is shared by the Israel Declaration of Independence, read on the Fifth Day of

Iyar 5708 (14.5.1948) and "The Prayer for the State'.

When the "Prayer for the State"

was first publicized, these words were already part of the introduction "Rock

of Israel

and its redeemer" in the sense of the "the Divine Providence", identical

with "Our Father in Heaven". What is the difference between "Rock

of Israel" and "Rock of Israel and its redeemer"? Wordings of

ancient prayers provide us with an answer. The wording of the Geula (deliverance) blessing (which follows the reading of

the Shema) recited in the Land

of Israel was, according to ancient

sources, "(King) Rock of Israel and its redeemer", whereas it was Rava the Babylonian who instituted the wording "Ga'al Yisrael" – Who

redeemed Israel

(Pesahim 117b). The deliverance of the Israelite

nation can occur only In the Land of Israel. The Rock

of Israel is omnipresent. The phrase "Rock of Israel" is suitable for

every place in the world; in combination with "and its redeemer" it

is valid and meaningful only in Eretz Yisrael.

Bless the State of Israel

The literary configuration "State

of Israel" does not appear in the Tanakh. We do

find "the Land

of Israel" [Eretz Yisrael] and "The Soil

of Israel" [Admat Yisrael].

Harav Moshe Zvi Neria claimed that the first person to employ the term "State

of Israel" was HaRav Avraham

Yitzhak HaCohen Kook, "A state which is

fundamentally ideal, in whose being is engraved the most elevated ideal content;

and this state is our state "Medinat Yisrael", the foundation of God's throne in the world."

The use of the term "Medinat Yisrael"

creates a tie between the Declaration of Independence – where it appears six

times – and the "Prayer for the Welfare of the State", a connection

between the Historic dimension and the spiritual dimension. For the Zionist, the

establishment of the Jewish state in the Land of Israel

symbolizes a new historic reality and defines the religious significance of

this reality.

The First Flowering of Our Redemption

Belief in the coming of the Messiah

has an important place in Jewish theology, not only as a philosophic principle,

but as a living and instructive value in real life. Testimony to the centrality

of geula can be found in the "Amida" prayer, wherein it is the subject of eight of

the 19 benedictions. The author of the phrase "beginning of the flowering

of our redemption" was, by his own admission, Chief Rabbi Herzog. What did

he have in mind?

Three words in a single literary

phrase, each one raising numerous questions. Why ‘the beginning'? How do we define ‘beginning'? How, exactly, does ‘flowering

of redemption' occur? What is redemption? The most perplexing question of all

is, if God wishes to grant Israel

complete deliverance, why must it accompanied by so much suffering over such an

extended period? Is the Lord's hand too short to accomplish it immediately?

In order to answer these questions,

which are at the core of our discussion of the prayer, we must be acquainted

with two concepts in the "Doctrine of Redemption". The first is "it'aruta d'letata" (arousal

from below) – and the second, "kim'ah kim'ah" ( little

by little). The meaning of the former is that the Holy One desires that

deliverance begin not with His action, with "it'aruta

d'le'eyla" (arousal from above), as with the

Exodus from Egypt.

He desires that it be instigated by our own human awakening; it should be

expressed through our actions, ex-ante, not ex-post facto. The

reason for this is inherent in the essence of the Geula.

Were the deliverance to come at the hands of the Divine Power, sans

human participation on our part, we would be receiving it as "hahama d'kisufa"[lit.

"bread of shame"] bread given out of

kindness, without our having worked or exerted ourselves for it. Geula would be not internal, but something external to us. Now

that we are participants in the Geula process, it is

doubly dear to us, we worked towards its achievement

with the labor of our hands and with devotion and sacrifice.

The concept "kim'ah kim'ah" is taken

from the Talmud Yerushalmi, at the beginning of

Tractate Berachot:

The story is told of Rabbi Hiyya the

Great and Rabbi Shimon bar Halafta, who were walking

in the Arbel

Valley at dawn and they

saw the Morning Star which had begun to shine.

Said Rabbi Hiyya the Great to Rabbi

Shimon bar Halafta: Great scholar! Such will be the geula of Israel,

little by little at first, but as it advances, it becomes greater.

The process of redemption – not

only ex-post facto but even ex-ante – is similar to sunrise, "kim'ah kim'ah". But

is it not in God's power to bring the geula all at

once? The answer is unequivocal. Certainly it is, but the geula

process demands adjustment and participation; just as one who moves from

darkness to light needs a period of adjustment lest he be blinded, so the move

from the darkness of the exile to light of redemption cannot be effected

without a process of adjustment.

Shield It under the wings of your

loving-kindness and spread over It the tabernacle of your peace

The request for protection is

composed of two parts, each of which is a metaphor for the power of the

protection which God provides the Jewish people. The term "the wings of

your loving-kindness" is original, appearing for the first time in this

prayer. "Evra" refers to the

wing of a bird, covered with large feathers. The Holy One looks after the

Jewish nation today, just as He did on the difficult journey through the Sinai

desert. "Like an eagle who rouses his nest, over

his fledglings he hovers". Stage one, defense of the perimeter from above;

"He spread His wings, He took him" – if He senses that his fledglings

are endangered, he gathers them to Himself; "He bore him on His pinion"

– He carries them on his wings, protected from all threat. The Hebrew for "your

loving-kindness', hasdecha, derives

from the root hessed; God's actions are

rooted in generosity. The Lord's great loving-kindness is proffered even when

the supplicants are undeserving.

The second part of the prayer for

protection: "And spread over it the Tabernacle

of Your peace" is explained by the author of the Eitz

Yosef: The blessing of protection is not a blessing

of a static situation, it is a foundation of geula.

Send Your light and truth to its

leaders, ministers, and counselors

The words "Send Your light and Your truth were adopted directly from "The

Prayer for Peace in the Land" which appeared in many Machzorim

edited by Yehiel Michal Zachs

and were very popular in central and western Europe

around the turn of the 20^th century. The meaning of the passage is: May

the Holy One direct the government on a straight and

proper path, in order that it do all that is necessary to realize the other

goals mentioned in the prayer.

An early source for the phrase "its

leaders, ministers and counselors" is in the prayer "Ribono shel olam" – "Master of the Universe", which

is recited as the Torah is removed from the ark on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.

This prayer first appears in "Sefer Shaarei Zion", written by Rabbi Nussen

Nuteh Hanover

in the middle of the 17^th century, a book of Kabalistic liturgy, composed

soon before the founding of the Shabbtaic movement. The

original version reads "and imbue the heart of

the monarchy and its counselors and ministers with a positive attitude towards

us". Later variants include "and direct the heart of the monarchy and

its counselors and its ministers towards our welfare" and – the current

variant – "and influence the heart of our ministers and their counselors

for our welfare."

And direct them with good counsel before You

The first part of the prayer ends

with a request of the Holy One for good and civilized counsel which is also favorable in His eyes, because many are the

intentions in a human's mind, but the Lord's plan prevails. And what exactly is

this counsel which is so necessary? It is the Divine plan for the order of the

appearance of the geula which can come into

being only through the power of "the Rock of Israel and its redeemer"

who generates "the beginning of the flowering of our deliverance". It

can be said that this very request–that He grant us good counsel lest we lose

this great achievement – constitutes the beginning of the geula.

Strengthen the hands of the defenders of our Holy

Land – and everlasting joy to its inhabitants

The second paragraph of the prayer

contains three requests for blessing. The first – itself threefold – concerns

defense and security, as befitted the period in which the prayer was composed: "Strengthen

the hands of the defenders of our Holy Land, and

grant them, our Lord, deliverance, and crown them with the crown of victory."

The second: Appeal for a blessing: "Grant

peace in the land".

The third: "And everlasting

joy to its inhabitants."

The realization and fulfillment of

the first three requests are the attainment of peace, as we recite in the

prayer "Grant peace in the land", a phrase found in the book of Vayikra (26:3-4) "And I shall set peace in the land". And what will

be the expression of peace? "And you will lie down with none to cause

terror… and no sword will pass through your land". The blessing of peace

is a result of the action of "the defenders of our holy land" and

because of it the sword will not pass through the land. If the defenders grow

in numbers and strength and peace will be achieved, then will come joy, which

will comfort us from the yoke of exile, joy shared by all the inhabitants of

the land, "and everlasting joy to its inhabitants."

The author of the prayer, Chief

Rabbi Yitzchak Halevi Herzog, anticipated that the

wording of the prayer, to be recited every Shabbat, with its variegated content,

would give expression to the religious significance of the Zionist project, significance

absent from the Declaration of Independence.

Dr. Yoel Rappel wrote an extensive study of The

Prayer for the Monarchy and the Prayer for the Welfare of the State. The study

is to appear this year in an English language book

Should a woman quicken with seed… she shall be unclean

foreskin shall be circumcised.

We have seen that the seven unclean

days end a period which one must overcome: one leaves a condition marked by

lack of freedom (six) and becomes a free person (seven), and he achieves this

by virtue of a covenant with God. On the eighth day he is reborn for the Jewish

mission; this birth is based on the Divine freedom of man, for the sake of a

more elevated fulfillment of that freedom's purpose. The eighth day is a

repetition of that first day – on a higher level; it is, as it were, an ‘octave'

of the first day of the human birth. Now, the coercive power of the laws of

nature – which have revealed itself in the mother and her son during the bodily

birth – brought about the seven days of impurity due to birth; and this very

cause also demands, in the case of the son – in normal circumstances – the

completion of seven days prior to fulfillment of the mitzvah of circumcision. Opposed

to this, if the mother was not a daughter of Israel at the time of birth – and

was subsequently not ritually unclean – it is the circumcision, not the birth, which

ties the son to Judaism; thus we see that circumcision is in itself a new

beginning of life – unrelated to what preceded it.

 (Rabbi SHimshon

Rafael Hirsch, Vayikra 12:2)

Leper – Defamer

Why is the tongue compared to an

arrow? Because if a person draws his sword to kill his fellow,

and the latter begs him to have mercy upon him, the killer may recant and

return his sword to its scabbard. An arrow, however, cannot be turned

back once shot, even if he wants to. Therefore it is said, [O deceitful

tongue!] A warrior's sharp arrows, with hot coals of broom-wood (Tehillim 120) – Once broom-wood is lit, its coal

are never extinguished. There was an incident involving two people traveling in

the desert who sat under a broom-wood. They collected sticks from it and used

them to cook their food, which they ate. A year later they returned to the same

spot in the desert and discovered ashes from their fire. They said: It has been

twelve months since we passed through and ate in this place! They touched the

ashes and stepped in it, and their feet were burned by the coals beneath the

ashes, because they had not been extinguished. That is why evil speech is

compared to the coals of broom-wood, as it says, A

warrior's sharp arrows, etc. And so this wicked man kills people with his

tongue. Just as an arrow remains unnoticed until it reaches its victim, so too,

evil speech remains unnoticed until the arrows of Esau's Kingdom arrive

suddenly.

 (Midrash

Tehillim 120)

"Two pure live birds" – excepting the impure bird. Because

affliction comes (as punishment) for slander (Hullin 140. Arachin 15) which is an act of babbling words,

therefore were necessary for his purification birds which always babble with a

chirping voice. "And cedar wood": Because

afflictions come (as punishment) for arrogance. "Scarlet of the worm

and hyssop": How shall his cure be

effected? He shall divest himself of his pride, (lowly) as the worm and the

hyssop.

(Rashi, Vayikra 14:4)

About us

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom is a movement dedicated to the

advancement of a civil society in Israel. It is committed to

promoting the ideals of tolerance, pluralism, and justice, concepts that have

always been central to Jewish tradition and law.

Oz Veshalom-Netivot Shalom shares a deep attachment to the land of Israel and it no less views peace as a

central religious value. It believes that Jews have both the religious and the

national obligation to support the pursuit of peace. It maintains that Jewish

law clearly requires us to create a fair and just society, and that co-existence

between Jews and Arabs is not an option but an imperative.

4,500 copies of a

4-page peace oriented commentary on the weekly Torah reading are written and

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distributed to over 350 synagogues in Israel and are sent overseas via

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