Grandma's army

When the Jews began returning to the Holy land - years before nationhood - they were imbued with a pioneering spirit. David ben-Gurion defined pioneering as the refusal to submit to reality. There is no other People in the world where, throughout their history,   the refusal to submit to reality is a fundamental, ongoing phenomenon.  Things did not begin with the Zionist movement, and the Zionist enterprise did not begin with the first Zionist Congress. These   early pioneers wanted to change their destiny with their own hands and to build a new life for themselves and their people.   In those days, with no financial or other resources, one of the most efficient way for economic sustainability meant living in farming communities. Kibbutz (communal agricultural settlement) ideology was established and developed during the pre-state and early years of Israel’s statehood.  During the initial years and for many years after, the Kibbutzim assumed prominen...

You have to go back almost 2,000 years to find a time when Jews, like virtually every other identifiable group, were primarily an agricultural people. Around A.D. 200, Jews began to quit the land. By the seventh century, Jews had left their farms in large numbers to become craftsmen, artisans, merchants, etc., the only group to have given up on agriculture. Jewish participation in farming fell to about 10 percent through most of the world. It’s true that in the Middle Ages, Jews were often prohibited from owning land. However, in the Muslim world, Jews faced no limits on occupation, land ownership, or anything else that might have been relevant to the choice of whether to farm. Moreover, a prohibition on land ownership is not a prohibition on farming. So, what’s different about the Jews? Why didn’t other groups leave the land? The temptation was certainly there. Skilled urban jobs have always paid better than farming. But those jobs require literacy, which requires educatio...

For far more years than London has been the capital of England, Paris of France, Berlin of Germany, etc., Jerusalem has been the eternal capital of only one nation in the history of the world – Israel. Today, JERUSALEM DAY is being celebrated, in  commemoration of 52 years after the miraculous victory of the Six-Day War when Jerusalem was reunited.   Ever since King David declared it the capital of Israel around 1,000 BCE, Jerusalem has remained the focus of the Jewish people. His son, Solomon, built the First Temple there. . Today, 3,000 years later, Jerusalem continues to have unbreakable religious and political significance for Jews. Rabbi Jonathan Sacks refers to Jerusalem as the “beating heart” of Judaism. During these thousands of years, Jerusalem was never divided. Its only period of division was 1949-1967 when the UN Partition Plan of 1947 to make Jerusalem an international city was accepted by the Jews, and rejected by the Arabs. War commenced, foll...