Remarkable Israel more than news headlines

Political unrest. Protests. Polarisation. Terror attacks. Security threats. Diplomatic difficulties.

The news coming out of Israel isn’t positive, to say the least. Many are speaking of doomsday scenarios.

Though I don’t negate that Israel is facing significant challenges, I harken back to two episodes involving my grandmother, and I’m filled with hope and optimism.

It was February 2004, and we had just decided to make aliya. I had to call my grandmother to tell her that we were moving. We lived in Maryland and she lived in New York, and we made an effort for her to see our children quite regularly. A survivor of Auschwitz, she was in the golden years of her life, enjoying her children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren. And now I had to tell her that we were moving her great-grandchildren thousands of kilometres away.

I picked up the phone and put it down a few times and then I finally dialled. After some small talk, I said, “Bubby, I have some news for you. With G-d’s help, we’re making aliya this summer. We’re moving to Israel.”

There was a pause on the other side of the line, and I braced myself for my grandmother to say it like it is, as she always did. I prepared myself for her to be legitimately upset. But she broke the silence with this blessing in Hebrew:

“Baruch ata Hashem elokeinu melech ha’olam she’he’cheyanu v’kimanu v’higiyanu lazman hazeh.” (She thanked G-d for keeping her alive and bringing her to this special time.)

It took my breath away. I said, “Bubby, where did that come from?”

She said, “It’s going to be very painful to have you so far away and not to see your children growing up. But when we were on the boat coming to America from the displaced persons camp in Germany after the Holocaust, I asked myself the entire way, ‘Why are we going in this direction to another foreign country to the Jewish people when we could be going in the other direction, where a new Jewish state is being established in our biblical and ancestral homeland?’” She said she appreciated how America welcomed the Jewish people, but “to see my grandchildren and great-grandchildren settling in Israel, I have nothing but thanks to G-d”.

Fast-forward 10 years later, and my elderly Bubby mustered up the strength and came to Israel. She visited me in my Knesset office, close to 70 years after her liberation from Auschwitz. She sat down, looked around, and said, “Dovele, this doesn’t make any sense. A Jewish state? Israel? The Jewish capital? Jerusalem? A Jewish parliament? The Knesset? My grandson as a member of the Knesset? This just doesn’t make any sense.”

Seventy years earlier, she arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau in a cattle car along with her parents, some of her siblings, and many nieces and nephews. That night, Shavuot 1944, all but she and one of her sisters were exterminated in the gas chambers. And here she was in my Knesset office 70 years later.

My Bubby was right. It doesn’t make any sense. G-d is “hard at work” making the impossible come true in the holy land.

Think about how many times Israel has been on the brink of destruction. In 1948, when larger and stronger Arab armies attacked us from all sides after we declared our independence; in 1967, when mass graves were prepared throughout Israel as the Arab armies again amassed along Israel’s indefensible borders; during the Yom Kippur War, when the Syrian forces seemed to have an unabated path to Haifa. Though these were all external foes whose plans to annihilate the Jewish state were squelched by our army with the help of G-d, it’s clear that we’re living in miraculous times in which biblical prophecies are coming true before our eyes.

Prophets in the Bible spoke about the “ingathering of the exiles”, when Jews from around the world would return to make Israel their home. I’m blessed to lead Yad L’Olim, an organisation that has assisted more than 32 000 olim families from 40 different countries of origin in just two years. The Jews are returning home from all around the world exactly as the prophets foretold.

The Bible speaks about a barren land that will lay fallow as long as the Jews aren’t there. But once the Jews return, the land will flourish again. Just look at lush Israel, filled with trees and flowers. For 2 000 years, nothing could grow there. And now it’s a “garden of G-d”, as predicted in the Bible.

We’re blessed to live in the most remarkable of times. Yes, there are challenges. But the very existence of the state of Israel is an open miracle. I often wonder what my great-great-great grandparents would have been willing to give up simply to breathe the air of Jerusalem for just a few minutes.

And yet here we are, with Jerusalem and all of Israel available for all Jews to visit or to move to whenever they choose to do so.

Yes, there are challenges. And yes, we must learn from the past and never allow ourselves to be so polarised, we cannot govern and function.

So, let’s zoom out from the minutia of the daily news and remind ourselves of what my Bubby saw and knew – that the G-d of Israel is “working overtime” on behalf of the Jewish people in Israel, as He promised He would. And then, let’s work to find solutions to our problems and challenges with positivity and the confidence behooving of a special people, living in a special time, in the most special of places.

• Limmud South Africa will be hosting Lipman in August 2023. He will present at Limmud Cape Town (Sunday 20 August), Limmud Durban (Monday 21 August), and Limmud Johannesburg (Friday 25 to Sunday 27 August). For information or to register, visit limmud.org.za.
• Lipman was elected to the Knesset in 2013. He has authored nine books about Judaism and Israel. He focuses on Israel education, and the integration of the ultra-Orthodox population into Israeli society. He founded Yad L’Olim, which assists new immigrants with acclimation to Israel.