We enter into the days celebrating Israel's independence as a nation wracked with concerns, confusion and self-doubt. The traumatic days of the Expulsion-Disengagement from the settlements of Gush Katif and northern Samaria, and the violent experience of the Amona police riot, simply culminated a decay that began with the ill-fated Oslo "peace agreements."

A nation born out of faithful determination and indomitable spirit had been overtaken by a leadership and society that seemed to crumble under every pressure. It seems to be a society that takes pride in "thinkers" who frolic in the notion that Zionism has diminished or was officially dead. The media, which seemed to relish giving great forum for these ideas, introduced this notion even amongst the many in this country who still felt the
The struggle between the forces of vision and those of hedonism is on.
privilege and the passion of living in this land. Even the common Israeli who deeply felt that his walk in this land seemed to echo of something deep and heroic began to wonder and doubt.

"Could it be," many began to ask, "that the selfish attitudes, superficial mores and me-focused ideals of Tel Aviv 'wannabee' culture have overcome Israel's past and has clouded its future?"

Yet, if one succeeds in looking past the headlines and the commercials blaring on TV, one can clearly sense the fire yet burning. It was not the ideals of the "wannabee" culture that propelled tens of thousands of young Israelis into the front lines to protect their nation and people, though it was exactly those ideals that hindered their success. It is not the self-serving attitudes that continue to motivate and stir the heart of many in this land, though it is exactly those attitudes that have attempted to belittle these passions. It was not superficiality that motivated heroic individuals like Major Roi Klein (H.y.d.) to jump on a live grenade, with a cry of "Sh'ma Yisrael," in order to save his men, but it is that same superficiality that has allowed his story to be forgotten.

The struggle between the forces of vision, idealism and passion in the one hand, and the smothering and numbing powers of hedonism and "me-ism" on the other is in full gear. That struggle remains the dark cloud over Israel's Independence Day. Yet, it is a passing cloud.

Last week, after the day commemorating the Holocaust, I was sent an audio recording that was filled with pain and optimism. On April 15, 1945, British forces liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in northern Germany. Sixty-thousand prisoners were living in the camp when the troops arrived, most of them seriously ill. Thousands more lay dead and unburied on the camp grounds. Five days after the liberation that came far too late for so many others, the sick and starving survivors gathered for their first Shabbat service since the fires of destruction began.

The Jewish chaplain to the British second army, Rabbi L. H. Hartman led the service and BBC reporter Patrick Gordon Walker recorded it for posterity. Knowing they were being recorded, it seems that those survivors wanted to send a message to the world. They gathered what little strength they had left and sang an earlier version of what was to become Israel's national anthem, Hatikva, "The Hope."

I wept as I heard their voices, sensed their passion and felt their pain. I also realized that this type of passion can never be extinguished. What gives the strength to a people who had witnessed the greatest evil, and felt it burnt into their own flesh, and yet still believe that there is hope? The secret may lie in the fact that this is a people that did not become a people because they lived together, or spoke the same language, or even looked alike. This is a people that became a nation because G-d ordained it to be so. They came out of Egyptian slavery and, after trials and tribulations, received their mandate and their land.

So it would be after the Jews' modern exodus from the valley of the shadow of death. Comprehending the presence of the Divine in the fires of Europe remains a mystery, but not so with the miraculous return and rebirth within the ancient land.
This type of passion can never be extinguished.

The passion that was so evident in that haunting recording from Bergen-Belsen has not died, but its sound only reverberates in the souls of those who want to hear. Israel's Independence was achieved by the efforts and the sacrifices of so many who felt that passion. Yet, the success of that achievement was secured and initiated by Divine intervention.

There is no other explanation that rings true for the victory of the few against the many. There is no other way to comprehend how six days in June of 1967 could turn impending disaster into eternal victory. There is no logic to the incredible rebirth of Torah institutions and schools of learning in a land that seemed to be so bereft of the waters of life. Yom Ha'atzmaut does not only celebrate the achievements of great and heroic men and women, it is ultimately a celebration of G-d.

On this Yom Ha'atzmaut, Israel's Independence Day, I will be singing loudly, dancing with more passion and speaking more clearly about the great miracles that have brought us to these days. All the self-serving actions and small-minded decisions of our present leadership cannot, and will not, deter my thankfulness for the Divine call that brought about these beginning steps of redemption. They will also not hamper my appreciation and feeling of honor for all those people who have not in the past, nor in the present, shirked from listening and acting on that Divine imperative.

The words of Israel's national anthem Hatikva were adapted from a poem called Tikvatenu ("Our Hope") written by the Galician-Jewish poet Naftali Herz Imber in Zolochiv (Ukraine) in 1878. The eighth stanza in the original poem reads as follows:

So long as deep national love
Beats in the heart of the Jew,
We can survive another day
Because a zealous God will yet grant us grace;

Od lo avedah tikvatenu
Hatikvah hannoshanah
Lashuv le'eretz avoteinu
Le'ir bah Daveed chanah.

"Our hope will not be lost / Our ancient hope / To return to the land of our fathers / The city where David encamped."