In honor of Israel's upcoming 60th birthday, the World Zionist Organization has sent an educational kit on the topic to hundreds of Jewish communities around the world.

The kit has various options from which schools may choose, ranging from the Shemittah year, music, HaTikvah, Tu B'Shvat, and more. Click here for more information.

In addition, publications such as a Zionist calendar, a music anthology and a children's magazine will be published and distributed. A variety of web conferences will also be held throughout the year, for educators as well as for students. For further details, email <sandrineb@jafi.org>.

What Happened
The State of Israel was declared on the 5th of Iyar, 5708 (May 14, 1948), when Jewish Agency chairman David Ben-Gurion stood before the People's Council - a 37-member body that had been established as an unofficial provisional legislature and government a month earlier - and read aloud the new state's Declaration of Independence. Excerpts:

"The Land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish People. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

"After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people remained faithful to it throughout their Dispersion, and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

"Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses... They made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving society controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.

"...This right [of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country] was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of November 2, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel, and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home.

"The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State...

"On the 29th of November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in the Land of Israel... This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable. This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State..."

Ben-Gurion then declared the establishment of the State of Israel, to take effect as of midnight, upon the termination of the British Mandate. The declaration itself was made on Friday, several hours before independence actually came into effect, in order not to clash with the Sabbath.

The People's Council became Israel's Provisional Government, serving for 10 months until March 10, 1949. It was headed by Prime Minister and Defense Minister David Ben-Gurion, and was manned by 12 other ministers, including Foreign Minister Moshe Sharett, Health and Aliyah Minister Chaim Moshe Shapira, and Religions and War Victims Minister Yehuda Leib Maimon.

Though the Declaration mentioned the new state's goal of absorbing the Ingathering of the Exiles, the ongoing Jewish struggle for the Redemption of Israel, and "with trust in the Rock of Israel," and though it appeared to many that centuries of Zionist dreams had now reached their climax - there were many Jews who were greatly disappointed.

The hareidi-religious public looked askance at the secular leadership and reigning culture, and did not then see the new State as part of the Divine plan for Israel's Redemption. Within the religious-Zionist sector, too, there were those who felt that a State without the Holy Temple in Jerusalem and without the Biblical areas of Hevron, Shechem, and more was merely a tease; Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook said he only joined in the general celebrations after great hesitations.

In addition, there were those who looked at the borders of the new state, as defined by the UN Partition Resolution several months before, as totally indefensible. They delineated three separate sections, with the east-Galilee section touching the narrow Coastal Plane section at only one point, and the Coastal Plane area touching the Negev at only one point. Half of the Galilee, all of Judea, Samaria, Gaza, Halutza and what is now the Jerusalem Corridor and Beit Shemesh areas were to become Arab.

However, within hours of the Declaration, seven Arab armies attacked the young Jewish state, and the war ended a year later with Israel in control of what became known as the pre-1967 borders - including the Jerusalem Corridor up to but not including the Old City, Halutza, and the entire Galilee.