In the latest episode of "The Israeli Perspective", Jay Shapiro discusses the extraordinary survival of the Jewish people and the establishment of the State of Israel after nearly two thousand years of exile.
Shapiro asks listeners to imagine how Moses would react if he returned to the world today. Unlike the rulers and thinkers of other ancient civilizations, Moses would not find that his nation had disappeared or that its traditions had been forgotten.
Instead, he would encounter Jews studying the Torah, observing Shabbat, reciting the same prayers, and speaking Hebrew in the Land of Israel.
Although Jewish communities were dispersed across continents and subjected to persecution, forced conversion, expulsion, and genocide, they continued to preserve a shared national and religious identity.
Shapiro notes that Jews living in widely separated communities remained united by their attachment to Jerusalem. They faced the same city during prayer, remembered it at weddings, and repeatedly expressed their hope of returning to Zion.
This continuity, he argues, distinguishes the Jewish people from the great nations and empires of the ancient world, many of which vanished or lost their original languages, beliefs, and identities.
Shapiro also addresses attempts to portray the Jewish people as foreign colonizers in their ancestral homeland. He rejects the claim that Zionism created an artificial Jewish connection to the land, emphasizing that the longing for Zion existed for generations before the rise of the modern Zionist movement.
The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, he says, was not the beginning of the Jewish connection to the land. Rather, it marked the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the homeland in which the nation was formed.
Shapiro further reflects on the threats facing Israel, including Iran’s hostility, regional instability, terrorism, and the continuing spread of antisemitism.
Despite these challenges, he maintains that the Jewish people are in a stronger position than at almost any other point during their long exile. Israel possesses a powerful military, a growing economy, and the ability to defend Jewish communities rather than depend entirely on the goodwill of foreign governments.
The existence of a sovereign Jewish state, Shapiro concludes, should never be taken for granted.
After centuries in which Jews prayed for a return to Jerusalem, millions now live in Israel, Hebrew is once again the language of everyday life, and the Jewish people can determine their own national future.
The State of Israel, he says, is both the result of Jewish perseverance and one of the greatest miracles of modern history.