The Land of Promise: The State of Israel

The book of Ezekiel contains a dual prophecy to the People of Israel. In its first part, God tells the Jewish People that the land assigned to them will remain desolate as long as it is occupied by strangers, and they remain in exile. And so it was - a bleak, barren, undeveloped land - for over 2000 years. In the second half of the prophecy, God describes the signs of the incipient redemption - how the land would appear just before the Jewish People would return forever. This part of the promise, too, began to come true, during the decades preceding the establishment of the Jewish state in Eretz Israel. This is the State of Israel, referred to in a Jewish prayer as the "first flowering of our redemption". From the deep sleep of oblivion in the absence of its sons and daughters, the land finally awakened.

On May 14, 1948 the State of Israel was declared and God's promise that the Jewish people would again be sovereign in their land was fulfilled. The long anticipation, the pain and the yearning merged into that old-new entity, an independent Jewish state in the Jewish homeland. The new State of Israel marked the end of the 2000-year-old exile.

Today Jewish people from all over the world continue to return to Israel, where cities that were once destroyed by their enemies have been rebuilt and where the soil is bursting with fruit, trees and flowers, just as the prophet Ezekiel had foretold. According to Rashi, the great medieval commentator on the Bible and Talmud, "When the Land of Israel gives its fruit abundantly, the redemption will be imminent, and there can be no more manifest redemption than this." The unfaltering faith in God's promise that the descendants of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob would return to their homeland was reflected in the wording of the Proclamation of Independence:

As a result of the Jewish people's love for their land and their strong desire to live there, the establishment of the State was followed by successive waves of Jewish immigration. In the first 18 months after independence, the population increased by more than 50 percent. In the first decade of statehood immigration came predominantly from the war-ravaged countries of Europe, and from Arab states. This was followed by a tide of immigration from North Africa.

The third decade of independence was marked by the first trickle of immigrants from the Soviet Union. Two organized campaigns, in 1984 and 1991, brought almost all the Jews of Ethiopia to Israel. Over the last decade, some one million newcomers from the former Soviet Union have arrived in Israel - the largest wave of immigration the country has ever seen. Many thousands continue to arrive each year from all over the world, predominantly from the Americas and Europe. Today, the population stands at over 6.4 million, of which some 78 percent is Jewish.

Thanks to the efforts of the pioneers and residents of the country, Israel has many forms of urban and rural communities including large and flourishing metropolises like its capital Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. Numerous villages and community settlements run the length and breadth of the country, together with over 700 moshavim and kibbutzim - cooperative farms and villages. Some of these communities predate the establishment of the State, while others are much newer and the site of energetic construction.

Despite severe weather conditions and water shortages, the toil of generations of farmers, whose strong desire was "to be tender to its dust" has produced impressive achievements in agriculture, noteworthy even by international standards. Today agricultural commodities constitute 3.5% of Israeli exports, and constitute the basis for many industries, including fresh fruits, flowers, fine wines, preserved goods and organic foods. In keeping with the Zionist ideology of working the land and living off its produce, Israel produces 95% of its food consumption. The desire to transform a barren land into a modern state, combined with Israel's large reservoir of academic and highly-qualified personel, has allowed the country to excel in many fields, including electronics, agrotechnology, telecommunications, computer-based equipment and alternative energy sources.

Since independence, the poignant words of the national anthem, Hatikva (the Hope) written by Naphtali Herz Imber, have represented the aspiration for genuine Jewish independence and peace in their Promised Land: