David Ben-Gurion: Our Festivals of Freedom
Matia Kam

The day after the declaration of the establishment of the state of Israel, at the end of Shabbat (6 of Iyar 1948) Ben-Gurion addressed the citizens of Israel in a live radio address: “Yesterday Israel witnessed a monumental event that only future generations would be able to measure its full historic significance.” Four years later Ben-Gurion did not hesitate to declare that Independence Day is “a redemptive and revolutionary event in the history of our nation,” thus adding to our calendar the first freedom festival after two thousand years of exile. “We are the last generation of oppression and the first of deliverance.”

Ben-Gurion emphasized and reiterated that Independence Day, like all freedom festivals, is share by Jews all over the world, and all Jews for generations to come, since “every person […] is but a link in the long chain and there is no meaning to a person’s existence without a place in the chain.”

Until the establishment of the state the people of Israel had “two days of national freedom”: the first and oldest is Passover. “The festival of the Exodus from Egypt, that we have kept for three thousand and three hundred years, and is veiled with rich and wonderous narratives that describe the

great deliverance of our people—after bitter suffering in Egypt, the first exile of four hundred and thirty years.” The second festival of freedom is Hanukkah, another ancient festival of more than two thousand years.

The first festival of Freedom, the Exodus from Egypt, “is linked with the greatest leader

in the history of our nation—Moses, the leader of leaders—a warrior, a liberator, a teacher, a law-giver, a leader, a military commander, and most of all, a prophet, the greatest of Israel’s prophets, the one who took his people out of bondage and gave the nation a Torah of life and justice, and brought it to the edge of the promised land.” Passover, our first Freedom festival, denotes the very beginning of our
existence as a nation”.

For Ben-Gurion, the vote in the United Nations on November 29, 1947 on the partition of the land was a crucial event in this long ancient chain of liberation; “the fact that the land is the ancient homeland of the Hebrew nation and the origin of the book of books”, have played “a considerable role” in the decision of all the nations that voted for the partition and the establishment of a Jewish state. These countries that voted for a Jewish state saw in the vote “redressing the historic wrong done to Jews by the Christian world.” Yet Ben-Gurion repeatedly said that the state of Israel is not a new state in the historic context; it is a renewed state, a state restored, in the sense of “restoring pristine splendor.” He believed that “most world leaders” were aware of this ancient context and they “too “understood that the restoring of Israel was not a creation of a new state.”

Ben-Gurion noted, that at the moment of the declaration of the state, Jews around the world shared a sense of unity of oneness. “The nation of Israel was united in jubilation and pride on that day of the declaration of the establishment of the state.” In that display of unity and celebration both within Israel and among Jews around the world, Ben-Gurion saw the singularity of the moment, “a moment of great historic of Chesed”, of lovingkindness.

Nevertheless Ben-Gurion foresaw the myriad of challenges facing the state. Addressing the nation he said: “Let us not become drunk by victory…Let us behave with humility.” He reminded the citizens of Israel that they have a role as the messengers of history, “that chose our generation to fulfill the vision of previous generations who hoped for redemption and renewal” and he pleaded: “Let us not fail.” It seems that Ben-Gurion’s admonitions and recommendations for his generation were appropriate not only for his time, they fit our time as well.

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