Israel's Greatest Accomplishments - Part 3

Part of The Yom Haatzmaut Project

Continued from Part 2


The third accomplishment I want to discuss is the sanctification of God’s name which came with the creation of the State of Israel.





There is a famous story from Rav Soloveitchik. Since he was involved in the Academia, during the holocaust, American professors kept telling him the reason for Jewish suffering was their refusal to accept Jesus. Rav Soloveitchik said that from the Creation of the World there had never been such a great Hillul ha-Shem (Desecration of God’s name) as occurred during the Holocaust when the non-Jews proclaimed: “This is God’s nation, and they have left His land.” In those years it certainly seemed that Christianity had triumphed. Rav Soloveitchik added that from the Creation of the World there had never been such a great Kiddush ha-Shem (Sanctification of God’s name) as when the State of Israel was established, when the entire world witnessed the resurrection of God’s nation.

Exile, in itself, is a Hillul Hashem. When God’s ambassadors are suffering, it reflects on God. It paints a bad picture about what God truly is, and takes away from his light in this world. Some Christian thinkers used to say that the reason why the Jews survived miraculously for generations but kept on suffering was in order to stay around as a testimony of Jesus’s greatness and to show what happens to those who do not accept him. This is why many of history’s most prominent anti-semites would speak at length about the Jew’s eternal nature. They were eternal because they had to be around as a proof of Jesus. Of course, this was a huge Hillul Hashem! Then, the State of Israel came and this theology no longer worked! It is no surprise that quickly after the creation of the State of Israel, Christian leaders removed their claim that Jews killed Jesus. This didn’t make sense anymore. If they did, how could they be resurrecting? How could the State of Israel be around?

The State of Israel is at once, the biggest proof of Judaism’s validity and the greatest disproof to all other religions. It brought Pride back to the Jewish People and to Judaism itself. It is the greatest Kiddush Hashem since Kriyat Yam Suf (the splitting of the sea).