David Ben-Gurion giving the first public reading of Israel's Declaration of Independence on May 14, 1948, in Tel Aviv. This is the sermon I delivered on Yom Kippur 5785 at Temple Sinai in Cranston, Rhode Island, October 12, 2024.
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations approved Resolution 181 calling for the division of the British Mandate for Palestine into two nations – one for Jews and one for Arabs. The leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine, led by David Ben-Gurion, decided that they would declare the establishment of the Jewish state one day before the British finalized their withdrawal. They also appointed a committee to write a proclamation of independence. Ben-Gurion would be among the last to make final edits on the document, which was completed just a few hours before its presentation in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948.
One of the most significant changes Ben-Gurion made to the document was the insertion of a new opening phrase. Israel’s Declaration of Independence begins by saying, “In the Land of Israel, the Jewish people was born.”
Now, you may notice that there is something odd about that opening. Was the Jewish people born in the Land of Israel? In the Torah, the first time that Abraham’s descendants are first referred to as a “people” is in the opening chapter of the book of Exodus while the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. Why did Ben-Gurion begin the Declaration of Independence with a statement that appears to be false?
It was not out of ignorance. Ben-Gurion was not a religious Jew in the sense of traditional observance, but he was a lifelong student and great admirer of Jewish sacred texts. His choice to call the land of Israel the place where the Jewish people was born was quite deliberate, and, to his understanding, it was quite correct.
To see what Ben-Gurion was really trying to say, you have to look at the full opening of the Declaration. You also have to look at it in the Hebrew, not the English translation. In his preamble, the Declaration says of the Land of Israel, “bah chai chayei komemiyut mamlachtit.” It’s a difficult phrase to translate, but it means something close to, “In [that land] they lived a life of sovereign upright dignity and independence.”
The really hard part to get right in English is that idea of “upright dignity and independence,” which is actually a single word in Hebrew: komemiyut. On Rosh Hashanah morning, I gave you a Hebrew word to get to know – katonti, “I am made small.” If you remember only one thing from this sermon, I want you to remember the Hebrew word komemiyut, for the very identity of the state of Israel may rest on that word.
Komemiyut. Ben-Gurion chose that word with deep intentionality. It appears in one verse in the book of Leviticus and nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. The Torah says, “I Adonai am your God who brought you out of the land of the Egyptians so you would be their slaves no more, and I broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk komemiyut” (Lev 26:13).
Looking at the word in this context, we see something of what Ben-Gurion envisioned for the state of Israel. The word komemiyut comes from the root that means “to arise” and it is connected in this biblical verse to the idea of breaking free from slavery and being strong, independent, and self-reliant. God did not just bring us to the land of Israel to exchange servitude to Pharaoh for servitude to a new king. God brought us to our land to allow us to be reborn in a state of dignity where no one would be able to lord over us in any way. That is what it means to be komemiyut.
The historian and scholar Daniel Gordis says that the word komemiyut contains the essence of Ben-Gurion’s dream for the Jewish state. For Ben Gurion, “Merely surviving in Egypt did not constitute genuine peoplehood,” writes Gordis. “Meandering in the desert is not what peoplehood is meant to be. Being across the river, not yet in their promised land and still desperate for God’s protection, is not peoplehood. Peoplehood, believed Ben-Gurion, requires independence.”
From Ben-Gurion’s perspective, the Jewish people were not really born until we arose into that state of dignity that is evoked by the word komemiyut. In Ben-Gurion’s mind there was no mistake in saying that the Jewish people were truly born in the Land of Israel, the place where they could walk upright as a free people.
That understanding of komemiyut is further amplified by the way the word is used in the siddur, the Jewish prayerbook. In the blessing before we recite the Shema in the morning service, we pray these words, “Bring us in peace from the four corners of the earth and lead us to our land komemiyut.” The rabbis who wrote the prayerbook pulled this word from the Torah to state our longing for the day when we return to our land, not as subordinates to anyone, but as a free people in control of our destiny.
You better believe that David Ben-Gurion was thinking about that line from the siddur, too, when he included komemiyut in the opening words of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. To Ben-Gurion, using the word was not just about the romance of using biblical or prayerbook language. It was about the way he saw the Jewish world in his own time.
After the experience of European antisemitism, and its most horrible manifestation in the Shoah, Ben-Gurion believed that the Jewish people needed to shed their identity as victims, just as the ancient Israelites needed to shed their self-image as slaves when they emerged from Egypt. The idea of returning “upright,” “sovereign,” “dignified,” and “independent” to the land of our ancestors was Ben-Gurion’s ideal of how we should live in our land. He saw Israel as the fulfillment of the Jewish people’s long-dreamed return to freedom, independence and self-sufficiency after the humiliations we had endured from the Middle Ages and until the Shoah. To Ben-Gurion, komemiyut meant Israel would be a state that would restore the Jewish people’s dignity – no longer merely tolerated outsiders in our own land, and no longer dependent on the good intentions of others.
And this, I think, brings us to the present moment in understanding what is happening in Israeli society today. It also gives us a framework for imagining Israel’s future.
Israelis in 2024, now 76 years after their Declaration of Independence, see their nation as the fulfillment of a promise that the Jewish people should have a nation in which they can live in safety and determine their own destiny. To Israelis of all political perspectives, the heinous attacks of October 7, 2023, were a direct assault on the idea of komemiyut. They see the war that has raged on for a year now as an existential threat to their ability to live their lives with upright dignity and independence.
Do not believe, as some do, that divisions in Israeli society today are about justifying the war against Hamas. There are deep differences in Israel about the government’s priorities in fighting this war – whether to prioritize defeating Hamas or prioritize the release of the hostages – but Israelis are quite united in their belief that Israel must be a nation that can stand up for itself. For Israelis, that is all part of what it means to be komemiyut,
Yet, it is possible for Israelis and for us to explore and discuss what now serves Israel’s long-term interest in maintaining its integrity and its dignity. After October 7, we should investigate komemiyut through a different lens. We should ask, what does it mean for Israel and for the Jewish people today to maintain their dignity, to be upright, after what we have seen in the war against Hamas?
Remember that the word komemiyut originates in a text that proclaims God’s determination that the Israelites should be “slaves no more” and that the yoke of slavery should be broken. How can we build a foundation for our independence by depriving others of their freedom and independence? How can pursue our upright dignity by denying the dignity of others?
The siddur has us recite a morning blessing that asks God to “Bring us in peace from the four corners of the earth and lead us upright to our land.” We cannot ask God to do that for us if we force other people from that same land to live lives bent over from oppression.
Today, we the Jewish people, need a reminder of what we built Israel for. In 1948, Israel declared its independence in the aftermath of the Shoah, not, as some will claim, out of racist or colonialist motives – that is not dignity, and it never was. Rather, Israel was founded, as its Declaration of Independence states, to “foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants,” to “be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel,” and to “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion…”
We remain committed to those ideals, in part because to go back to the Jewish situation of pre-1948 would mean going back to a time when we had no security, no way to defend ourselves, and no way to be a dignified and upright people. We also remain committed to those ideals because they are right. They make us worthy of dignity and worthy of being a people in partnership and covenant with God.
Komemiyut today is being a nation that fights its enemies, but also fights for the rights of the innocent. It means being scrupulous in holding fast to the international laws that defend human rights. It means being tolerant of dissent and protecting the right to demonstrate against the government. It also means grieving the loss of not just Israeli lives, but also of Palestinian lives.
Komemiyut does mean taking arms against our enemies when that is needed, but it also means making peace when it is possible. It means fighting to make possible in the future what now seems impossible.
My hope for 5785 is that the war in Gaza and the war in Lebanon will come to an end – as quickly as possible and with as little additional suffering by innocent people as possible. And that we will then move to creating a sustainable future in which Israel will reach out to its neighbors – those who are willing to receive it – with an offer of peace. It is my hope that we will make the turn toward a future of healing, peace-making, and true komemiyut – peace, independence and dignity – for all people.
G’mar Chatimah Tovah. May you be sealed for a good year.
On November 29, 1947, the United Nations approved Resolution 181 calling for the division of the British Mandate for Palestine into two nations – one for Jews and one for Arabs. The leadership of the Jewish community in Palestine, led by David Ben-Gurion, decided that they would declare the establishment of the Jewish state one day before the British finalized their withdrawal. They also appointed a committee to write a proclamation of independence. Ben-Gurion would be among the last to make final edits on the document, which was completed just a few hours before its presentation in Tel Aviv on May 14, 1948.
One of the most significant changes Ben-Gurion made to the document was the insertion of a new opening phrase. Israel’s Declaration of Independence begins by saying, “In the Land of Israel, the Jewish people was born.”
Now, you may notice that there is something odd about that opening. Was the Jewish people born in the Land of Israel? In the Torah, the first time that Abraham’s descendants are first referred to as a “people” is in the opening chapter of the book of Exodus while the Israelites were slaves in Egypt. Why did Ben-Gurion begin the Declaration of Independence with a statement that appears to be false?
It was not out of ignorance. Ben-Gurion was not a religious Jew in the sense of traditional observance, but he was a lifelong student and great admirer of Jewish sacred texts. His choice to call the land of Israel the place where the Jewish people was born was quite deliberate, and, to his understanding, it was quite correct.
To see what Ben-Gurion was really trying to say, you have to look at the full opening of the Declaration. You also have to look at it in the Hebrew, not the English translation. In his preamble, the Declaration says of the Land of Israel, “bah chai chayei komemiyut mamlachtit.” It’s a difficult phrase to translate, but it means something close to, “In [that land] they lived a life of sovereign upright dignity and independence.”
The really hard part to get right in English is that idea of “upright dignity and independence,” which is actually a single word in Hebrew: komemiyut. On Rosh Hashanah morning, I gave you a Hebrew word to get to know – katonti, “I am made small.” If you remember only one thing from this sermon, I want you to remember the Hebrew word komemiyut, for the very identity of the state of Israel may rest on that word.
Komemiyut. Ben-Gurion chose that word with deep intentionality. It appears in one verse in the book of Leviticus and nowhere else in the Hebrew Bible. The Torah says, “I Adonai am your God who brought you out of the land of the Egyptians so you would be their slaves no more, and I broke the bars of your yoke and made you walk komemiyut” (Lev 26:13).
Looking at the word in this context, we see something of what Ben-Gurion envisioned for the state of Israel. The word komemiyut comes from the root that means “to arise” and it is connected in this biblical verse to the idea of breaking free from slavery and being strong, independent, and self-reliant. God did not just bring us to the land of Israel to exchange servitude to Pharaoh for servitude to a new king. God brought us to our land to allow us to be reborn in a state of dignity where no one would be able to lord over us in any way. That is what it means to be komemiyut.
The historian and scholar Daniel Gordis says that the word komemiyut contains the essence of Ben-Gurion’s dream for the Jewish state. For Ben Gurion, “Merely surviving in Egypt did not constitute genuine peoplehood,” writes Gordis. “Meandering in the desert is not what peoplehood is meant to be. Being across the river, not yet in their promised land and still desperate for God’s protection, is not peoplehood. Peoplehood, believed Ben-Gurion, requires independence.”
From Ben-Gurion’s perspective, the Jewish people were not really born until we arose into that state of dignity that is evoked by the word komemiyut. In Ben-Gurion’s mind there was no mistake in saying that the Jewish people were truly born in the Land of Israel, the place where they could walk upright as a free people.
That understanding of komemiyut is further amplified by the way the word is used in the siddur, the Jewish prayerbook. In the blessing before we recite the Shema in the morning service, we pray these words, “Bring us in peace from the four corners of the earth and lead us to our land komemiyut.” The rabbis who wrote the prayerbook pulled this word from the Torah to state our longing for the day when we return to our land, not as subordinates to anyone, but as a free people in control of our destiny.
You better believe that David Ben-Gurion was thinking about that line from the siddur, too, when he included komemiyut in the opening words of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. To Ben-Gurion, using the word was not just about the romance of using biblical or prayerbook language. It was about the way he saw the Jewish world in his own time.
After the experience of European antisemitism, and its most horrible manifestation in the Shoah, Ben-Gurion believed that the Jewish people needed to shed their identity as victims, just as the ancient Israelites needed to shed their self-image as slaves when they emerged from Egypt. The idea of returning “upright,” “sovereign,” “dignified,” and “independent” to the land of our ancestors was Ben-Gurion’s ideal of how we should live in our land. He saw Israel as the fulfillment of the Jewish people’s long-dreamed return to freedom, independence and self-sufficiency after the humiliations we had endured from the Middle Ages and until the Shoah. To Ben-Gurion, komemiyut meant Israel would be a state that would restore the Jewish people’s dignity – no longer merely tolerated outsiders in our own land, and no longer dependent on the good intentions of others.
And this, I think, brings us to the present moment in understanding what is happening in Israeli society today. It also gives us a framework for imagining Israel’s future.
Israelis in 2024, now 76 years after their Declaration of Independence, see their nation as the fulfillment of a promise that the Jewish people should have a nation in which they can live in safety and determine their own destiny. To Israelis of all political perspectives, the heinous attacks of October 7, 2023, were a direct assault on the idea of komemiyut. They see the war that has raged on for a year now as an existential threat to their ability to live their lives with upright dignity and independence.
Do not believe, as some do, that divisions in Israeli society today are about justifying the war against Hamas. There are deep differences in Israel about the government’s priorities in fighting this war – whether to prioritize defeating Hamas or prioritize the release of the hostages – but Israelis are quite united in their belief that Israel must be a nation that can stand up for itself. For Israelis, that is all part of what it means to be komemiyut,
Yet, it is possible for Israelis and for us to explore and discuss what now serves Israel’s long-term interest in maintaining its integrity and its dignity. After October 7, we should investigate komemiyut through a different lens. We should ask, what does it mean for Israel and for the Jewish people today to maintain their dignity, to be upright, after what we have seen in the war against Hamas?
Remember that the word komemiyut originates in a text that proclaims God’s determination that the Israelites should be “slaves no more” and that the yoke of slavery should be broken. How can we build a foundation for our independence by depriving others of their freedom and independence? How can pursue our upright dignity by denying the dignity of others?
The siddur has us recite a morning blessing that asks God to “Bring us in peace from the four corners of the earth and lead us upright to our land.” We cannot ask God to do that for us if we force other people from that same land to live lives bent over from oppression.
Today, we the Jewish people, need a reminder of what we built Israel for. In 1948, Israel declared its independence in the aftermath of the Shoah, not, as some will claim, out of racist or colonialist motives – that is not dignity, and it never was. Rather, Israel was founded, as its Declaration of Independence states, to “foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants,” to “be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel,” and to “ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion…”
We remain committed to those ideals, in part because to go back to the Jewish situation of pre-1948 would mean going back to a time when we had no security, no way to defend ourselves, and no way to be a dignified and upright people. We also remain committed to those ideals because they are right. They make us worthy of dignity and worthy of being a people in partnership and covenant with God.
Komemiyut today is being a nation that fights its enemies, but also fights for the rights of the innocent. It means being scrupulous in holding fast to the international laws that defend human rights. It means being tolerant of dissent and protecting the right to demonstrate against the government. It also means grieving the loss of not just Israeli lives, but also of Palestinian lives.
Komemiyut does mean taking arms against our enemies when that is needed, but it also means making peace when it is possible. It means fighting to make possible in the future what now seems impossible.
My hope for 5785 is that the war in Gaza and the war in Lebanon will come to an end – as quickly as possible and with as little additional suffering by innocent people as possible. And that we will then move to creating a sustainable future in which Israel will reach out to its neighbors – those who are willing to receive it – with an offer of peace. It is my hope that we will make the turn toward a future of healing, peace-making, and true komemiyut – peace, independence and dignity – for all people.
G’mar Chatimah Tovah. May you be sealed for a good year.
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