5 - Where were you when …

Pop quiz: Where were you when you when 9/11 happened?

This question, a defining moment for my generation, has become a meeting ground for us to enter into our shared history and unite around a commonly held tragedy. For our parents, the question was “where were you when JFK was shot?” To go back another generation, the question is “where were you when Pearl Harbor was bombed?”

Today, we stayed more local to Tel Aviv. We visited Jafo, the ancient (dates back further than Egyptian Pharoah Tutmus III) small Arab city from which Tel Aviv was first a suburb, and then its own small city, and then the dramatically dominant city. We visited an archeological dig site that evidenced Jafo’s tumultuous history as a frequently conquered, destroyed and rebuild city, we visited the artist’s community that apparently is open quite late in the evening because at 10:00 in the morning it was just our clan and the alley cats (Mum, we saw Cameo’s cousins!). We also visited St. Peter’s Church, the first distinctly Christian space we have entered since arriving in Israel (more later), and did our best to stay in the shade and near breezeways (in the words of Dee-Dee, we didn’t want anyone to plop).

Next, we visited Independence Hall, in one of the oldest sections of Tel Aviv. The Hall, initially the home of the first mayor of Tel Aviv, Meier Dizengoff (who I keep wanting to call Dumbledore … bad Devon, bad!), was selected as the site at which to announce Israel’s Independence because it was secure … thick walls, few windows, and was not a natural choice for a public announcement (it had been converted into an art museum shortly before Dizengoff’s death).

We were fortunate to arrive just as one Birthright group was leaving, and we essentially had the Hall to ourselves. We watched a video on the first decades of Tel Aviv’s history, and then listened to a docent account for the events leading up to David Ben Gurion’s announcement late on a Friday afternoon, 4:00 p.m., on May 14, 1948 that Israel was declaring its Independence. As we learned at the Palmach Museum, war had been going on for about six months (ever since the November 4, 1947 UN voted for the Israeli-Palestinian partitioning of Eretz Israel). This war was a civil war between the Jews and the Arabs, and England, still enforcing the British Mandate, wore the many hats of occupier, peace keeper, educator, communicator, border controller, economic stabilizer, etc.

On May 15, 1948, the British were going to leave Israel, creating a power vacuum, and leading to certain attacks by the neighboring Arab nations. Israeli leaders were split … do we declare Independence now and be our own rulers in Israel for the first time in millennium? Or do we fight until we reach a ceasefire and wait until we are victors to declare ourselves a sovereign state. Ten of the 13 parliamentary leaders met in Tel Aviv on May 12 (the other three were unable to travel the 50 miles from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv because the city was under siege), and they met in secret for 13 hours to make this decision. Israel was under great international pressure to wait to for a cease-fire, but the leaders and voted six to four to declare independence as the British left.

We listened to a highly emotional tape of the highlights of the 32 minute ceremony … spontaneous singing as Ben Gurion arrived at the Hall, Ben Gurion’s declaration, the reading of the Shecheynu, and the voices of 350 persons and a 50 piece orchestra singing Hetikfa, for which we stood, and many sang along. And after playing these moving segments, our museum guide told us that he knew exactly where his grandparents were when the Declaration of Independence was signed and radio broadcast. They were behind barbed wire on a refugee camp in Greece, to which they were sent after surviving the holocaust, finding themselves unwanted in their native Poland, risking the sea voyage to Israel, and being denied entry to Israel by the British.

Our museum guide’s grandparents were homeless, though hardly wanderers. As a people, the Jews have frequently found themselves unintentionally and undesirably homeless. Israel, he said, has been established to give all of us a place to call home. May 14, 1948 is a day cemented into the memory of Israelis and Jews around the world. Getting so far towards the Zionist dream, knowing full well that the State would be attacked from three sides the following morning, was a cause for celebration for a weary and determined people. Where were you when the Israel declared independence?

PS. I know that most of us were not alive in 1948, but I think it is an interesting excercise.