Since their expulsion from the Holy Land, that is modern Israel, by the Romans in around 131 of the Common Era, Jews have prayed for their return at least three times daily.
The centrality of Israel, and its capital Jerusalem, constitute a core element in Jewish religious practice, and the word Jerusalem appears 669 times in the Bible, known in English as the Old Testament and in Hebrew as Tanakh.
“If I forget thee O Jerusalem let my right hand lose its cunning” is the opening of one of the most famous Psalms, and summarises this longing. It is offered up at the conclusion of the Day of Atonement service, the most solemn in the Jewish calendar, and at Passover, the festival that we have just celebrated.
Yet one more religious reference. The breaking of a glass at the conclusion of a Jewish marriage service is to remind the groom not to allow his own rejoicing to be greater than the need to recall Jerusalem’s destruction, and the Jews’ expulsion from the Holy Land by the Romans.
The importance of Israel to the overwhelming majority of Jews around the world is therefore underpinned by religious belief and practice.
In 2010, the Institute for Jewish Policy Research, whom I have mentioned in previous articles, carried out a large scale poll of British Jews’ attachment to Israel. For 82% of respondents, Israel plays a ‘central’ or ‘important but not central’ role in their Jewish identities. 90% believe that Israel is the ‘ancestral homeland’ of the Jewish people and 95% have visited Israel in some point. This figure has grown over the course of several similar polls, suggesting that Israel now assumes a greater role in their lives than previously. Moreover an overwhelming majority (87%) agreed that Jews are responsible for ensuring the survival of Israel’.
But Jews’ attachment to Israel, and Israel’s attachment to the worldwide Jewish diaspora go much further than one based only on religious bonds. They both invest an enormous amount in each other. Jews support charities in Israel which fund every facet of life from the emergency services, to children’s homes, to helping new immigrants to integrate, to schools, universities and other educational services. Virtually every public building has a plaque recording the generosity of a foreign Jew who has endowed the building in memory of parents, or other relatives. Israel is the preferred holiday destination for many European Jews, especially during religious festivals and in winter when the beaches of Eilat and the Red Sea beckon.
High school students from most European states now spend several months in Israel, and many do so for a gap year between school and university. The US-based Birthright Israel funds educational visits for a growing number of American youth. Practically every synagogue raises money for charitable and developmental work in Israel during important Jewish religious festivals via the United Jewish and Israel Appeal, or the Jewish National Fund, which owns the freehold of all public land in Israel, and which has been the main vehicle for agricultural development there since 1901.
In return, Israel sends emissaries to Jewish communities to help educate the young, and to assist in local community development. Israel’s diplomats don’t only represent Israel to foreign governments: they also act as a bridge between their government and local Jewish communities. The Jewish Agency for Israel, a government agency founded in 1929 to represent Jews’ concerns to the British mandatory power, and which acted as embryonic government before the birth of the modern state in 1948, now serves as the main link between the Jewish state and Jewish communities everywhere, helping them to confront the many challenges they continue to face. It acts as first responder to Jews in crisis, acting together with local national governments and their agencies, and has been the main agency rescuing Jews in peril since the 1930s.
Perhaps this historic and possibly unique relationship between Jews world-wide is expressed best in the Hebrew Am Israel, which translates as ‘the Jewish people’, through which Jews everywhere see themselves as part of the same family.
