Between Ben Gurion and Bishop Benjamin
On the 78th anniversary of Israel's independence, a virtual congregation of Jewish and Christian leaders gathered to mark a moment that still defies comprehension.
My good friend Bishop Leon Benjamin organizes a remarkable daily prayer call under Global Leaders United. I have participated in the past and have always been impressed by the dedication of scores of people committing the first hour of their day in prayer together. I refer to it as a big virtual congregation.
A few months ago, when he was scheduling speakers into the summer months, I immediately grabbed May 14 as my turn to share and pray. When I explained to him why I picked May 14, he embraced it and promoted it widely.
As the call began, I felt the overwhelming sense of something very powerful taking place. Not just rhetorically. I was honored and blessed to be part of the virtual congregation, especially today. Honestly, it became very emotional.
I began by bringing greetings from the Judean mountains south of Jerusalem, and explained that I wanted to talk about a little bit of history, a little bit of scripture, and the modern intersection of the two.
“Who has heard such a thing? Who has seen such things? Shall a land be born in one day? Shall a nation be brought forth at once?”
Isaiah 66:8
Can a nation be born in a day? The short answer is yes, and that is why May 14 is relevant. But I also explained that as a nation, the Jewish people was born in the desert 3,500 years earlier. An auspicious setting. Just out of slavery in Egypt, two million people in the wilderness, and then, poof, we become a people.
May 14, 1948, was different. It marked a formal milestone, a beginning of the end of our exile of nearly 2,000 years. It represented the prophetic fulfillment of the restoration of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel, the third commonwealth.
To say that the room at the former Tel Aviv Museum was heavy with history would be an understatement.
It also came on the heels of a third of the Jewish people having been slaughtered in the Holocaust.
That year, May 14 fell on a Friday, the eve of the Sabbath. The British Mandate for Palestine was going to expire at midnight. The Jewish leadership had accepted the formula of two states, in 1947 and before that in 1937, one Arab and one Jewish, to be carved out of the remaining 22 percent of what had been Mandatory Palestine. The British had already unilaterally created the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan on the other 78 percent.
The Arab leadership of the surrounding states rejected it and declared a war of extermination. The local Arab clans had no distinct national identity of their own at that point. Their Arab brethren viewed them as part of a broader Arab nation. The Arabs on the East Bank of the Jordan River became Jordanians. Those in the remainder of Palestine did not view themselves as a distinct people until 1964. Facts matter.
The about-to-be-born State of Israel was not going to be born in violation of the fourth commandment.
The formal declaration was made at 4:00pm local time, 9:00am in Washington, DC. Eleven minutes later, President Truman became the first leader of the first country to recognize the State of Israel.
As Israel prepared for Shabbat, it also prepared for war. Prime Minister David Ben Gurion looked for a safe deposit box in which to store the written Declaration, signed by 37 Israeli leaders. He knew war was coming and wanted to preserve the document, recognizing the significance of that moment as much as having an original by Isaiah himself.
The war lasted well into 1949, with armistice lines drawn but no formal borders, because the Arabs rejected the very existence of the Jewish state. Six thousand Israeli soldiers were killed, one percent of the Jewish population.
After the armistice, Gaza was occupied by Egypt. Judea and Samaria and ancient Jerusalem, the cradle of Judaism and Christianity, renamed the West Bank simply to describe its location on the west bank of the Jordan River, were annexed by Jordan. This is an essential core of the ongoing conflict, in a war that has never really ended.
While Israel celebrates its Independence Day on the 5th of the Biblical month of Iyar, May 14 is and will always be significant. Several of the Global Leaders joined in reciting Psalms of thanksgiving (113 through 118), Hallel, to mark the milestone as a virtual congregation. Powerful.
This year, the 28th of Iyar overlaps with May 14, a rare occurrence. The 28th of Iyar is the anniversary of the day during the Six Day War in 1967 when Israel reunified Jerusalem. The holy city, the center of our faiths, reunited forever under the sovereignty of the Jewish people and the State of Israel.
We are literally living in miraculous times with prophecies unfolding before our eyes. These are impossible to ignore.
Israel’s existence today, on these two milestones, is proof that God exists, that He keeps His covenants, and that He is always faithful. There is no greater evidence than the return of the Jewish people to the Land of Israel, defying the odds of 2,000 years in exile. There is no other example in history of a people being exiled from their land for so long and returning with such strength, if returning at all.
Bishop Benjamin made some concluding remarks that seemed to echo the overall feeling: all the Global Leaders understood the significance of the moment we were sharing together. We celebrate Israel at 78. We celebrate the United States at 250. And we celebrate the alliance between us.
The call began at 3:00pm Israel time, 8:00am Eastern. As it was wrapping up, ending precisely on the hour, I realized we were finishing exactly at the time Ben Gurion was preparing to make the historic Declaration 78 years before.
The weight on his shoulders, the responsibility, the history, the looking into the future, must have been immense. I tried to imagine what he was doing in that hour before the formal declaration. Was anything going wrong? What preparations were being made for the war about to begin?
Did he realize he was about to fulfill the prayers and dreams of millions of Jews over millennia?
Could he have imagined that 78 years to the day, to the exact hour, one of his people would be celebrating what he did, alongside scores of Christian leaders whose joy was no less than mine?
I am still having a hard time getting my arms around the enormity of the moment.
Thank you, Bishop Benjamin. Thank you, Global Leaders. God bless you.