The fourth aspect of the relationship arises from Israel’s role in resolving the problem—or should one rather say in removing the curse, the scourge, and the shame?—of Jewish homelessness. It is an achievement equal in importance, if not actually superior, to the attainment of independence. The fateful transformation which took place in this regard can again be expressed in simple terms. The question “Whither?”—that is, where are we or our brothers to go?—which had cast a shadow over Jewish history with such inexorable fatefulness for so many centuries on end, was with one stroke relegated to the past. It was completely removed from the Jewish (or, for that matter, the international) agenda. It has simply vanished. Just as the Jewish people as a whole has ceased to be a “stateless person” with no country of its own, so it is no longer a “displaced person” with nowhere to go. The highest purpose of the struggle for Jewish territorial sovereignty was thereby decisively vindicated. That purpose was to gain power over the one country in the world the Jews could call their own, in order to make the rescue of Jews via their immigration depend on nothing other than the will of the Jewish people itself. The tragic lesson of the Mandatory experience was indelibly engraved on the minds of our generation in Israel. Based originally on the full recognition of the Jewish right of immigration, the Mandate eventually degenerated into its denial—just at a time when its free exercise became a matter of life and death. The reason for this historic volte-face was that though the right had been internationally acknowledged, its application was entrusted to a foreign power which had its own interests to uphold—interests which in its estimation were overriding whenever they conflicted with the protection of that right. It became evident that the rescue of Jews could be assured only by making it into a legitimate function of Jewish national sovereignty.

In that sense, Israel’s independence primarily meant that the keys to the country’s gates had come into Jewish hands, and the War of Independence was fought to prevent those keys from falling into the hands of others. It is these keys that were the crux of the battle, and it is they that became the prize of victory. Bloodstained, they were placed at the feet of the Jewish people, for to the Jewish people they belonged and on its behalf and for its sake were they to be entrusted to a redeemed Israel. The first right enjoyed by every normal nation was at last ours: Mastery over a strip of territory, enabling us to admit into it any and all of our brothers who reached our shores. That momentous achievement received its legislative expression in the Law of Return and found its concrete realization in the tremendous number of Jews who have flocked to Israel since the gates were opened, wave after wave, from north and south, from east and west. It, too, represents a jointly owned asset and entails a joint responsibility for Israel and the diaspora.

For it not only spells deliverance, present and future, for all Jews who are or ever will be driven by want, fear, persecution, or spiritual enslavement to seek homes in Israel. While this is its main achievement, its salutary effects go far beyond. About two-thirds of the Jewish people outside Israel dwell at present in their respective countries in freedom and safety. They have never been indifferent to the lot of less fortunate Jewish communities. But what were they in a position to do in the past—what did they in fact do—whenever a stricken Jewish community, whether the adversity was a sudden one or had been building for a long time, found itself uprooted or had to uproot itself and seek shelter elsewhere? All they could do was appeal, solicit, protest. Their best hope was that their fellow Jews would become objects of international sympathy, which, to say the least, rarely proved effective. They have now been spared, and, let us all hope, spared forever, the humiliation and torment of helplessness which had seemed to be their inexorable fate. Rescue via entrance to the land of Israel is now automatically guaranteed, by the very existence of Israel and by its declared policy, which it conceives, as do all Jews, as an irrevocable pledge solemnly assumed by it towards the Jewish people for all its future history.

There is still acute concern for the fate of those Jews who, despite their strong desire to leave their countries of residence and settle in Israel, are prevented from doing so. There is still a need for concerted Jewish action for the lifting of prohibitions on emigration. The World Jewish Congress has indeed exerted its efforts in this direction with respect to certain countries, with remarkable perseverance. In doing so it has upheld what it sees as an elementary Jewish right, in fact an elementary human right. But the moment a Jew is free to go, and unless in his wisdom he happens to have other preferences, his country of destination is obvious—and open.

The responsibility of the diaspora is to protect and to exercise this newly won freedom of immigration for Jews, by providing for the absorption of Jews who have come. The role that the free Jewish communities of the dispersion played in helping Israel grapple with the tidal wave of immigration that followed immediately upon independence was decisive. That effort continues as immigration and the process of absorption have continued, but it does not always fully address the needs. At times it fails to reflect an adequate awareness of the emergency at hand. But its continuity and scale are unlike anything ever achieved or even attempted in the history of voluntary financial endeavors anywhere in the world. This is no ordinary philanthropy. This is no casual financial aid to a country in need. This is a worldwide demonstration of the response of a scattered people to a call to united action issuing from within itself—an epic of its resolve to rebuild its ancient, distant land and to save its threatened sons and daughters. It is an elemental expression of that sense of purpose with which Israel has endowed Jewish life, one of the results of which is the direct involvement of diaspora Jews in the process of reviving the land and rehabilitating its people. The sense of ownership over the land of Israel, which has increasingly enveloped the Jewish diaspora in a spiritual sense, acquires in this context a nearly physical significance. For it is the entire Jewish people which, by its united will and common effort, continually transforms the country’s appearance, creates new places for cultivation, repaints its landscapes, uncovers its hidden treasures, lays the groundwork for harnessing its soil, earth, water, mineral wealth, science, capital, labor, and enterprise for the creation of its new life.

Apart from Jewry’s collective contributions to centralized funds, the investment of private Jewish capital creates for its sponsors a more direct and explicit stake in Israel’s economy. There are grounds for hope that this form of individual participation in the process of Israel’s development and in the enjoyment of the assets that have been created is on the verge of a new phase of expansion.

All in all, these efforts are reflective of a mission that has been undertaken for decades to come, in the course of which the people may again and again be called upon to shoulder new burdens and to help prevail in hours of grave crisis.

The duties which are incumbent upon Israel as a result of this mission are self-evident. Much as the diaspora may contribute, it is the Jews of Israel who will always have to carry the major share of the burden. To grumble or worry about this burden is tantamount to calling into question Israel’s urgent need to grow and to gather strength. It is the paramount long-term interest of the Israeli nation to make sure that the country can sustain a much larger population at a higher level of productivity; that its total defensive capabilities are increased and at the same time the burden of defense per unit of financial and human resources is reduced; that the base of its cultural progress is broadened; and that, by solidifying its position, it hastens the advent of peace with its neighbors.

 

What has been included in this survey as the fifth aspect of Israel’s relations with the diaspora is the direct and persistent call which Israel, by its very existence and progress and by its lure of a new life, silently but eloquently addresses to each individual Jew to make the country his permanent home and that of his children.

That Israel and the diaspora are by no means static entities is self-evident. Israel is constantly growing through natural increase and immigration, at the diaspora’s expense. Whole sections of the diaspora have in the last decade or so been completely transplanted to Israel. The communities of Yemen and Iraq on the one hand and of Bulgaria on the other are noteworthy cases in point. Other communities are in the course of such transplantation, and still others await their turn at the doorstep of history. In some countries the exodus was interrupted by the authorities, but it may not be overly optimistic to hope that the forces which had originally driven the process will eventually prevail against arbitrary administrative obstruction. In all these cases, powerful, large-scale forces, of both matter and spirit, have combined to produce the phenomenon of a mass exodus or at least a desire for one.