Sublime

this was what Zionism meant for him: to want the best for Israel’s children but no less for the children of Israel’s neighbours. Love, decency and care know no religious or ethnic boundaries.

AFTER THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE, the Arab population of Israel numbered 156,000, about 20 percent of the country’s total population. Most lived in the Negev (those were largely the Bedouin) and in the Galilee, in an area known as the “Little Triangle” (which had been transferred to Israel by Jordan as part of the armistice agreement). Poorly organize

ONE MAJOR DEVELOPMENT WAS the rise of the Mizrachim to a place of social and cultural prominence in Israeli life. Mizrachi religiosity had always manifested itself differently than the philosophically more rigid Ashkenazi variety, and now secular Israelis were being exposed to its worldview. Mizrachi Jews admired rabbis more than their Ashkenazi co

So the Yishuv stepped up illegal immigration.

Like many who had come before them, Soviet immigrants often arrived with little money and needed significant support upon arrival.

the centuriesold mission statement of the Jewish people, expressed by Shimon Ha-Tzaddik (Pirke Avot 1:2): “The world stands on three things: Torah study, worship/service, and acts of lovingkindness.”

Israel’s international image also suffered. Despite his own losses, Arafat refused to leave Beirut. He appeared on Western television regularly, showing pictures of maimed Palestinian children and still-smoldering Palestinian homes. As a result of Israel’s attack on Beirut, to many millions of international viewers, Arafat was suddenly a hero, the

veteran members of the Yishuv essentially accused the survivors for what they had endured. “‘Why didn’t you fight back?’ they would ask. ‘Why did you go like sheep to the slaughter?’ They were First-Class Jews who took up arms and fought, while we were Second-Class Yids whom the Germans could annihilate without encountering resistance.”28

The Jews who remained Jews, who remained faithful to the historical character of the Exodus, continued to insist that redemption could not be fully realized without social, political, and economic liberation as well as spiritual fulfillment.