The birth of the State of Israel, on 5th Iyar 5708, was an event unprecedented in history. Never before has a people survived for 2000 years in exile without losing its identity. Never before has a nation returned to its land, recovered its independence, and taken up again the reins of sovereignty after so long an interval. One thought kept echoing through my mind as I worked on the double CD, 'Israel: Home of Hope' which I hope you've received (please don't play it on Shabbat). It was the line from Hallel: 'This is the Lord's doing. It is wondrous in our eyes.'

Four thousand years ago, Abraham heard a call: Leave your land, your birthplace and your father’s house and go to the land I will show you. Those were the first syllables of recorded Jewish time, and ever since, Jewish history has been a set of variations on the theme of the journey to Israel, exile and return, dispersion and homecoming.

Never did the Jewish people leave Israel voluntarily, and there were places which they never left at all. Wherever they were, they prayed about Israel and facing Israel. The Jewish people was the circumference of a circle at whose centre was the holy land and Jerusalem the holy city. For centuries they lived suspended between memory and hope, sustained by the promise that one day God would bring them back.

At the end of his life, foreseeing exile, Moses prophesied, 'Even if you have been banished to the most distant land under the heavens, from there the Lord your God will gather you and bring you back.' That has come true in our time.
Only in Israel can a Jew speak a Jewish language, see a Jewish landscape, live by the Jewish calendar, walk where our ancestors walked, continue the story they began.  Israel is the only place on earth where, in four thousand years of history, Jews have formed a majority, been able to defend themselves, and do what almost every other people takes for granted: live as a nation shaping its own destiny and create a society according to its own values.

A mere three years after standing eyeball to eyeball with the angel of death in the Holocaust, the Jewish people, by proclaiming the State of Israel, made a momentous affirmation of life. And a day will one day come, when the story of Israel in modern times will speak not just to Jews, but to all who believe in the power of the human spirit as it reaches out to God, as an everlasting symbol of the victory of life over death, hope over despair.
Israel has taken a barren land and made it bloom again. It’s taken an ancient language, the Hebrew of the Bible, and made it speak again. It’s taken the West’s oldest faith and made it young again. It's taken a tattered, shattered nation and made it live again. Israel is the country whose national anthem, Hatikva, means hope. Israel is the home of hope.

Israel - Home of Hope.  An inspiring double CD produced by the Chief Rabbi to celebrate Israel’s 60th Anniversary  is available from your community now…….listen and be inspired
Visit:  www.homeofhope.co.uk