Segula - The Jewish Journey Through History, 10 Yad Harutzim, Jerusalem (2025)

21/09/2025

The war in Gaza and elsewhere continues as we prepare to celebrate Rosh Hashanah 5786. Our soldiers stand firm at their posts and battle fiercely with terrorists. Yet though the war’s effects are everywhere apparent, and despite our ongoing concern for husbands, brothers and fathers at the front, the Jewish calendar goes on as usual. New Year’s greetings are in the air and on every digital platform – notes, memes and wishes bearing faith, comfort and hope for a year of victory, peace and tranquility.

📬 There’s nothing new under the sun. For generations, New Year cards have gone out in times of war, struggle and persecution. People strengthened one another with words of hope and courage, linking present suffering with faith in a rosier future.

💌 We’ve chosen just such a card as our New Year’s greeting to share with readers; its illustration depicts one particular – and radical - shift in Jewish history.

The card was sent in 5675 (1914), soon after the beginning of World War I. It reflects a rare combination that characterized many Jewish soldiers during that war: an uncompromising religious Jewish identity coupled with a previously unprecedented devotion to their national homeland or the empire to which it belonged.
Jewish soldiers prepared for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, sending postcards to their families back home. Jewish chaplains provided shofars and prayer shawls and improvised spaces for worship. Wherever possible, food was collected for holiday meals and dining areas prepared to host the many soldiers hoping for some semblance of Jewish festivities.

Rabbi Georg Salzberger of the German Fifth Army recorded his impressions of the war and the part he played during the High Holy Days in his diary. On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, he recorded, all the soldiers were busy fighting and he had to pray and dine alone. In his mind’s eye, he saw our forefather Abraham taking his son to the Binding of Isaac to give him up as an offering, just as fathers were now sending their sons to the Great War.

✉ The New Year’s greeting card pictured above shows two Jewish soldiers: one Austrian, the other German.
Both are wrapped in prayer shawls and holding prayerbooks, while Austro-Hungarian and German flags flutter in the background. The text includes the German slogan Sieg und Ruhm unseren Waffen – “Victory and glory to our weapons,” and the blessing Glückliches Neujahr – “Happy New Year,” and alongside these the traditional Hebrew greeting L’shanah tovah tikatevu – “May you be inscribed for a good year.”

To read more about historic New Year’s cards sent during wartime and other periods in Jewish history, see Segula Magazine’s article on Haim Stier’s collection: https://segulamag.com/en/one-hundred-good-years/

Wishing all of our loyal readers a Shana Tova: may it be a year of victory, of peace, of tranquility and security! 🇮🇱🐦🌿🍏
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15/09/2025

Every year, as the month of Elul draws to a close, an air of festivity tinged with a solemn nostalgia envelopes Kibbutz Kfar Etzion: its members mark Yom HaAliyah, the day of return, when the children of Kfar Etzion, now grown, came back after nineteen years of exile – from its capture and destruction in the War of Independence until its liberation in the Six-Day War.

The place that had become synonymous with loss and longing was now home once again.

Fifty-eight years ago today, Kfar Etzion was re-established.🌳

“As orphans, all through our childhood we pointed in the direction of Kfar Etzion. It was the center of all our games. There we’d find consolation, for what we had lost. All those years we spoke about Kfar Etzion, pointing out the site that was beyond our reach,” recalled Yeruham, one of the orphans whose father had fallen in Kfar Etzion.

The Six-Day War put an end to those days of yearning.

On Shabbat, 18 Elul, Hanan Porat gathered the sons and daughters of Kfar Etzion to get ready to resettle illegally, after the government had refused to approve their return. But on Friday, in a meeting with Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, consent was finally given:
“Nu, kinderlach, if you want to go up – go.”
Hanan pressed further: “Can we pray there, then, on Rosh Hashanah?”
Eshkol smiled:
“Yes” – and was immediately invited to come join in the prayers.

For the younger generation of Kfar Etzion, this was no mere detail. The High Holiday prayers were the beating heart of their childhood memories; the familiar old melodies had the power to restore to them something of the family they’d lost in that final battle in 1948. 🎼

The traditional tunes sung in Kfar Etzion on Shabbat and festivals had their roots in Sławków, Poland, where the members of Kvutzat Avraham – idealistic youngsters who’d later form the founding core of the kibbutz – developed their own unique blend of Hasidic melodies with Zionist touches to inspire their prayers. When they settled in Kfar Etzion, they kept to it with almost fanatical devotion.

“Prayers in Kfar Etzion were something special,” remembered Ora, the first child born on the kibbutz.
“They had a Hasidic spark, with singing that went on forever and a fervor that caught everyone up, even those who hadn’t grown up in Hasidic homes.”

Shalom Karniel, one of those killed in the Lamed Heh relief convoy, served as cantor.
“He was a truly gifted cantor – we’d sit and listen, utterly transported as he prayed,”
recalled the children who’d been raised on those special melodies with longing.

Even those who were too young to remember the original prayers and tunes absorbed them from the surviving adult prayer leaders, who carefully passed on the tradition for future generations of Kfar Etzion.

“Yaakov Yisrael was our neighbor, and every Elul we we’d hear him practicing the High Holiday melodies – that’s how it pierced our hearts,” remembered Haim Levinovitz, one of the orphans of Kfar Etzion.

On Rosh Hashanah 5728 (1967), just days after the children of Kfar Etzion came back to rebuild their childhood home, the sound of the High Holy Day melodies wafting upward finally bridged the gap between their painful past and their hopes for the future.

📷 Photo: Kfar Etzion’s synagogue today, by Michael Jacobson.
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11/09/2025

“No foreign land have we seized, nor confiscated strangers’ riches, but rather the heritage of our fathers, which at one time or another was wrongfully conquered by our enemies.” (Maccabees I, 15)

Today, 2,167 years ago, on 18 Elul, in the presence of the priests, elders, and leaders of the Jewish nation, Simon the Tarsite (better known as Simon the Hasmonean) was anointed prince and high priest in Jerusalem. 👑

Simon was the fourth son of Mattathias, the elder Hasmonean who started the Hanukkah story by rebelling against Hellenist rule. In his final speech, Mattathias passed military command to his sons Judah and Jonathan, but entrusted Simon to lead the people:

“Listen to the voice of your brother Simon, for he is a wise and discerning man – let him be as a father to you. Judah the Maccabee, a warrior from his youth, shall lead you in battle.”

Simon earned the people’s trust to the point that they appointed him Nasi (prince) and High Priest. Maccabees I records the proclamation made at his coronation, which was engraved on copper tablets and set up on Mount Zion as an eternal memorial:

"The people saw Simon’s faithfulness and the honor he sought to do for his nation, and they made him their leader and High Priest, because of all he had done and the justice and loyalty he showed his people." 📜

(It’s worth noting that historians suspect Simon may have written the coronation text himself. 😊)

One of Simon’s first acts was to forge a treaty with Demetrius II. 🫲🏻🫱🏻
This was a turning point: after decades of struggle against the Seleucid Empire, Judea gained the status of an independent state, free of Seleucid taxation, for the first time since the days of King David.

The Hasmoneans therefore marked 142 BCE as Year One of their new royal era.

Simon is remembered in historical sources as a leader who embodied justice, faith, and prudence. Modern scholarship also sees him as the most balanced of the Hasmonean brothers.

Though not a brilliant tactician, he was regarded as a builder and unifier – a statesman who skillfully combined diplomacy, military power, and economic development.

In Shevat, 134 BCE, Simon was murdered together with two of his sons by his own son-in-law, Ptolemy son of Habub, acting on behalf of Antiochus Sidetes, Simon’s bitter enemy.

His third son, John Hyrcanus, who had remained in Gezer, survived and continued the dynasty. 🤴🏻

📷 Image: Simon the Hasmonean being crowned as Nasi and High Priest, etching by Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld, 1860.

📖 For more on the Hasmonean family and kingdom, see our Segula Magazine website:
https://segulamag.com/en/brief-history-hasmoneans/
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09/09/2025

For evil to endure, it is enough that good people do nothing.

Today, 20 years ago, the famed N**i hunter Simon Wiesenthal passed away. His life story reads like a thriller, though every word of it is true.

Wiesenthal was born to intellectual Jewish parents in the town of Buczacz, the writer Agnon’s hometown. When he was seven, his father was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army and killed in action in World War One.

Running an errand for his mother not long after he was orphaned, Wiesenthal was attacked by a Cossack who stabbed him in the leg. The dagger struck bone, and though he survived, Wiesenthal carried the memory of that assault all his life.

He trained as an architectural engineer in Prague, and married his high school sweetheart, Cyla Müller. For a brief moment, it seemed life was finally on track: a home, a wife, the promise of family.

Then came the Second World War, and his world collapsed.

In the summer of 1941, N**i Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Simon and Cyla were captured and sent to Janowska camp. From there Wiesenthal was dragged through a nightmare of five concentration and extermination camps. At Janowska he was ordered to paint swastikas on locomotives, following the guards’ commands.

On Hitler’s 54th birthday, Janowska’s guards chose to “celebrate” by shooting 54 Jews. Two SS men picked Wiesenthal and two others, leading them to the ex*****on site. He heard the gunfire, saw prisoners falling dead before his eyes. There were only three men left ahead of him when a loudspeaker blared: “Wiesenthal is required at the front,” and he was spared.

The war’s final years were hell on earth. Wiesenthal was forced to struggle hundreds of kilometers on a death march, hobbling with his crippled limb on a broomstick in place of a crutch. He eventually collapsed in the snow and was dumped at the crematorium, left for dead. At the last moment, the workers discovered he was still breathing. Weighing less than 45 kilos, he was lucky enough to march, limping, at the liberation of Mauthausen, into the waiting arms of American soldiers.

Emerging from the inferno, Wiesenthal resolved to dedicate his life to justice and retribution. In a cramped Vienna office, surrounded by papers, documents, and newspaper clippings, he tracked every shred of evidence that might lead to N**i criminals who’d evaded prosecution. Slowly, methodically, he built himself into an invaluable international institution.

He helped bring more than a thousand war criminals to trial and became a central figure in the hunt for fugitive N**is.

For decades he devoted his strength, his fortune, and his very soul to this mission. Finally, at the age of 94, in 2003, he announced his retirement:
“I found the mass murderers I was searching for. I have survived them all. If there were any left, they’d be too old and weak to stand trial today. My work is done.”

Photo: Simon Wiesenthal, May 1965. Photo by Joop van Bilsen / Anefo
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02/09/2025

“I write you… from the holy city of Jerusalem. Praise and thanks be to the Rock of my Salvation, I was privileged to arrive safely on the ninth of the month of Elul and will stay [here] in peace until the day after Yom Kippur.”

Today, 758 years ago (some reckon 759), on September 1, 1267, Rabbi Moshe son of Nachman (Nachmanides – Ramban) reached Jerusalem, opening a new chapter in the history of Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel.

He had come to the country by way of the port of Acre, after a turbulent journey from Spain. The voyage followed his public disputation with the Christians in 1263 and the mounting pressure of Pope Clement IV. Some viewed his departure as a forced flight, yet his writings make clear that he saw it as a profound spiritual mission. He expressed his motives in moving, heartfelt words:

“I left my home, abandoned my inheritance. I was like a raven to my sons, as cruel as that bird to my daughters – for I wished my soul to be cradled in my mother’s bosom.”

When Nachmanides reached Jerusalem, he found a city in ruins after the Mamluk conquest that had ejected the Crusaders. In a letter to his son, he described the devastation:
“What shall I tell you of the land? Desolation and ruin abound. Generally, the holier the place, the greater its neglect. Jerusalem is the most desolate of all (and the Judean Plain more than the Galilee), yet in all its devastation it is still goodly …”

At that time, the only Jews in the city were two brothers – dyers by trade – in whose home a small prayer quorum of ten would sometimes gather to pray. Nachmanides was undaunted.

He rallied the remnants of the community, discovered an abandoned structure with marble columns and a fine dome, and turned it into a synagogue:
“We found a derelict house with marble pillars and a fine dome, which we took for a synagogue, for the entire city is ownerless, and whoever wishes may claim its ruins. We raised funds to repair the building, and they’ve already started, sending word to Nablus to bring back the Torah scrolls smuggled there from Jerusalem when the Tartars came.”

After the High Holidays, Nachmanides traveled to Hebron to pray at the Tomb of the Patriarchs and to prepare a burial place for himself. Yet traditions regarding the location of his grave multiplied: Silwan, Acre, Tiberias, even Mount Carmel. To this day at least six “tombs” of Nachmanides can be found across the country – a testament both to his singular stature and to the wish to anchor his presence in the landscape of the land.

Read more on the Barcelona Disputation and Nachmanides’ journey to the Land of Israel in Dr. Amihai Schwartz’s article in Segula magazine: https://www.calameo.com/read/0064782394a5ea678d5fd

Photo: Nachmanides’ seal, discovered in 1972 in the Acre Valley near Tel Kisan, inscribed: Moshe son of Rabbi Nachman, from Girona. Be strong.
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28/08/2025

Sixty-seven years ago this week, on Elul 3, 1958, Israel held its first International Bible Quiz for Adults.

The quiz was one of the highlights marking the State’s tenth anniversary. 🇮🇱

The preliminary round was held at 10 am on the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus. When it closed, Israel’s representative – a modest, unassuming clerk named Amos Hakham – ranked top.
Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper rushed out a special afternoon edition with the headline: “Hakham (“wise guy” in Hebrew) Leads – in the Bible Quiz’s Preliminary Round.”

The grand final took place that evening, attended both by Israel’s President and its Prime Minister.

📻 The entire competition was broadcast live on national radio. That Tuesday evening, the whole country – old and young alike – tuned in to listen. Loudspeakers broadcast the proceedings in areas where many residents had no radio at home.

A snap poll that night estimated that some 1.2 million people heard the radio program – roughly two-thirds of Israel’s Jewish population!

The French and Brazilian contestants both did well, but Hakham outshone them with ease. His answers were complete, clear, and precise, flowing from his lips the instant the questions ended, with barely a pause for thought. The speed and perfection astonished not only the judges but the nation as a whole.

Yet what etched itself most deeply in people’s hearts was not only his vast knowledge, but the quiet confidence and humility with which Hakham delivered his answers.

🥇 An emotional Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion himself awarded Hakham the title “World Bible Champion,” adding his own personal words of praise and admiration.

Hakham was no ordinary scholar. He’d fought his whole life to overcome disability and poverty; he worked as a clerk in the Jerusalem Institute for the Blind, where he read all twenty-four books of the bible aloud to a blind typesetter. Together they produced the entire Bible in braille. No wonder he knew every line by heart.

📷 Photo: Amos Hakham answering a question at the first International Bible Quiz.
Courtesy of the Israeli Film Archive
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27/08/2025

Few today will recognize the attractive young woman in this portrait.
Judging by her dress and hairstyle, she might be taken for a pampered Viennese princess or an English queen’s lady-in-waiting – but her steady gaze tells another story: this is a woman of vision and resolve, a doer and an innovator.

One hundred and fifty-six years ago today, on August 27, 1869, the American Jewish socialite, educator, and philanthropist Rebecca Gratz passed away.

Though she lived over a century before her, Gratz could well have been described as “the Jewish Mother Teresa.”

She was born in 1781 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, into a wealthy American Jewish family, the middle of ten children.

Raised in Philadelphia’s elite society, Gratz received an excellent Jewish education. Exceptionally well-read for a woman of her time, she attended women’s academies and explored the rich library of her father, stocked with history, literature, and popular science.

Even as a teenager, Gratz understood that the privileged life she enjoyed would have meaning only if she devoted it to helping others.

She never married; instead of running her own household, she founded and led no fewer than five major social institutions in Philadelphia:
🙏🏻 A general women’s aid society for women and children in need (1801)
🙏🏻 A city orphanage (1815)
🙏🏻 A Jewish women’s charitable society (1819)
🙏🏻 A children’s shelter
But above all, the work that earned her a place in Jewish history was her idea of a Sunday school for Jewish children where they could study Judaism in English – a revolution for American Jewry.

Gratz saw the need to provide Jewish learning for children who had no structured religious education during the week. Many Jewish children in America attended Christian public schools, with little or no Jewish instruction outside the home. Her initiative strengthened the identity of countless Jewish children and, in many cases, saved them from assimilation.

📚
According to a well-known literary tradition, Gratz’s stand against assimilation reached as far as Scotland: the occasion was a visit paid by American author Washington Irving, who knew and admired Gratz’s dedication and wisdom, to celebrated Scottish novelist Sir Walter Scott.

During their meeting, they spoke of Gratz’s accomplishments. Legend has it that Scott modeled Rebecca of York, one of the heroines of his 1819 novel Ivanhoe, on Rebecca Gratz. Scott’s Rebecca is a wise and courageous Jewish woman who is kidnapped and urged to marry a Christian in medieval England. Her brave refusal to abandon her faith fitted the proud, steadfast Rebecca Gratz to perfection.

Portrait: Rebecca Gratz, painted by Thomas Sully.
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25/08/2025

“In Basel I created the Jewish state. If I said this out loud today, I would be greeted by universal laughter. In five years perhaps, and certainly in fifty years, everyone will perceive it.”
(The Diaries of Theodor Herzl, p. 22)

One hundred and twenty-eight years ago today, on the first day of Elul, the First Zionist Congress opened in Basel.

To mark the date, here are 10 small facts about a great historic event:
🧵 When Herzl came to inspect the offices assigned to the congress by the Basel municipality, he found they were in a tailor’s shop. To ward off ridicule as well as racist jokes, he had the store sign covered with a large cloth.

🍺 Next, Herzl found that the hall rented to host the entire event was a beer cellar. He rejected it outright and moved the Congress to Basel’s elegant “Casino” rooms.

💰 Dutch banker Jacobus Kann provided not only funds but also vital political connections. Without his help, the Congress might never have taken place.

🧑🏻‍🌾 Delegates received impressive admission cards, edged with art showing a farmer sowing and the Western Wall.

🌟 Delegate badges gleamed with twelve red and gold stars and the German inscription: “The only solution to the Jewish Question is the founding of the Jewish State.”

🎩 Entry cards also specified the dress code: black tailcoat and white tie. Many participants owned no such formal attire and had to rush out to rental shops.

🍽 Herzl insisted the Congress be held in a place with kosher dining. Delegates ate at the Braunschweig kosher restaurant, and Herzl himself – though not usually observant of Jewish dietary requirements – took most of his meals there.

👨🏻‍🦳 The opening session was chaired by Karpel Lippe of Romania, the Congress president and eldest delegate. Herzl allotted him ten minutes for his speech, but Lippe spoke for half an hour, ignoring four discreet attempts to stop him.

👑 When Herzl rose to speak, the hall erupted in thunderous applause. Each time he tried to begin, the ovation swelled again, sometimes for fifteen minutes straight. Writer Mordechai Ben-Ami even shouted, “Long live the king!” – a cry gladly taken up and chanted in unison over and over by the crowd.

👏🏻 At the end of the Congress, when Herzl declared, “The First Zionist Congress is adjourned,” his words were drowned in waves of jubilation that lasted nearly an hour. People stomped their feet, women waved handkerchiefs, men embraced and kissed, and some jumped on their chairs to dance, as the cry “Next year in Jerusalem!” echoed through the hall.

📷 Not a single photo survives from the First Congress. In the excitement, the organizers forgot to hire a photographer. The familiar images are actually from the Second Zionist Congress, held a year later in the same hall.

Read more about the First Zionist Congress in Dr. Asael Abelman’s fascinating article: https://tinyurl.com/Zionist-Congress

Photo: Delegate card from the First Zionist Congress, Basel.
Courtesy of the Central Zionist Archives.
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19/08/2025

Who pours down silver in endless streams,
For four proud colonies, fulfills their dreams,
Who lifts up fathers and sons with gleams,
And heals the broken in sorrow?
It is the Baron we hail and follow!
(From the poem “Who is He and What is He,” written by Shlomo Mandelkern in honor of Baron Rothschild)

One hundred and eighty years ago today, Baron Abraham Benjamin Edmond James de Rothschild was born.

Baron Rothschild visited the Land of Israel five times, and each trip became a milestone in the development of the pre-state Jewish towns and colonies. Wherever he went, he was met by children’s choirs singing complimentary choruses written specially for the occasion by the community’s teachers and poets.

This was just the beginning of a litany of songs of varying literary quality dedicated to the Baron.

On 14 Shevat 5659 (1899), Baron Rothschild arrived for his third visit. He disembarked at Jaffa and set out to tour the colonies whose upkeep depended largely on his support.

He was greeted in Rehovot by the regular chorus of schoolchildren celebrating his generosity and making special mention of his wife and children.

In Rishon LeZion, vineyard owner Yaakov HaCohen Shkowitz of Gedera presented the Baron with a poem in praise of his efforts on behalf of the village’s fledgling wineries:
To whom do the exiles lift their eyes,
To whom their hope, their yearning cries?
On whom do their sunny blessings shine?
On you – who creates the fruit of the vine!

Yet not all songs were pure adulation. Some carried a sharper edge. These sarcastic lines, attributed to the elderly thinker, writer and pioneer A.D. Gordon, circulated among his contemporaries from the second wave of Zionist immigration preceding World War I.

Gordon mocked the Baron’s officials and their inefficient agricultural methods, thanks to which vineyards were first planted, then uprooted:
Rejoice, rejoice, O children of the Baron,
Tear up the vines from the fields and be glad,
The Baron will give you money!

And of course, who could forget the world-famous "If I Were a Rich Man" – rendered in Hebrew as "If I were a Rothschild"?

Sheldon Harnick’s Broadway hit "If I Were a Rich Man" for the musical "Fiddler on the Roof" didn’t mention Baron Edmond at all. The song, however, was based on Sholem Aleichem’s Yiddish tale Ven ikh bin Roytshild – “If only I were Rothschild” – the daydream of a poor Hebrew school teacher in the well-known author’s imaginary shtetl, Kasrilevke.

In Dan Almagor’s Hebrew translation of "Fiddler on the Roof," the Baron’s name was restored, closing the circle: from the shtetl in Yiddish, to Broadway in English, and back into Hebrew.

📸 Photo: Baron Rothschild and his wife Adelheid visiting the orchards of Zikhron Yaakov, 1914.
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12/08/2025

God, Lord of the spirits, distributor of talents – who gives one an eye that sees, a listening ear, a discerning heart and a mouth for oratory; to another, He gives paper, ink, and a pen.
(Agnon, Opening Words)

On this day 138 years ago, 18th Av 5647, Shmuel Yosef Agnon was born.

“I was born in the city of Buczacz in eastern Galicia on the Ninth of Av, 5648, which is the acronym of “May You have pity on Zion;” and by the count of the nations, 8.8.88 (August 8, 1888), whose sign is four figure eights,” wrote Agnon, in a sentence whose only accurate detail is the name of his birthplace…

As befits a writer whose imagination outstripped reality, Agnon altered his name, his birth year, and even his Hebrew birth date.

Shmuel Yosef Czaczkes, as he was known growing up, was indeed endowed with many talents. He became the most prestigious writer in the history of Israel – but when it came down to paper, ink, and pen, ie. his penmanship, it left much to be desired…

Anyone who has had the privilege of leafing through Agnon’s archive, with its thousands of handwritten pages, knows just how difficult it is to decipher Agnon’s handwriting. It’s utterly illegible – and his manuscripts are widely considered among the most impenetrable in the annals of Hebrew literature.

Agnon’s wife Esther devoted her life to the painstaking, Sisyphean labor of copying out her husband’s creations. She worked day and night to transcribe and type up all his handwritten manuscripts so that they could be sent to press.

In one interview she admitted:
“His handwriting wasn’t exactly easy to read. When my pace could no longer keep up, my daughter took over, and she has been at it ever since. When he finished a manuscript, I would read it, and if he asked me, I’d tell him what I thought.”

Even Gershom Scholem, Agnon’s friend, confessed:
“At first I was still able to decipher his handwriting in letters and in the stories he gave me to read and even to translate. But even then, he had a tendency to turn his handwriting into a cryptogram that dazzled the reader’s eyes. In later years, matters reached the point where Mrs. Esther, if she wished to do you a kindness, would attach a transcript to his letters, to spare you the effort of deciphering this secret script, which was more like the specks of flies than Hebrew letters.”

Even David Ben-Gurion experienced this first-hand. In a particularly candid letter, he told Agnon, who was then in Sweden to receive the Nobel Prize:
“Your letter from Stockholm lay undisturbed for a long time before I could decipher your handwriting, but in the end I found someone capable of reading it, and he typed out your letter…”

Photo: Agnon at work, by Yachin Hirsch, Dan Hadani Collection, National Library of Israel.
Above: Ben-Gurion’s letter, from the National Library archives.
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07/08/2025

“You sit below, listening to the man speak – and feel in your very bones how he lifts you higher and higher.
Conquered? No! Beyond that – sanctified!
Someone whispers in your ear: You are consecrated to me, to the idea, forever.”
(Menachem Begin recalling the first time he heard Jabotinsky speak at a public meeting in his hometown of Brisk.)

Today, 112 years ago, on 13 Av, Menachem Begin was born.

That speech by Jabotinsky left a deep mark on the 16-year-old, who swore loyalty to his ideas on the spot. It also played a pivotal role in shaping Begin as an orator and leader.

Begin would go on to become a master of rhetoric – painstakingly crafting each speech. Some of them would become classics of Israeli history.

To mark his birthday, here’s a selection of his most memorable addresses:

🎙 As Irgun Commander:
“We were tasked with sparking a popular uprising.
We believe that a movement that sends people out to shed blood must not only know its ideological goal – it must shoulder the responsibilities that lead there.
It must know when its struggle will climax – the moment that will bring the longed-for solution.”
(Speech to the Irgun command, August 31, 1944)

🎙 The Day After the State Was Declared:
“In our state, justice shall be sovereign – justice over rulers too.
There will be no tyranny. Those in power shall serve the people, not rule over them.
There will be no parasitism. No exploitation.
The State of Israel has arisen – but let us never forget: the homeland is not yet free.
God of Israel, protect Your soldiers and bless their swords as they reforge the covenant You made with Your chosen people and with this chosen land.
Onward to battle. Onward to victory.”
(Broadcast on The Voice of Fighting Zion radio station, May 15, 1948)

🎙 On the Altalena Affair:
“These are the facts.
As God lives, I have not told you a single untrue word.
On the life of my youngest son, on the memory of my great teacher, I swear to you – I have spoken no falsehood.
This is the truth of the most terrible episode in our history.
And more stories will be told – of the heroism of our men aboard that burning ship.”
(Radio speech, June 22, 1948)

🎙 On Peace:
“Peace is the beauty of life. The sun rising. A child’s smile. A mother’s love. A father’s joy. A family, together.
It is human progress. The triumph of justice. The victory of truth.
Peace is all these – and more.”
(Nobel Prize acceptance speech, Oslo, December 10, 1978)

📸 Menachem Begin addressing an election rally in Tel Aviv, 1948. Photo by Hans Pinn, Israel National Photo Collection
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Segula - The Jewish Journey Through History

21/09/2025

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