Wednesday, April 11, 7 pm
Basing Israel’s claim to her land and right to exist on today’s media reports, could lead you to believe that our connection to the region goes back merely a few decades. But we all know that ancient history supports that Jews have, in fact, the longest and deepest relationship with the land of Israel of any other peoples. Some cities, like Jericho, date back 10,000 years, and hundreds of civilizations have been unearthed all over the country baring witness to Jewish life in Israel for millennia.
The Community Relations Council of the United Jewish Federation of Tidewater will hold the fourth in a series of Step Up for Israel Films at Ohef Sholom Temple. This one, entitled, Creation of a State, will examine events leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel and explore lesser-known facts about its creation. While many are aware, many do not realize, that Israeli troops were so outnumbered in this defensive war, that, according to Yitzhak Rabin, “victory—even the survival of Israel itself—seemed like lunacy.”
Other questions answered in the film are: what is the basis of today’s “Green Line,” behind which settlements are disputed or occupied, and is this “line” a reasonable starting point for negotiated borders for two states of Israel and Palestine living side by side? Or how is it that Israel has, and continues to, absorb Jewish refugees from Arab and other lands, while the Arab countries did not, and have not, absorbed the refugees who resulted from the War of Independence or those that have come since? Or why has Israel managed to make the swamp and desert land upon which it rests green, fertile and productive, while its neighbors, with similar topography, have not?
This will be a fascinating look at this unbelievable period in Israel’s, the Jewish people’s, and the world’s history.
To RSVP or learn more about this important series, visit www.JewishVA.org/CRC or email JJohnson@ujft.org.
by Rabbi Rosalin Mandelberg