A Leap into the Absurd: Israel at 75

From the moment the United Nations declared the end of the British Mandate, there was enormous fear and worry among the Jews who lived in the Yishuv, the Jewish community of Mandatory Palestine. They were overjoyed that the U.N. had authorized a Jewish State, but frightened that the neighboring Arab countries would attack and push the Jews into the sea.

Marie Syrkin, who visited the Yishuv in 1947, captured the mood in her poem David:

Suppose, this time, Goliath should not fail;
Suppose, this time, the sling should not avail
On the Judean plain where once for all
Mankind and pebble struck, suppose the tale
Should have a different end: the shepherd yield
The triumph pass to iron arm and thigh,
The wonder vanish from the blooming field,
The mailed hulk stand, and the sweet singer lie.

“Suppose the tale should have a different end.” This possibility was frightening then, and the counterfactual is still too painful to imagine now. But at the time, disaster seemed like the most probable outcome.

Right before the declaration of the State of Israel, David Ben Gurion asked Yigael Yadin, the head of the Haganah, whether his troops could withstand the impending attack. Yadin responded: “If I wanted to sum it all up and be cautious, I’d say that at this moment, our chances are about even. If I wanted to be more honest, I’d say that the other side has a significant edge.” A CIA analysis came to a similar conclusion, saying that initially, the Jewish soldiers would hold off the Arab armies, but “as the Arabs gradually coordinate their war effort, the Jews will be forced to withdraw…and having been drawn into a war of attrition, will gradually be defeated.” The situation for the nascent State of Israel in 1948 was quite bleak. Ben-Gurion himself noted in his diary that after the Declaration of Independence, he felt like a mourner at a wedding. Everyone else was celebrating, but he could only think about a possible military collapse.

Just a few years after the Shoah, the haunting possibility of a potential sequel hovered in the air. The Jewish future seemed depressing. Worried about continued antisemitism, some European Jews began to deny their identity and became crypto-Jews. Faith felt like a farce; even the man in the street was saying “God is dead.”. It was certainly questionable whether the Jewish people, which had just lost 1/3 of their population in a horrific genocide, would be able to continue for much longer. And now they would take on Goliath, and declare a State of Israel?

It was an absurd decision, by an absurd people, at an absurd time.

Zionism never made much sense. This vision of return, in which, after 2,000 years of exile, a beleaguered and scattered people overcome multiple obstacles to reestablish their homeland, was akin to a science fiction fantasy. In 1895, when Herzl wrote “The Jewish State,” the possibility of that actually occurring seemed less likely than spaceships colonizing Mars.

But what happened in 1948 was part of a tradition of impracticality that has marked Zionism from the very beginning.

Zionism was a leap into the absurd. Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, in his 1978 essay Catharsis, explains what this phrase means:

There are situations in life with which clear-cut logical processes and utilitarian approaches fail to cope, while the sudden spontaneous leap into the absurd (to use a Kierkegaardian phrase) may save man when he finds himself in utter distress. This non-rational and impractical action is heroic….

Rabbi Soloveitchik sees Jacob’s wrestling match with the angel as a prime example of this:

Jacob had emerged victorious from a most awesome encounter; he had held fast his mysterious foe, through a night of sorrow, fear and loneliness, until the new day dawned. Was Jacob’s victory something to be expected; could it have been predicted logically? Was he certain of victory? Of course not. He was alone, weak and unarmed, a novice in the art of warfare. His antagonist was a powerful professional warrior.

Why did Jacob not surrender to the foe who attacked him in the dark? Jacob acted “absurdly,” and contrary to all rational practical considerations.….He, who had displayed so much business acumen and the keenness of a pragmatic mind during his long sojourn in Laban’s household, suddenly, in the darkness of a grisly, strange night, made the leap into the “absurd.” He refused to yield to a superior force and declared war upon an invincible enemy. ….With daybreak, the helpless, lonely, non-logical Jacob found himself, unexpectedly, the victor, the hero. The impossible and absurd had triumphed over the possible, and logical: heroism, not logic, won the day.

Is this merely the story of one individual’s experience? Is it not in fact the story of Knesset Israel, an entity which is engaged in an “absurd” struggle for survival for thousands of years?

Jewish history is one unending leap into the absurd.

Generations of preachers saw Nachshon ben Aminadav as the paradigm of one who makes this sort of heroic leap. The Talmud (Sotah 37a) says that after the Exodus, the Jews stood on the shore of the Red Sea, afraid to go forward. Nachshon jumped into the water, and only then did the water split.  In sermon after sermon, Nachshon has been held up as an example of courage and commitment.

But if you think about it, the Jews of 1945 showed greater heroism. Nachshon was making a leap from faith; he had seen God’s miracles in Egypt, and could trust that another one would occur. Not so the post-war Jewish community, who had seen the horrors of the Holocaust. Yet they continued forward against all odds, in an attempt to reverse two millennia of persecution and exile. This truly was a leap into the absurd.

The concept of a leap into the absurd is based on one simple idea: change requires one to imagine the impossible, and then create it. One must take leave of the tried and true without being certain what will happen next. And that is what happened 75 years ago with the founding of the State of Israel.

After the Holocaust, many survivors chose to go to Israel. The journey wasn’t easy. At border crossings and ports of entry, police and military authorities would turn back refugees who didn’t have the proper travel papers; and even if one managed to make the journey, entry into the British Mandate was restricted. An underground called the Bricha (literally “flight”) mushroomed overnight, organized by the soldiers of the Jewish Brigade, representatives of the Jewish Agency, and the survivors themselves.  Over three years, the Bricha smuggled as many as 300,000 people into the British Mandate.

The refugees found multiple different ways to make their way to Israel. Between May and September 1947, as many as 8,000 refugees, men, women, and children, hiked through the Krimml Pass, which runs between Austria and Italy and is 12 miles long and 8,642 feet high. They did so under the cover of darkness, in conditions that would challenge even expert mountain climbers. (An Austrian organization, Alpine Peace Crossing, holds a yearly hike and seminar in tribute to these refugees.) These stories, like the Bricha itself, are astonishing. As one survivor put it, when she initially heard about the Bricha she thought it “was something sort of unbelievable….How could it be possible?”

Once the survivors got to Israel, they joined the Haganah and fought in the War of Independence; nearly 22,000 of Israel’s soldiers at the time were Holocaust survivors. This too boggles the mind; to join the battle against Goliath after surviving the Shoah is truly a leap into the absurd.

Eliezer Ayalon was one of those soldiers. His entire family perished in the Treblinka extermination camp, and he had survived five different concentration camps. He arrived in Israel at age 17. A short while later, he was part of the 16th Brigade of Jerusalem and fighting in the War of Independence.

Years later in an interview, he reflected on his life in Israel. He said:

So here I am right now, I have two married children, five grandchildren and one great-grandson. Three generations born and raised from the ashes of the Holocaust. Today I am the happiest man in the world.

Eliezer and others like him have built families, communities, and a remarkable country.

But in 1945, all this seemed impossible. Back then, it was difficult to even imagine Israel surviving; yet today, she is a country of nearly ten million people, and a cultural and economic success. It’s absurd, isn’t it?

Happy birthday Israel!

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.