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begin, everything would suddenly change, all at once, and everything would be
different, and it would start very soon: the darkness would end, the dawn would
come, the terrors would recede, and the lost hopes would live and come true.
A nd this was no group of unbalanced daydreamers. They were six hundred thousand
Jews – sober, tormented, fairly frightened and having a fair amount of trouble just holding
on. Children quickly became youth ready to go out into battle; adults went to train and
to tighten their belts. Everything seemed to be moving towards the Day of Judgment, the
eve of the End of Days. The terrible echoes had not yet subsided, and the ongoing waiting,
falling and rising, and the general anxiety and anticipation of "all will be well" and the
sound of the shofar [ram's horn] and the news – "a state", like some magic formula; "a
state" – and all would be different. The fears would dissipate, the difficulties would be
smoothed out, "a state" – and everything that had been missed, or had not succeeded,
would now start working as it should, and the tragedy that had so recently befallen the
Jewish People in Europe, and all that had been unbearably difficult here within the small
Yishuv, and all the poverty and the neglect, and all the endless Arab "incidents", with all
the eternal conniving of the British, and all the pressuring and all the failures wherever
one turned, and with all that had been hanging by a thread for too long – now the state
would arise, and all would be solid, on solid ground, and the Jews would have a state.
People breathed the fragrance of the approaching state. They sensed its emergence as
farmers sense the coming rain. There was no need to prove anything, nor to bring any
evidence, make any calculations, or create any plans. Everything would happen on its own.
An entire nation was at a single point, sharing the same faith that now the state would carry
out the great, long-awaited, messianic and earthly deed. And the Jews would have a state.
And one man, short in stature, with a mane of white hair, went before them, and
his clear, decisive voice summoned, urged, called, roused, affirmed that this was
indeed the case; that indeed the state was on its way, and everything would truly
start to happen, and everything would truly be different, and it was as though the
entire enormity of the sun was shrunk and squeezed into a single burning point.
O f course, it is not difficult now to smile at that faith and to cast doubt on the dream
that the state could solve everything. It is not difficult to prove how blind they were, and
naïve, and perhaps simply unbearably dejected; and how hasty they were in believing –
and perhaps even pathetic, and how they forgot reality and the limits of imagination and
the boundaries of reality, just as they had ignored the Palestinian demand right next to
them, and the whole reality of the Middle East, or the cruelty of the laws of economics,
which do not dissolve at the sound of the word 'state'; or that they had not philosophized
about a state which is simply a vessel, and that everything depends on who leads it,
and to where, and on and on. But these were two or three years when questions were
not asked, and the entire world folded and became a single demand, a single desire, a
single belief, blinding like a great light, and the entirety of one man, and of one nation,
folded into a single point – the Jewish state. Such moments happen only once in the life
of a nation, once in history – certainly, only once in a person's lifetime. Whether this
204 The Friday That Changed Destiny
different, and it would start very soon: the darkness would end, the dawn would
come, the terrors would recede, and the lost hopes would live and come true.
A nd this was no group of unbalanced daydreamers. They were six hundred thousand
Jews – sober, tormented, fairly frightened and having a fair amount of trouble just holding
on. Children quickly became youth ready to go out into battle; adults went to train and
to tighten their belts. Everything seemed to be moving towards the Day of Judgment, the
eve of the End of Days. The terrible echoes had not yet subsided, and the ongoing waiting,
falling and rising, and the general anxiety and anticipation of "all will be well" and the
sound of the shofar [ram's horn] and the news – "a state", like some magic formula; "a
state" – and all would be different. The fears would dissipate, the difficulties would be
smoothed out, "a state" – and everything that had been missed, or had not succeeded,
would now start working as it should, and the tragedy that had so recently befallen the
Jewish People in Europe, and all that had been unbearably difficult here within the small
Yishuv, and all the poverty and the neglect, and all the endless Arab "incidents", with all
the eternal conniving of the British, and all the pressuring and all the failures wherever
one turned, and with all that had been hanging by a thread for too long – now the state
would arise, and all would be solid, on solid ground, and the Jews would have a state.
People breathed the fragrance of the approaching state. They sensed its emergence as
farmers sense the coming rain. There was no need to prove anything, nor to bring any
evidence, make any calculations, or create any plans. Everything would happen on its own.
An entire nation was at a single point, sharing the same faith that now the state would carry
out the great, long-awaited, messianic and earthly deed. And the Jews would have a state.
And one man, short in stature, with a mane of white hair, went before them, and
his clear, decisive voice summoned, urged, called, roused, affirmed that this was
indeed the case; that indeed the state was on its way, and everything would truly
start to happen, and everything would truly be different, and it was as though the
entire enormity of the sun was shrunk and squeezed into a single burning point.
O f course, it is not difficult now to smile at that faith and to cast doubt on the dream
that the state could solve everything. It is not difficult to prove how blind they were, and
naïve, and perhaps simply unbearably dejected; and how hasty they were in believing –
and perhaps even pathetic, and how they forgot reality and the limits of imagination and
the boundaries of reality, just as they had ignored the Palestinian demand right next to
them, and the whole reality of the Middle East, or the cruelty of the laws of economics,
which do not dissolve at the sound of the word 'state'; or that they had not philosophized
about a state which is simply a vessel, and that everything depends on who leads it,
and to where, and on and on. But these were two or three years when questions were
not asked, and the entire world folded and became a single demand, a single desire, a
single belief, blinding like a great light, and the entirety of one man, and of one nation,
folded into a single point – the Jewish state. Such moments happen only once in the life
of a nation, once in history – certainly, only once in a person's lifetime. Whether this
204 The Friday That Changed Destiny
