Political Zionism was never just about survival, although it often looked that way. Political Zionism was the home of Israel’s realists, first in their sober assessment of European antisemitism, then in their defense against Israel’s Arab neighbors. Nevertheless, Theodor Herzl’s romantic, utopian, European liberal nationalism animated this realism with idealism. As the State of Israel found its footing, its leaders remembered that Zionism was the Jewish people’s national liberation movement, charged with developing a nation-state that could be a light unto the nations.
In Israeli political terms, May 14, 1948, answered the essential question of Political Zionism: Will we have a Jewish state? Still, a new challenge emerged: surviving.
The ongoing fight for Israel’s existence then entailed repeated restatements of the essential Zionist idea. As the state developed amid crushing conditions—facing wars, international repudiation, terrorism, hostile internal populations, and waves of mass migration—leaders kept updating the Zionist vision for war and peace, for democracy and prosperity. Underlying all this was the question Herzl never fully resolved: Should the Jewish state be a normal state or an exceptional light unto the nations?
This first selection, Israel’s Declaration of Independence, captures the two sides of Zionism—a movement that is both particular and universal, tempering ethnic nationalism with essential civic and democratic dimensions. The declaration also shows the two sides of the Herzlian dilemma—establishing a state that asserts its right to be normal while dreaming of opportunities to be exceptional.
This foundational document powerfully expresses the Zionist narrative—featuring the Jewish ties to the land, rights to the land, needs for the land, and the Jewish values expressed through the land. It opens with the kind of romantic history that shaped nineteenth-century European nationalism but with Jewish and Zionist twists emphasizing the richness of the biblical heritage, the anguish of exile, the continuing ties to the land, and the recent redemption.
Simultaneously, offering peace, promising “full . . . equality,” and envisioning a state that can be “for the benefit of all” the land’s “inhabitants,” demonstrates Zionism’s universal dimension. Expansive democratic values were entwined in the Jewish state’s DNA. Promising that the state “will be based on the precepts of liberty, justice and peace taught by the Hebrew Prophets,” honors those ancient preachers as the architects of modern democracy. Substituting for a constitution, these ideals have not just been aspirations, but legal guarantees.
Balancing religious and non-religious, then as now, the final paragraph trusts in Tsur Yisra’el. Some translate the phrase into English as “the Almighty” or “Almighty God,” but the words mean “the Rock of Israel.” This phrasing acknowledges the spiritual power behind Judaism without mentioning “God.”
Zvi Berenson of the Histadrut prepared the first draft. A committee consisting of Moshe Shertok (Sharett), David Remez, Pinhas Rosenblueth (Rosen), Moshe Shapira, and Aaron Zisling then edited it. A second committee of Shertok, Zisling, Rabbi Yehudah Leib Fishman (Maimon), and David Ben-Gurion reworked it. Ben-Gurion annoyed Shertok by making the document less legalistic. The vote to declare the state divided the provisional government. Representatives debated for twelve hours before voting six to four in favor. When Chaim Weizmann, the World Zionist Organization chairman who would become the country’s first president, heard about the hesitations, he muttered, “What are they waiting for, the idiots?”