The global event which helped crystallize my relationship with Israel that year was the 6-Day War.  Until the days leading up to that war, I never realized how deeply important Israel was to me.  Those of you who lived through those days will remember all too well that before there was the elation over Israel’s amazing victory, there was this heart wrenching anguish over whether or not the state would survive.  With each passing day, more dreaded news was reported in the papers and on television and Israel’s fu­ture looked bleaker and bleaker.  Nasser insisted that the United Nations peace keeping forces leave the Gaza Strip, and they did - only to be replaced by the Egyptian army.  The port of Eilat was cut off as the Egyptians and the Saudis mined the Straits of Tiran.  Arab rhetoric daily increased in vehemence as they promised to finally drive the Jews into the sea.  And then, what seemed to be the final straw.  President Johnson, who had continually promised to support Israel, announced that Israel’s fate was out of his hands.  To this day I still remember how forlorn and betrayed I felt.  Israel seemed doomed and I was bereft.

At that darkest of moments, Israel did the only thing she could do.  She struck preemptively.  When the news broke that in the early morning of June 6th, the Israeli air force had almost totally destroyed the Egyp­tian air force while still on the ground, my sadness was turned to joy and my anguish to hope.  I an­nounced to my parents that I wanted to go to Israel and offer my help.  They were less than pleased.  But before we could resolve that argument the war was over.  The enemy had been vanquished and far more defensible borders had been secured.
It would be yet another 3 years before I would actually set foot on Israeli soil.  And when I did I went whole hog, so to speak.  For my first Israel sojourn was no 8-day tourist visit but rather a year of study; my first year of rabbinic school.

Having done the Israel tourist thing - 5 times since my year of study there - I can tell you that there is a world of difference between visiting and living in Israel.  While I have enjoyed and greatly benefitted from each one of my visits, it was my residency which forged my imperishable connection to the land, the State and its people.  For it is one thing to experience Israel through the windows of a tour bus, spending your nights in plush hotels with wonderful free breakfast buffets, and quite another to experience Israel through day-to-day living; to walk the streets, shop in the markets, ride the Egged buses, go to the mov­ies, and, of course, deal with the institutional bureaucracies.  It was not always easy but living there, I truly got a sense of what it meant to be an Israeli - the joys and the challenges.  I quickly came to under­stand that being an Israeli means living Jewish history, past, present, and future.  To daily walk and stand in the places where once King David and the prophets walked and stood is to truly experience what it means to be a link in what we so often call the “Chain of Tradition”.  It is to be a living affirmation to the continuity of our people on this planet and especially in that land.  The experience is indescribable.

Praying at the Western Wall is one such indescribable experience.  People see pictures of the Wall, and all they see is a wall - that’s nice, some Jewish holy site.  But as a Jew, to stand at that Wall, to put your hands upon it, to rest your forehead against its cool stones, and to pray is to connect your prayer with those prayers of fellow Jews who, for over two thousand years, prayed at that very site and there found God.  It is truly holy.  For us Jews, God touches that place.  There, more than any place else on earth, it is somehow easier for us as Jews to sense God’s presence.  Yet to so many others, it’s just an old wall.

The power of that experience can be found in varying degrees throughout the land.  You feel it on the top of Masada, in the south, where the Zealots chose death over surrender to the Romans, and while roaming the narrow streets of Tzfat, in the north, where the mystics once walked; where “L’cha Dodi” was first chanted.  Wherever you go in Israel, you touch our history, and you become at one with it.

But it is not just the past that grabs you.  It is also the present.  One cannot help but marvel, and as a Jew feel especially blessed, while encountering all that modern Israelis have accomplished and achieved.  When the earliest Zionists first returned to that land - back in the second half of the 19th century - all they found was swamps in the north and desert in the south.  It was anything but a “Promised Land”, a land flowing with milk and honey.  It was desolate.  It was forbidding, as if daring them to attempt to trans­form it into worthy real estate.  Yet they accepted that challenge and met it.  They transformed both swamps and desert into lush and fertile fields.  Where the land once only produced mosquitos and scorpi­ons, now it produces fruits and vegetables aplenty.  To eat a Jaffa orange in Israel is to bear witness to such achievements.  Nor was it in agriculture alone that these people have demonstrated their energy and creativity.  Out of barren beach front arose the modern city of Tel Aviv; a metropolis to match any other on the face of the planet.  And then there is industry.  When I studied in Israel, Israeli industry was just getting off the ground.  Each small accomplishment was a point of great pride.  I was there when the first Israeli produced airplane, the Arava, took to the skies.  Whenever it flew overhead, people stopped and pointed to it, as if to say, “We did that!”  Today Israel is a burgeoning modern industrial center, produc­ing everything from clothing to technology.  If you use a cell phone or a computer, you owe a debt to Israel.

And along with the present, there is the grasp of the future as well.  When in Israel, you know that what you do - what Israel does - will have a direct and immediate impact upon the Jewish future; for good or for ill.  That was why, when the Israeli army was formed, it was important for them to frame their Tohar HaNeshek, their code of the  Purity of Arms, making it one of the few, if not the only, army on this planet that has a formal ethical code when it comes to the conduct of war.  For even in war, Israel must be the embodiment of the highest of Jewish values.  For in so many ways, they are the framers of the Jewish fu­ture.  Today, in spite of what her detractors claim, Israel continues to hold herself up to a higher standard of behavior.  She does so because she understands that in whatever she does, she lays the foundations for the future of our people.

Let me conclude by briefly recounting two Israel experiences.

It was Yom Kippur, 1970.  I was living in Jerusalem.  As I and my classmates walked to services - walked because there was no public transportation on that day - we were struck by the emptiness of the streets.  Any other day the streets would be jammed with cars, but not that day.  In fact, the only vehicles on the roads were military ones; there to insure the peace of the day.  Where was everyone?  Many were in synagogues, praying, but many were not.  Yet whether or not the Israelis observed the rituals of Yom Kippur, they all acknowledged its sanctity.  Even for the non-religious, it remained a day of awe.  This was truly a Jewish state.

It was the summer of 1991.  The Cantor and I were part of a rabbinic mission, visiting absorption centers where new refugees from both Ethiopia and Russia were learning the skills they would need for living productive lives in the State of Israel.  We watched as these people - the Russians in the Russian absorp­tion centers and the Ethiopians in the Ethiopian ones - eagerly wrestled with their learning of the Hebrew language and Israeli culture.  How happy they were!  They had left everything that was familiar to them behind in their native lands.  They came only with what they could carry.  Yet they were happy.  Why?  Because for them, Israel was not just a spot on the map but rather the embodiment of freedom and hope.  It was the land in which they knew that they, as Jews, belonged.  We stood and we watched and we were filled with pride; pride in the fact that we had a part in helping these people, but more importantly, pride in the knowledge that the very existence of Israel means that there will always be a place in this world where Jews will be welcomed and at home.