NOVEMBER 29, 1947
JACOB LEANED TOWARD THE RADIO, listening intently, hanging on to the announcer’s every word. Avraham, Sarah Rivkah, and Fredeleh sat on the sofa together, listening along with him as the United Nations voted on a resolution to create a Jewish state in Palestine. The broadcast was live, and they listened in suspense as each nation cast its vote. Avraham kept a written tally, waiting to see if two-thirds of the U.N.’s members would decide in their favor.
And suddenly the suspense ended. It was over. The thirty-third nation voted yes to Resolution 181. The Jewish people would once again have their own nation and homeland, after nearly two thousand years of exile.
“Abba! We have seen prophecy fulfilled before our eyes,” Avraham said as they laughed and wept and hugged each other. “Remember what Isaiah wrote? ‘Who has ever seen such a thing? Can a country be born in a day or a nation be brought forth in a moment? Yet no sooner is Zion in labor than she gives birth to her children.’ That’s what just happened before our eyes. A nation – our own Jewish nation – born today.”
“Out of the ashes,” Jacob murmured.
It was what the prophet Ezekiel had written, as well: “The Sovereign Lord says: O my people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them.”
Hashem had shown Ezekiel a valley filled with dry bones. “Son of man, can these bones live?” Hashem had asked. The prophet’s reply would be Jacob’s reply from now on, whenever he had difficult questions for Hashem, questions that seemed to have no answers: “O Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”