JEWISH STATEHOOD

For two thousand years our people dreamed. For two thousand years Jews remembered Zion and prayed for deliverance. In song, in prose, in their hearts and thoughts, Jews kept alive the dream of the Return to Zion—and the dream kept them alive. For two thousand years Jews piously hoped that the Return would take place "quickly in our time."

It has happened and is happening in our time. Ours will be the time written of, sung about, talked about as long as the Jewish people will live. Ours will be the generation of the Third Temple.

How fortunate we all are! How happy we all are! The hopes, longing, sacrifices, struggles against persecutions, battles for the sanctification of the Lord and our people—all stir around and well up in one tremendous, joyous cry: the Jewish State, medina writ, b'yameinu, in our time!

It was made possible by the combined efforts of Jewish people everywhere, by the translation into practical action of the latent hopes and energies that the Zionist movement brought to the surface and directed into creative channels. It was made possible, most of all, by those young people who themselves journeyed to Palestine, to plow and sow, to drain the swamps, to create gardens out of the wilderness, to build and to be rebuilt.

We call upon all Jewish youth in America, but upon the members of Habonim first and foremost. Let us rise and accept the challenge of history! Ours is the chosen generation! We dare to believe that a new code of ethics will blaze forth from Zion, a new life based on the principles of equality and social justice, the code of the prophets themselves.

The new Eretz Israel calls upon us. Let us go and rebuild Zion. Our help, our support, our selves are needed. Let us arise and build!

MERKAZ HABONIM, December, 1947