Israel’s Contribution to the Special Relationship

“Congress applauded Netanyahu once every minute during his speech,” headlines an article on the Arabic news site Al Mayadeen. The warm welcome and strong support for Israel witnessed in the U.S. Capitol this week were encouraging and heartening during this confusing and challenging time for our people.

The special U.S.-Israel relationship is bipartisan and mutually beneficial, as Prime Minister Netanyahu stated:

“For decades, America has provided Israel with generous military assistance, and a grateful Israel has provided America with critical intelligence that saved many lives. We’ve jointly developed some of the most sophisticated weapons on Earth.”

While this is fully true, Israel’s reciprocal role in our “special relationship” goes beyond intelligence, weapons development, and keeping American boots off the ground.

A healthy Israel contributes to the very soul of America.

In his second inaugural address, Thomas Jefferson drew a model from the people of Israel for the young USA. He said: “I shall need, too, the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old…” On the last day of his life, Abraham Lincoln reportedly told his wife that there was no city he so much desired to see as Jerusalem. John Adams famously stated, “I will insist that the Hebrews have done more to civilize man than any other nation. I really wish the Jews again in Judea an independent nation.”

There is more. The nature of civilizations is that they wane. Ancient Greece, the Roman Empire, and the Aztecs were all great civilizations in their time. Today, their ruins are tourist destinations.

Yet, in Israel, one doesn’t find the ruins of the Jews; they find the largest Jewish civilization in modern history. There, one can simultaneously find tefillin that are thousands of years old while seeing tefillin made for tomorrow’s Bar Mitzvah boys. In Jerusalem, one can throw a pebble from an unearthed archaeological mikvah into a mikvah that is under construction.

How has Israel defied the “decline of civilizations”? Through its connection to the eternal Creator and His eternal Torah. When we sit down at the Seder and say, “We were slaves to Pharaoh, and Hashem our G-d took us out,” we are cutting across time and space. When we celebrate Shabbat, declaring how Hashem created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, we are connecting our reality with the very Maker of reality.

When Israel is truly connected to its soul and eternity, it shares those blessings with its allies as well. When the presence of eternity is felt in Israel, its allies not only benefit from its futuristic technology, but they also draw energy from its eternity.

The tenth-century scholar Rashi explained this beautifully:

In Temple times, over the seven days of Sukkot, seventy bulls were brought as sacrifices to represent the seventy nations of the world. Instead of bringing ten bulls a day, thirteen bulls were offered on the first day, twelve on the second, successively decreasing, with only seven on the last day.

Why not simply offer ten bulls per day? “To symbolize that civilizations decline,” explains Rashi, so that these offerings “protect them from suffering.”

Israel is both a place and an idea. Each one of us, wherever we are, can make our space a little more Israel-like. It can be a space that connects with the beyond, where the highest levels of values, namely Torah and Mitzvot, are the guiding force.

A robust United States fosters a more secure world for all. A healthy Israel infuses that world with soul and spirit.