Meyer Weisgal, the personal assistant of Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president, and principal architect of the Weizmann Institute of Science, was often asked why the Jews decided to return to their ancestral home, the land of Israel. Before and even after the establishment of the state, someone would inevitably inquire “Why here?”
In March 1968, J. B. Priestley, an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster, asked Weisgal the same question. Weisgal told Priestley about a cartoon in the Israeli press by the cartoonist Dosh showing Yisrolik, a little guy with a cap, who had become a symbol of the young state, explaining to King Hussein of Jordan how he might get back parts of Jerusalem. “Do what we did,” he told the king. “Say over and over again for two thousand years’ Next year in Jerusalem.’”
Jewish religious ritual and liturgy and biblical, medieval and modern literature is pervaded with longing for Zion.
The phrase Next Year in Jerusalem “has been the umbilical cord which has tied the Jews of the world to the land of Israel for two thousand years,” Weisgal explained. “Jewish religious ritual and liturgy and biblical, medieval and modern literature is pervaded with longing for Zion. Agricultural and meteorological conditions in Israel are also a fundamental part of this identification."-During January, when the cities in the Northeast might be covered with snow, Jewish children plant saplings because in Israel, it is the New Year of the Trees, when the almonds blossom for the first time. Even though the streets might be soaked from torrential rains in October, Jews pray that it should rain in Israel. The harvest has ended and the fields are parched. No other space on earth arouses such fervor and passion among the Jews, and infinite sacrifice to bring back the land to life. [1] READ MORE