Israel At 60

Israel, Through the Decades

By J.J. Goldberg

To honor the 60th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel, the Forward asked a number of prominent Israelis to reflect on the six decades of history they have lived through. Their narratives provide a fresh, startlingly honest look at the history of the Jewish state, as seen through the eyes of those who lived it and helped to shape it.Read More

Before Independence: The Meaning of a Jewish State

By Leonard Fein

What we knew about Israel back then, in the months before and in the months and early years after, was derived 10% or so from newsreels and 90% from Zionist youth movements, Hebrew schools, now and then a newspaper or a book. The world was different before television, and the first years of television were only a tiny foretaste of what television was to become, with its 24/7 coverage of just about everything. The world was different before the Internet, too. Today Israeli newspapers, frequently updated, are a mere key click away. Israel back then was mostly an imagining, and imagination offers more room for dreams, for milk and honey and utopian speculation or messianic conviction than does insistently graphic depiction.Read More

A Jewish State: ‘Mazel Tov!’

The day has finally arrived, the day that Jews have awaited with such longing in their hearts — a day for which they have waited 2,000 years.Read More

The 1950s: Fighting a War for Survival

By Aryeh Lova Eliav

In the first years after World War II, people around the world wanted nothing more than to recuperate and forget the horrors they had been through. It was an era of consumerism, affluence and good feelings. But in Israel we did not have that luxury. As the war ended, we were moving from one fight into another, even greater, struggle.Read More

The 1960s: The New Israelis

By Mordechai Bar-On

It is sometimes said that the social and cultural revolutions of the 1960s passed Israel by because of our special circumstances here. It’s not true. Israel underwent a cultural revolution of its own during that decade. What happened in Israel in the 1960s was a turnabout in the spirit and ethos of Zionism.Read More

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