Albert Einstein co-founded the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with Chaim Weizmann in July 1918. Years later, Einstein turned down an offer to become Israel’s second president after Weizmann’s death in 1952, citing his age and lack of relevant skills. Einstein died in 1955 just days before he was to deliver a speech to an American radio audience on the seventh anniversary of Israel’s independence. He left his scientific and other writings to Hebrew University.
Doña Gracia Nasi, a 16th century Converso, openly reclaimed her Judaism and dedicated her life to activism on behalf of her people. She used her family’s shipping wealth and influence to help Jews flee Iberia and to establish houses of learning and worship. With permission of the Ottoman Sultan, she initiated the rebuilding of Tiberias in the Holy Land as a refuge for Marranos.
Israel’s capital, Jerusalem, was established as the capital of the Jewish kingdom by David in 1,000 BCE. Throughout millennia of dispersion, it remained eternally in the hearts of the Jewish people. Wherever they are in the world, Jews pray in the direction of Israel. In Israel, they pray in the direction of Jerusalem. In Jerusalem, they pray in the direction of the Temple Mount.
Rebecca Affachiner sewed Israel’s first flag from a bedsheet, using a crayon to color the fabric used to fashion the blue stripes and six-pointed Magen David. She proudly displayed it on her porch when she learned that David Ben-Gurion had declared the new State of Israel on May 14, 1948. For this act, she became known as Israel’s Betsy Ross.
Israel-South Africa relations have not always been rocky. In 1948, South Africa was the seventh nation to give de facto recognition the new State of Israel. The Israeli city Ashkelon was originally designed, financed, and built by South African Jewry, who managed it from 1949 to 1959. Started to house new immigrants and refugees from around the world, Ashkelon merged with Migdal Gad in 1955.
The Mount of Olives (Har Hazaitim) cemetery, with 70,000-150,000 graves, dates back 3,000 years and is still in use today. Sections overlook Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Notable people buried there include Shebna (a First Temple royal steward mentioned in the Book of Isaiah), Eliezer Ben-Yehuda (father of modern Hebrew), Chief Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, as well as Gavriel and Rivka Holtzberg (Chabad emissaries killed in a 2008 terror attack in Mumbai).
Following the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE, the Roman Emperor Hadrian renamed Judea as “Syria Palaestina” – a name derived from the Hebrew “פלשתים” which means “invaders” and the name of the biblical Philistines who had died out by then. In Mandatory Palestine, the mil, a general circulation coin, was stamped (פלשתינה (א”י, which included the abbreviation for ארץ ישראל or “Land of Israel”.
Golda Meir, who served as Israel’s prime minister from 1969 to 1974, was the third woman in history to serve her country in that role – and the first in the Middle East.
After the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Muslim countries forced over 900,000 Jews from their homes, froze their bank accounts and confiscated property. Most fled to Israel; they and their descendants now make up about half its population.
