The Declaration of the State of Israel

It was 5 Iyar 5708, eight hours before the British mandate ran out. The ceremony was set for four in the afternoon on Friday, so that it would end before Shabbat. The hall of the Tel Aviv Museum on Rothschild Boulevard was chosen because it was small and hard to bomb. Two hundred and fifty people gathered. Ben-Gurion struck the gavel, everyone rose, and an orchestra behind the wall played Hatikvah.

Reading the declaration took sixteen minutes. Two questions had been argued until the last hour: whether to define borders (they did not) and whether to mention God. The compromise was the phrase 'placing our trust in the Rock of Israel'—Tzur Yisrael—which the religious signatories could read as a name of God and the secular as an image of national strength. Rabbi Yehuda Leib Maimon, one of the signers, recited the Shehecheyanu blessing in tears. Some of the thirty-seven signatures were added later: several council members were trapped in besieged Jerusalem.

Eleven minutes after the announcement the United States recognised the state; the Soviet Union followed. That night Egyptian planes bombed Tel Aviv. The exile that began in 3828 ended—not as the prophets had pictured it and not as the sages had hoped, but for the first time in 1,878 years there was Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel.