In the center of it all

On November 29, 1947, the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution proclaiming the right of the Jewish people for a state in their historic homeland. As we mark the 70th anniversary of that watershed event in Jewish history, it is important and instructive to understand some of the process and historical context that led to the announcement that day, as well as the emotions it unleashed for those who experienced it first hand.

On January 4, 1946, in the tumultuous wake of World War II, the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry was founded in Washington DC with American and British members.

The goal was to do a study of Jewish immigration and settlement in Palestine and the well-being of the people living there. The commission was to consult with Arab and Jewish representatives and make recommendations “as may be necessary.”

The report was published in April 1946 in Lausanne after the committee’s consultations there when the report was developed.

The main point was to admit 100,000 Jews to Palestine from DP camps immediately, but the plan was never implemented because Britain expected the US to provide financial support in case of an Arab revolt. US president Harry Truman said no to providing funding, and that was the end of that report.

In October 1946, Rebecca Affachiner of Jerusalem, the “Betsy Ross of Israel,” wrote a note that can be found in her archives: “Although the British have been kind to me, personally, I know that it is time for them to release Palestine to the Jewish people.”

A friend of Ethiopian leader Haile Selassie and High Commissioner for Palestine Sir Harold Alfred MacMichael, Affachiner heard on the news that the British had given up on making peace between the Jews and the Arabs.

The British government had decided to return the Mandate to the United Nations.

In May 1947, United Nations Special Commission on Palestine was formed, consisting of representatives of 11 countries. When the UNSCOP delegation of leading international representatives began to meet in Jerusalem, the sessions were held at the YMCA. Affachiner somehow obtained a ticket and witnessed a portion of the proceedings.

The UNSCOP report issued on September 3, 1947 called for the termination of the British Mandate in Palestine to be completed as soon as possible. The key recommendation was to divide Palestine into two states – one Arab, one Jewish. This is best known as the “Partition Plan,” approved on November 29, 1947.

Dr. Shulamit Schwartz Nardi, who lived in Jerusalem, once explained how the American Zionists and their high-placed friends helped to organize the campaign in the fall of 1947 to promote the passage of the Partition Plan.

“I went to work in the early 1940s for the noted Zionist Dr. Abba Hillel Silver, a Cleveland Reform rabbi who took a stronger position on statehood than his noted colleague Rabbi Stephen Wise. Both were exceptional Reform leaders, but each had his own philosophy.

“Silver, a staunch Republican, saw to it that various publications were developed that would let the English-speaking world know about the Land of Israel. The most successful publication was Walter Clay Lowdermilk’s Palestine: Land of Promise, a book on how the Jews had developed the agriculture of Eretz Yisrael. Thousands of copies were distributed throughout the world.

“We were one of the main lobbying groups to ensure the passing of the Partition Plan. We had great help from Herbert Bayard Swope, a noted journalist and financier, who had created a news service as a rival to JTA.”

After the UNSCOP report in the summer of 1947 called for the creation of Jewish and Arab states, American rabbis were deluged with material that could be used in their High Holy Day sermons.

Rabbi Tuvia Geffen in Atlanta, Georgia, knew a lot about what was transpiring because he read the Tag-Morning Journal daily after it arrived on the train from New York.

The Yiddish newspaper had its own correspondents who wrote news articles that were more detailed and accurate than those in the daily papers.

Rabbi Hyman Friedman, the associate rabbi at Shearith Israel in Atlanta and a leader of Atlanta Mizrahi, gave a stirring speech in English on the first day of Rosh Hashana about Eretz Yisrael as the Jewish homeland. Rabbi Geffen, the senior rabbi, gave his sermon in Yiddish.

He stressed, “We have waited a long time for our own nation. God has promised us that we will return to Eretz Yisrael and this seems to be the moment.”

In a clip from a documentary made by the Toldot Yisrael film company on the birth of Israel through the eyes of those who participated in this major event in our history, the eloquent Silver can be seen making the case before the United Nations as to the importance of a Jewish state. His evidence stemmed from the divine promise of ancient days, the longings for the return to Eretz Yisrael from the Middle Ages and the great hope for a nation in modern times.

Then he stressed the horrible death of six million million Jews in the Holocaust, plus the fact that refugees were living in displaced persons’ camps throughout Europe and needed a home.

David Ben-Gurion had asked Silver to deliver this address rather than he himself and Silver wonderfully rose to the challenge.

Well-known writer Zipporah Porath, who has lived in the country since 1947, published the book Letters from Jerusalem 1947-1948 about her experiences in Eretz Yisrael in that important period.

She wrote, “Even though we were here in Jerusalem, there was no open discussion about what was to happen the following month. We knew that Jews were being killed here all the time, so security was very important. We were encouraged to be careful.

“Raised in a Zionist home in America, my yearning for Jewish sovereignty had focused on youth movement meetings and activities. The Hagana, on the other hand, was already putting into practice the Zionist dream of asserting Jewish national identity in Palestine. It wasn’t long before I joined them.”

Before classes began at the Hebrew University, she traveled around the country in October and briefly in November, then settled down to her studies until that fateful Saturday night of the partition vote. On Sunday morning, November 30, she wrote to her parents and her sister.

“I walked in a semi-daze through the crowds of happy faces, through the deafening singing of ‘David Melech Yisrael, chai, chai vekayam’ (King David of Israel is alive and well), past the British tanks and jeeps piled high with pyramids of flag-waving children.”

Then she returned to the actual vote itself the night before.

“The light in my room was still on from last night. I had planned to go to sleep early since rumor had it that voting at the UN on the Partition Plan would probably be postponed for a day.”

Then the excitement began to build. One student rushed in around 11 p.m. and exclaimed, “We’re getting through to America [on an old-fashioned short-wave radio]. Come on down. The voting’s tonight.”

Pajama-clad students crowded into the room. They sat tensely around the battered radio and waited. Then it happened as Porath writes.

“We got through just as the announcement of the majority vote was made: 33 in favor, 13 against and 10 abstentions. Ecstatic, we hugged and kissed each other frantically, then stood rigidly and sang Hatikva with fervor.”

They dressed quickly and first climbed to the roof of their building before heading down to the street.

“Then we made a snake line to the nearest houses, banging on the shutters and the doors shouting the news as we went... The streets of the city were beginning to fill as the news got around. People poured out of their homes in an ever-thickening stream. In the center of town crowds of happy people, hugging each other, dancing horas and jigs.”

Then it was off to the Jewish Agency building on King George Avenue. On the balcony out came a flag. Golda Meir appeared.

“There were no words to suit the moment,” Porath wrote. “Choked with emotion, she managed to say ‘Mazal tov’ and down came tears, oceans of unrestrained happy tears.”

Most appropriate is her description of Ben-Gurion speaking from the balcony of the Jewish Agency building on Sunday morning, November 30.

“He looked slowly and solemnly around him to the rooftops crammed with people, to the throngs that stood solid in the courtyard below him. He raised his hand and declared, Ashreynu shezachinu layom hazeh (blessed are we who have been privileged to witness this day).’ “He concluded with techi medinat yisrael! (long live the Jewish state) and a solemn Hatikva arose from all sides. The moment was too big for our feelings. There were few dry eyes and few steady voices.”

Then the most exhilarating moment of all.

“Ben-Gurion tossed his head back proudly, tenderly touched the flag that hung from the railing and charged the air with electricity when he shouted defiantly, ‘WE ARE A FREE PEOPLE.’” Sometime between December 4 and 12, Porath, in a secret ceremony, was sworn into the Hagana.

A few days later in New York City, Dr. Israel Goldstein, chairman of the United Palestine Appeal, headed a rally at Madison Square Garden. Shortly afterward a group of some 50 American Jewish leaders assembled in Atlantic City, New Jersey.

They had been in contact with Ben-Gurion and others as to the needs of those living in Palestine and in DP camps. The decision was made for American Jewry to raise some $250 million for the new State of Israel and they did.

Rav Tuvia Geffen kept a daily diary in Yiddish from 1940 to 1965. His daughter, of blessed memory, Helen Geffen Ziff, began to translate her father’s diaries before she passed away here in Jerusalem. On November 29, 1947, he wrote: “A good and healthy week for all Jewry and for us. Today we heard good news over the radio that the UN passed with a ²⁄3 majority to divide Palestine into two states, a Jewish one and an Arab one.

“This is very important news, since it is the beginning of the revival of the Jewish people. We refer to it as the revival, because now the Jewish people will begin the return to their own country in Palestine. Congratulations, with the blessing of mazal tov for the Jewish people in the whole world.”

Marking 70 years since the vote that changed history on November 29, 1947