The first time the Jewish people changed the world, they did it without an army, without a state, without territory. They did it with a book.

The Hebrew Bible — the Tanakh — introduced something no empire had articulated with such moral clarity: history as meaningful, power as accountable, human beings as bearers of dignity because they are created b’tzelem Elohim — in the image of God, and law not as the whim of rulers, but as covenant.

The French produced revolution; the English developed constitutional monarchy. The Americans framed liberal democracy. But the Jewish text produced something deeper: the moral grammar upon which those civilizations eventually built their political experiments.

Without Sinai, there is no social contract as we know it. Without prophets, there is no idea that kings stand under judgment. Without Exodus, there is no enduring political imagination of liberation.

That was the first time. The second time is happening now.

The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was not simply another nationalist project. It was the return of an ancient civilizational people to sovereignty after two millennia of dispersion.

Unlike France, England, or the United States — which emerged from imperial or colonial frameworks — Israel emerged from catastrophe. After the Holocaust, Jewish sovereignty was not expansionist ambition; it was existential necessity.

And yet, what has Israel produced in less than eighty years?

A citizen army — the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — built not on aristocracy, but on compulsory service that binds diverse communities into shared responsibility.

A global intelligence........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)