Message from Rabbi Philip Scheim

Avraham Shlonsky was one of Israel’s significant modern Hebrew poets.

Schooled in his native Poltava in traditional Jewish learning, his family sent him to the new city of Tel Aviv in his Bar Mitzvah year of 1913 so that he could study Hebrew. Forced to return to Russia during the First World War, he returned to Palestine in 1922, and worked in farming and road building.

This profoundly talented literary figure personally paved many of the roads of Tel Aviv. His classic poem “Amal - Toil,” reflects his unique view of the new city, and the surrounding landscapes of Israel: “My country wraps itself in light as in a tallit. Houses stand out like tefillin-boxes. And like the tefillin-straps, the roadways that palms have paved glide down.”

Avraham Shlonsky’s imagery reflects the transformation that was beginning to unfold at the outset of the twentieth century, in which the world of the Jew, for two thousand years confined to ritual and to study, would expand beyond the pages of sacred texts and into the realm of sacred space.

Avraham Shlonsky was representative of a generation of young men and women who left families behind in Europe to embark on an extremely hazardous journey. Many of them were affluent, almost all of them were highly educated. Their decision to leave the world they knew, with its cafes and universities and culture and comforts for the untold hardships of Palestine was voluntary. They could have listened to their families and friends and remained in Europe. But rather, they became the generation that would drain swamps, that would transform wasteland into fertile fields, that would build cities that had never before existed, such as Tel Aviv, and revive other centers of Jewish life that had been dormant for centuries or millennia. Here they were in an untamed, dangerous, fiercely hot, unfriendly climate - young, scared - but filled with vision.

They, through their actions, proclaimed an end to Jewish waiting. They knew that the time had come for Jews, after thousands of years, to take charge of their history, to act decisively and courageously, for the sake of Jewish generations to come.

As we look ahead to Israel’s sixty-ninth year of statehood, our annual Israel Bonds High Holy Day Campaign provides us with an opportunity to carry forward the determination and the courage of the founding generation, and to demonstrate our undiminished love and admiration for Israel, our confidence in her ability to meet the great challenges of the moment, and our support for all who defend Israel’s borders, who stand guard on the front lines of Jewish history, who represent the greatest hope for our future.