The president of Israel’s address to a joint session of Congress just wrapped up, and I must confess that I found it far more moving than I expected. In my world, talk of the American–Israeli alliance is abundant, almost tiring. But there’s something about a Jewish head of state addressing a crowd of cheering American lawmakers that will never cease to amaze. I was particularly moved by President Herzog’s remembrance of his grandfather’s meeting with President Truman which played a crucial role in the formation of the Jewish State:
In 1949, the President of the United States of America, Harry S. Truman, met with the Chief Rabbi of the newly established State of Israel, my grandfather Rabbi Yitzhak Isaac Halevi Herzog, in the Oval Office. This was just a few years after each of them had pleaded and campaigned for the rescue of Europe’s Jews being slaughtered in the Holocaust by the Nazis.
In speaking to President Truman, Rabbi Herzog thanked him for being the first world leader to officially recognize the State of Israel, eleven minutes after its foundation. He spoke of the Divine Providence that destined President Truman to help bring about the rebirth of Israel, after two thousand years of exile. Witnesses of the encounter recalled tears running down President Truman’s cheeks.
As I listened, tears ran down my cheeks as I recalled the story of two of my own great-grandparents, one who spent the Second World War wandering through the Soviet Union to avoid the fate of her family — themselves murdered by the Nazis — the other who joined his fellow citizens in the American army, fighting in Europe to preserve the unprecedented freedom that the United States so remarkably provided to the Jews. Sitting in the National Review office in New York City, having a platform to share my beliefs without fear, I’m thankful to God for the two providential nations – and the alliance between them – that He has supported.
You can listen to President Herzog’s full address below.
