No, Israel is not born of the Holocaust.

Journalists should be honest: Israel’s roots lie in ancient Jewish history and the Zionist movement long before the Holocaust, which only underscored the urgency of a sovereign homeland.

Holocaust survivors arrive in Haifa in 1945. (photo: Zoltan Kluger/Wikipedia)

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This is a guest essay by Alan Mairson, a journalist and former staff writer and editor at National Geographic magazine.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

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Ezra Klein is a smart, articulate guy.

Klein is an American journalist, political commentator, and co-founder of Vox, the popular news and media website founded in 2014, best known for its “explanatory journalism” style. He now serves as a columnist and podcast host at The New York Times, where he analyzes politics, policy, and culture.

Klein is well read, knows a lot about public policy, and probably knows a good bit of history, too.

But when he says things like, “The Jewish state is born of the Holocaust,” many people will hear cause and effect without any context: The Nazis killed six million Jews, so the world, out of pity, granted the Jewish People a nation-state of their own.

The problem is, context matters. A lot.

For instance, Klein could have said: “The Jewish state is born of the Balfour Declaration.” Which takes us back to 1917, more than 20 years before the Holocaust. The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by the British government during the First World War announcing its support for the establishment of a “national home for the Jewish People” in Palestine. The text of the declaration was published in the press on November 9, 1917, decades before the Holocaust.

Klein could have said: “The Jewish state is born from the dream of Theodor Herzl.” Which takes us back to 1896, more than 40 years before the Holocaust. Theodor Herzl first envisioned a Jewish state in 1896, when he published Der Judenstaat (“The Jewish State”), arguing that the only solution to antisemitism was for the Jewish People to establish a sovereign nation of their own. The following year, he organized the First Zionist Congress in Basel, Switzerland, which laid the groundwork for modern political Zionism.

Klein could have said: “The Jewish state is born of the Blackstone Memorial.” Which takes us back to 1891, more than 50 years before the Holocaust. William Eugene Blackstone was an American evangelist, a Christian Zionist, and the author of “Blackstone Memorial” (1891), a petition calling upon the United States to actively return the Jewish People to the Holy Land.

Klein could have said: “The Jewish state is born from the mind of Leon Pinsker.” Which takes us back to 1882, more than 60 years before the Holocaust. Leon Pinsker, a Russian-Jewish physician, had previously advocated for Jewish assimilation but eventually concluded that antisemitism was a deeply ingrained, incurable “psychosis” and that Jews would never be safe without a country of their own.

His pamphlet, “Auto-Emancipation” (1882), was a direct response to the pogroms in Russia in 1881. He argued that the Jewish People needed to emancipate themselves by establishing a national home. His work was instrumental in mobilizing the Hovevei Zion (“Lovers of Zion”) movement, which promoted Jewish settlement in the biblical Land of Israel.

Klein could have said: “The Jewish state is born from the imagination of Moses Hess.” Which takes us back to 1862, more than 70 years before the Holocaust. Moses Hess, a German-Jewish philosopher, believed that Jews would never be fully accepted in Europe. In his book, “Rome and Jerusalem: A Study in Jewish Nationalism” (1862), Hess argued that the solution to “the Jewish question” was a return to the Land of Israel to create a socialist society.

Klein could have said: “The Jewish state is born from the visions of Rabbi Yehudah HaLevi.” Which takes us back to the 12th century, 800 years before the Holocaust. “The Kuzari: In Defense of the Despised Faith” is a philosophical, historical novel written by Rabbi Judah HaLevi in the 12th century. In the story, the king of the Khazars invites representatives of each of the three major religions to come and explain their beliefs. HaLevi’s book is based on the actual conversion to Judaism of Bulan, King of the Khazars, in the early 9th century, and it speaks directly to the centrality of the Holy Land to the Jewish People.

Klein could have said: “The Jewish state is born from the wisdom of the great sages of the Talmud.” Which takes us back to between the 3rd and 6th centuries CE, roughly 1,600 years before the Holocaust (and hundreds of years after the destruction of the Second Temple).

In Ketubot 110b, a key Talmudic passage that speaks about the unique status of the Land of Israel and the Jewish relationship to it, the Sages teach:

• Living in the Land of Israel: It states that a person should always live in the Land of Israel, even in a city where most of the inhabitants are non-Jews, rather than live outside of Israel, even in a city mostly populated by Jews.

• Importance of Dwelling in the Land: Dwelling in Israel is considered of such importance that one who resides outside the Land is likened to someone who has no God, while living in Israel is connected to having a relationship with God.

• Obligation in Marriage Disputes: The Gemara also rules that if one spouse wants to move to Israel and the other refuses, the one who insists on living in Israel has the stronger claim. The spouse who refuses can be divorced (or forced to accept divorce terms) because of the primacy of the mitzvah of living in the land.

Klein could have said: “The Jewish state is born from the vision of the Hebrew prophet who was my namesake.” Which takes us back to around 450 BCE, roughly 2,300 years before the Holocaust. In the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), specifically in the Book of Ezra, Chapter 1, it says God issued a proclamation that the God of Heaven had commanded Cyrus to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem. Cyrus invited any Jew who wishes to return to Jerusalem to go up and rebuild the House of God.

Or, Klein could have said: “The Jewish state is born from the promise made to Abraham in the Book of Genesis.” Which takes us back to the beginning of the Jewish story: The Torah establishes the eternal connection between the Jewish People and the Land of Israel, first promised to Abraham and his descendants.

Describing Israel this way — “born of the Holocaust” — makes a certain degree of sense if you’re a journalist who is expected to stand on the sidelines and report only what you can observe or fact-check. Journalists maintain this editorial distance and (supposed) objectivity by refusing to insert themselves into their stories.

But this is precisely what Judaism demands of Jews: To insert themselves into the Story — Creation » Eden » Flood » Babel » Egypt » Sinai » The Land » Exile… […Right Now…] — by becoming active participants, and to tell this ongoing story to their children. Put another way: Jews are called to be observers, narrators, creators, critics, dreamers, and participants in the Greatest Story Ever Told.

Seen through that lens, the Jewish state is not “born of the Holocaust.” It is born from an ancient narrative that teaches us what it means to be a human being; that warns us about the problems which arise when we are completely free; and that points to one available source of light and a destination that might dispel the darkness.

This is what happens when a Jew decides to become a High Priest in the Church of Journalism and stand on the sidelines, where he can narrate stories of his own choosing, appear on the op-ed page of The New York Times, tour the country as a best-selling author, and be the star of his own podcast.

Klein’s other option? Be a Jew and stand proudly with your 17 million brothers and sisters who live inside a story that we inherited but didn’t create — and which will continue long after we’re dead.

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