Since ancient times, human beings have imagined rising above the ground and moving through the sky like birds. Myths, sketches, and early mechanical experiments all reflected the same desire: to overcome distance, terrain, and the limits of travel on land. That dream moved from imagination to reality with balloons, gliders, and eventually powered flight in the early twentieth century. Airplanes transformed long-distance travel, while helicopters introduced the possibility of vertical takeoff and landing, allowing flight without runways and access to crowded cities, rooftops, and remote areas. Yet for all their usefulness, helicopters remained costly, noisy, mechanically demanding, and limited to specialized markets rather than everyday personal transportation.
Today, that centuries-old ambition is entering a new phase through electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, known as eVTOLs. These aircraft combine advances in battery systems, lightweight materials, distributed electric motors, and digital flight controls to offer many of the benefits of helicopters with lower noise and potentially lower operating costs. Companies such as Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, BETA Technologies, and Volocopter are testing aircraft designed for short urban trips, airport transfers, and regional transport. What earlier generations imagined as a “flying car” is emerging instead as a network of quiet, app-booked air taxis that may soon become part of everyday mobility.
Just as the dream of flight lived for centuries before technology made it practical, the Jewish hope for a return to a national home endured through exile, prayer, and generations of longing before taking concrete form in the establishment of the State of Israel. What once seemed distant and improbable became real through vision, persistence, sacrifice, and hard work. Yet, as with eVTOL aircraft, realization is not the final stage but the beginning of a larger purpose. The promise of Israel is not only sovereignty or refuge, but the chance to build a society that reflects justice, wisdom, compassion, and moral courage, becoming in time a light unto the nations and an example of what principled nationhood can achieve.
The establishment of the State of Israel in 1948 was not the creation of something entirely new, but the reestablishment of Jewish sovereignty in the ancestral homeland after centuries of exile. The Jewish people had ancient kingdoms in the Land of Israel, centered in Jerusalem, long before the common era. Following successive conquests by the Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, and Romans, large portions of the Jewish population were dispersed, especially after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and the suppression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135 CE. Even so, Jewish communities remained continuously present in cities such as Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron throughout the centuries. My maternal grandmother is actually descended from families that never left the land of Israel.
During exile, Jewish identity remained closely tied to the land through prayer, law, language, and memory. Daily prayers spoke of return to Zion, holidays recalled the land’s history, and generations ended the Passover Seder with the words “Next year in Jerusalem.” In the late nineteenth century, modern Zionism turned that enduring hope into a political movement encouraging immigration, settlement, and national renewal. After the devastation of the Holocaust and the end of the British Mandate, Jewish leaders declared independence in 1948. In that sense, Israel’s founding was both a new state and the return of an ancient people to self-rule in their historic homeland.
The Hebrew date is the 5th of the month of Iyar. Israel Independence Day, or Yom Haatzmaut, as it’s called in Israel, is a modern holiday. It’s modern in the sense that it obviously is not of biblical or rabbinic origin, but rather a holiday that’s been celebrated only since 1948. As a result, there are no biblical or rabbinic “commandments” associated with it. There is no prohibition of doing labor like on the Sabbath or the biblical holidays, and there are no strictures as to what should or shouldn’t be eaten, where and when someone can eat, prescribed prayers or other rituals.
Nonetheless, a number of modern customs have emerged and evolved over the years:
It is a National Holiday and most businesses are closed.
It is proceeded by the National Memorial Day, a truly solemn day, where we remember all of those who fell in our wars and terror attacks. A siren sounds throughout the country, and everyone comes to a halt while it sounds. There is both a national memorial service and a pilgrimage to the military cemeteries all over the country.
Cities and communities will have commemorative services, sometimes going from the sadness of the Memorial Day and pivoting to the gratitude and joy of Independence Day during the same event.
On Independence Day it was common to have fireworks at the end of the festive ceremonies, though those have been banned recently because of trauma a growing percentage of our population has to both explosive noises and sirens.
Perhaps the most common custom has been that of barbecuing, followed by hikes through national parks, nature trails and more. One of my favorite events is the International Bible Contest, where high school kids from all over the world compete in a high-level test of biblical knowledge – some of these kids know every word in the Bible by heart!
In some of the religiously observant circles there are also added prayers that are said during Independence Day, though in some orthodox circles they are not said, nor do they consider Israel Independence Day a day worthy of celebrating or commemorating.
I personally believe that it is a day imbued with its own holiness. It represents, in a very tangible way, the miraculous, historic return of Jewish self-determination to our ancestral land, and is indeed a promising start of a fuller redemption that will go forth from Zion and be a true beacon for the world.
