Neil Rogachevsky on Israel’s Declaration of Independence

Conversations with Bill Kristol

News, Society & Culture, Government, Politics

4.7 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 2 February 2023

⏱️ 74 minutes

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Summary

What were the major political and diplomatic issues that Israel’s founders faced in 1948? How did they inform the writing of Israel’s Declaration of Independence? What can Israel’s Declaration teach us about natural and historic rights, the relationship of religion and state, and the meaning of national sovereignty? To discuss these questions, we are joined by Neil Rogachevsky, a scholar of Israel studies and political thought at Yeshiva University in New York and co-author, with Dov Zigler, of the forthcoming book: Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Rogachevsky tells the riveting story of the composition of Israel’s Declaration of Independence. Its first draft, he explains, was a collaboration between an American rabbi and a young Israeli lawyer, and produced a text that fundamentally drew upon America’s Declaration of Independence, which blended natural rights and Jewish justifications for the Jewish state. Rogachevsky narrates the drama of the weeks and days leading up to the eve of independence on May 14, 1948, as the Declaration weaved its way through the bureaucracy of the state-to-be before landing on the desk of Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion had to make monumental decisions about the character of the state and its relationship to the outside world. His choices, Rogachevsky argues, fundamentally shaped modern Israel—and offer lessons about democracy, rights, sovereignty, religion, and statecraft that resonate to this day.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, I'm Bill Crystal. Welcome back to Conversations. I'm very pleased to be joined today by my friend, Neil Rogochewski,
0:22.2	teachers at the Shoeving University as a professor there and associate director, I believe,
0:26.4	of the Strauss Center on Torah and Western thought, student of political philosophy,
0:32.2	and Judaism written on both PhD and history from Cambridge University. So,
0:37.9	lots of diverse credentials that you bring to this conversation about Israel's Declaration
0:41.9	of Independence. And I guess most importantly, that you've written a book that shortly to appear
0:47.2	from Cambridge University Press. I should have appeared already frankly, but that's how
0:51.3	university presses are. I guess I shouldn't, maybe we'll take this out of the final version,
0:55.2	so it's not to offend the Cambridge, the powers that be there. Cambridge, excellent book,
0:59.4	which I've read in Galleys, Israel's Declaration of Independence, the history and political theory
1:05.6	of the nation's founding moment that you will with your co-author, Doug Ziegler. So, Neil, thank
1:10.8	you for joining me today. Great to be with you, Bill. I'm looking forward to this conversation.
1:16.6	And I was talking yesterday, telling someone a friend that we were going to have this conversation
1:21.5	about Israel's Declaration of Independence. And this friend who's well-educated and interested in
1:26.0	things Israeli and Zionist and 20th century history and so forth said, I must say, I would have
1:33.9	had this reaction a few years ago, probably. I didn't know there wasn't Israeli Declaration of
1:38.0	Independence, which is kind of striking that it's not considered not something everyone knows about
1:43.6	in terms of the founding of the state of Israel. So, just say a word about what is it? When does
1:50.4	it appear? How does it fit into what was happening in 1948 and just before that as well?
2:01.1	Great. So, May 14, 1948, David Ben-Gurion, the de facto leader at that point of the issue,
2:09.3	the Jewish commuting Palestine, assembles local dignitaries, rabbis, fellow politicians,
2:16.8	in the Tel Aviv National Museum in Tel Aviv on Rothschild Boulevard. Not the nicest museum
	...

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