Let us now celebrate.

Set aside your disappointments and unfulfilled expectations. Disengage for the moment from your politics. Ignore your fear of war and your fear of peace. Stop quibbling about borders. Ignore the hat or the lack of a hat on the men's heads. Unarch your eyebrows, unfurrow your brow, unscowl your face, and refrain from sighing.

Let us now celebrate.

Fifty years ago a miracle occurred, and fifty years later the miracle is that it's no longer a miracle, it is the status quo. The Jews are a people in their own land. Only those who knew a world without a State of Israel – and I am not among them – can understand in their souls the difference between then and now. But the rest of us can tell the story, just as we tell the stories of our earliest history.

Let us now celebrate.

When our ancestors left Egypt, the mountains danced like rams, the hills like young deer. When, after weeping beside the rivers of Babylon, God restored our exiles to Zion, it was like a dream – our mouths were filled with laughter and our tongues with joyful song. When our community in Persia was delivered from Haman, there was light, happiness, rejoicing and endearment. Hard reality set in afterward. The business of life is a rough-and-tumble endeavor. Yet each year we participate in festivities which recall the remarkable joy which came with the intersection of redemption and promise.

Let us now celebrate.

The advantage of yesterday is that we can choose how and what to remember. The advantage of tomorrow is that we can plan what will yet be and how we hope to arrive to it. The challenge of today is to recognize the realities which will become our memories and nourish our aspirations.

Let us now celebrate.

For its triumphs and shortcomings, for its paradigms and uniqueness, for its endearments and aggravations, for its open heart and its stiff neck, there is cause to rejoice in Israel with a full heart at this moment in history. The exigencies of history can change at a moment’s notice, and any day of survival is cause for gratitude. But Israel is an answered prayer, reaffirmed with each passing day and each passing crisis. We have yearned to see the realization of a dream of two thousand years: to be a free people in our own land, the land of Zion, and Jerusalem. And fifty years later, those yearnings are requited still.

Let us now celebrate.