"This is Israel's annual season of solemnity and celebration, an extraordinary time when the nation moves from sadness to joy, from remembrance to hope. Beginning last week with Yom HaShoah, the day that commemorates those who died in the Holocaust, and continuing this week as Israel mourns its own war dead and immediately celebrates the creation of the state the next day, on Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day) and Yom HaAtazmaut (Independence Day), this is a period of ups and downs, highs and lows. It is the very crescendo of human emotions that, in fact, makes us human, connecting us to past and future generations. This year, Israel celebrates its 70th year. These days, 70 is the new 40. It is not at all a time of old age, but rather a time when we settle in to think about where we have been, and where we still want life to take us.

There is no doubt that its very existence is a modern-day miracle, a miracle born from the sweat, blood, and ingenuity of the best of humankind. Among the world's most visionary documents is Israel's declaration of independence. Written by David Ben Gurion and other dreamers, farmers, and philosophers, this treatise, in 1948, created a nation, a Jewish homeland for a people that had yearned for it for centuries and who, in that moment, desperately needed the security only a nation of our own could deliver: THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

In her 70th year, Israel is a strong, unique nation. She can be stronger, though, by truly living up to her founding values. To build a vibrant Jewish world for the next 70 years, we, the Jewish community in North America - together with our brothers and sisters in Israel - must emphatically stake our claim on an inclusive, living Judaism that embraces and offers hope to all who wish to enter our tent and engages them in the work necessary to repair our severely broken world. Of course, it is no easy feat to achieve the goals Ben Gurion and the other founders set forth to make Israel a miracle on earth, but it is our sacred obligation, and we do it with love."