The Silver Platter: The Ongoing Sacrifice for Israel’s Existence

Israeli Emissary Omer Karavani Shares a Reflection at Our Gathering to Remember October 7th

When Chaim Weizmann, the first president of Israel, was asked for his assessment of the UN’s partition vote back in 1947, he explained that the vote was but the first step in establishing a Jewish state. But like anything worth having, it would have to be fought for: “The state will not be given to the Jewish people on a silver platter.” The state of Israel would have to be dearly bought, with Jewish blood.

That night, the Israeli poet Nathan Alterman went home and started working on his poem, “The Silver Platter.” It envisioned the toll that creating a Jewish state would take. He described a war-torn land, a homeland of “smoky frontiers” still burning from battle. He wrote of a Jewish homeland that was “torn at heart but existing,” describing that the cost of the Jewish state will be the soldiers that died and will die for the existence of the Jewish state.

But over the past year, the silver platter on which the Jewish state is given has grown and changed.

And don’t be mistaken in thinking this is a price that is paid once. It is a price that Israel pays every day. To exist.

It’s not just soldiers; it’s civilians. It is a country that is currently burning. It’s the families in Israel, it’s the friends, maybe some former emissaries. It’s a nine-year-old talking to you about death, who truly understands the meaning of it. It’s the farmer in the north that lost his house and acres to this war after years of taking care of them. It’s the people being evacuated from their homes in the north. It’s the soldiers that haven’t been home for months because they are on reserve duty.

It’s exhaustion. It’s the constant fear for the well-being of our hostages.

It’s the need to maintain humanity in an inhumane world. It’s the desire to be angry, to hurt, and to grieve without losing control. It’s being sad that the world has forgotten, doesn’t know, or chooses to ignore what happened on October 7th.

But we haven’t forgotten. Not the 7th, not the soldiers, not the civilians, not the destruction that was caused, not the north that’s burning, not the blood-soaked land, and not our hostages. It is simply because this place is dear to the hearts of Israel and the Jews around the world, it’s the silver platter we’ve been paying for over the past year.

But Omer, is it worth it? All the pain, the suffering, the fears, the anxieties?

If you had asked me this a year and a half ago, I would have told you to ask a Holocaust survivor, whose entire family was murdered in Europe during World War II, and they are the only survivor.

Today, I’ll tell you, go ask a Nova survivor, ask survivors from Kibbutz Be’eri or Kfar Aza. Go ask Noa Argamani who came back after 247 days in captivity.

Is the State of Israel worth this sacrifice?

What the Holocaust survivor and the Nova survivor have in common is not that they lost their loved ones, but that they stared death in the eyes only because they are Jewish and came to the realization that, truly and deeply, we have no other land.

Thanks to Partnership with Western Galilee, we now have an opportunity to show our support through a special project for Lone Soldiers who are defending Israel. A Lone Soldier is someone who immigrated to Israel without their family, or an orphan, or an individual from a broken home.

As Israel fights a war for its survival, I call on our Jewish community to stand up for Israel.

Omer Karavani
Israeli Emissary
Jewish Federation of St. Joseph Valley