I have been asked about a very delicate question. Basically it is almost like religion and politics, something you do not discuss. Is it wise to talk about something that divides us? Yes it is. I would like to be heard with light and not heat, as I would like to make this into an intellectual discussion.
Jewish educators are faced with many questions. How do the following apply to us? 1) Holocaust Day 27th of Nissan, 2) Yom Haatzmaut Israeli Independence Day 5th of Iyar, 3) Yom Yerushalayim…
Let me tell you what I have to say. Take it or leave it. But, first listen.
To say to celebrate that day which was the day of decision to make a medina (state), I think is highly questionable. It is much worse than that.
As history shows, it was by a hair’s breadth that Ben-Gurion decided to proclaim a state. The members of the Jewish Agency had to come to a decision because five Arab armies were threatening them and they had no arms. It was a fifty-fifty vote. And most of the members were apikorsim gemurim (heretics and atheists), as they had to include the Tzur Yisroel clause on the declaration. Many people felt they would never make it. It was Maimon, I think, who broke the tie and they proclaimed the state.
Let us think – in our value system, what is worth more, no matter how many points you give to medina (state), do you give less points to the ten thousand Jews, who died, clearly died as a result of the proclamation of the medina?
The decision to proclaim the medinah was a clear cut decision which brought about the avadon (loss) of ten thousand Jewish neshamos (lives). The great tragedies we know – that the Jews who were killed were both husbands, fathers, sons, and grandsons all wrapped up into one. What kind of a loss and tragedy this was! It is not up to us to measure. Even it if is one Jewish life, we do not measure lives.
By gentiles, for nationalistic or chauvinistic reasons, for the muterland, one does this. But in our value system, what is worth more?
So this momentous decision to say that we are taking medinah over Jewish lives is to me a decision which is grounds for mourning rather than simcha.
The Gemara says that when someone hears that his father died, he recites two blessings: one that G-d is the true judge and one for his inheritance. But what does he celebrate the next year? The yahrzeit or the fact that he got his inheritance? A year ago his father died so it is a yahrzeit.
The fifth of Iyar is a yahrzeit.
The medina is not more important than the loss of ten thousand Jews, who died as a result of this decision. That decision was a momentous error. It was an achzarius (extreme cruelty).
The decision was a wrong decision as far as our value system is concerned. (Speech to the Torah Umesorah Convention in 1983, printed in The Jewish Guardian, Summer 1983)
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For background on Rabbi Cohen’s remarks, the following is from Golda Meir’s autobiography, My Life, p. 181.
Within two days, the final decision had to be taken: should a Jewish state be proclaimed or not? After I had reported on my conversation with Abdullah, a number of people on the Minhelet ha-Am (literally the people’s administration) made up of members of the Jewish Agency, the Va’ad Leumi, and various small parties and groups which later became the provisional government of Israel, pressed Ben-Gurion for one last evaluation of the situation. They wanted to know what the Hagana’s assessment was at zero hour. So Ben-Gurion called in two men: Yigal Yadin, who was the Hagana’s chief of operations, and Yisrael Galili, who was its de facto commander in chief. Their answers were virtually identical – and terrifying. We could be sure of only two things, they said: the British would pull out and the Arabs would invade. And then? They were both silent. But after a minute, Yadin said, “The best we can tell you is that we have a fifty-fifty chance. We are as likely to win as we are to be defeated.”
So it was on that bright note that the final decision was made. On Friday, 14th of May 1948, the Jewish state would come into being, its population numbering 650,000, its chance of surviving its birth depending on whether or not the Yishuv could possibly meet the assault of five regular Arab armies actively aided by Palestine’s one million Arabs.
Meir goes on to relate how Ben-Gurion ordered her to fly to Jerusalem on Thursday the 13th in a Piper Cub and bring back Yitzchak Gruenbaum, so that he could attend the declaration ceremony on the 14th. The engine almost broke down in the middle of the flight and her pilot had to turn around.
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And the following is from Alan Hart, Zionism the Real Enemy of the Jews, volume 2 p. 45-49:
Ben-Gurion had fixed that Wednesday as D-day, the day when the Zionist leadership in Palestine, after one more review of the entire situation, would take the final irrevocable decision: to go ahead or not with the unilateral declaration of Jewish independence the moment the British Mandate expired. Ben-Gurion’s prospects of getting what he wanted, war, had been much improved by the reduction of the number of those who would be called upon to make the decision. He had created the Council of Thirteen. This replaced the much bigger executive of the Jewish Agency and was to be the provisional government of the Jewish state. The evidence suggests that Ben-Gurion would not have got his way if the decision had been left to the larger body.
On the fateful day, the Council of Thirteen was actually the Council of Ten, nine plus Ben-Gurion. Three members of the provisional government-in-waiting were absent. There would have been a fourth absentee if Ben-Gurion had not taken an extraordinary precaution. He sent the Jewish Agency’s precious Piper Cub from Tel Aviv to besieged Jerusalem, a short but extremely perilous air journey, to extricate an Orthodox rabbi whose vote he knew he could count on.
What they were actually going to vote on, at Ben-Gurion’s insistence, was not: do we go ahead with a unilateral declaration of independence, yes or no? but: do we accept or reject the call by Secretary of State Marshall for a truce? If they had accepted Marshall’s call for a halt to the fighting, they would obviously have to postpone a unilateral declaration of independence, a postponement Marshall wanted to allow more time for the General Assembly to reconsider the problem of what to do about Palestine and more time for diplomacy, driven by the US State Department and the British Foreign Office, to come up with a solution that would avert a major war, a war that Marshall and Forrestal and others feared would light a fire in the Middle East that nobody would ever be able to put out…
By the time Ben-Gurion had finished making his case for Marshall’s call to a truce to be rejected, he might well have felt that the vote in favor of what he wanted, war, would be unanimous. If he did, he was in for a shock. When he called for the vote, four of the nine hands were raised in favor of accepting the truce Marshall wanted. It was by only one vote that the decision to reject the truce and declare the coming into being of the Jewish state was taken…
One of the four who had voted in favor of accepting Marshall’s call for a truce suggested that if there was to be a unilateral declaration of independence, it, the actual declaration, should put the Jewish state in the best possible standing with the international community by indicating that its borders were those of the partition plan. That of course was a bright red rag to Ben-Gurion’s bull. He angrily rejected the suggestion and pointed out that the Americans had not announced the frontiers of their state in their Declaration of Independence.
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The following is from Wikipedia:
On 12 May 1948, the Minhelet HaAm (Hebrew: מנהלת העם, lit. People’s Administration) was convened to vote on declaring independence.Three of the thirteen members were absent, with Yehuda Leib Maimon and Yitzhak Gruenbaum being blocked in besieged Jerusalem, while Yitzhak-Meir Levin was in the United States.
The meeting started at 13:45 and ended after midnight. The decision was between accepting the American proposal for a truce, or declaring independence. The latter option was put to a vote, with six of the ten members present supporting it:
For: David Ben-Gurion, Moshe Sharett (Mapai); Peretz Bernstein (General Zionists); Haim-Moshe Shapira (Hapoel HaMizrachi); Mordechai Bentov, Aharon Zisling (Mapam).
Against: Eliezer Kaplan, David Remez (Mapai); Pinchas Rosen (New Aliyah Party); Bechor-Shalom Sheetrit (Sephardim and Oriental Communities).
Putting this together with Hart’s narrative, it seems the “Orthodox rabbi” who was extricated from Jerusalem and broke the tie must have been Shapira, not Maimon. (Maimon did make it there for the declaration, since we know that he recited the Shehecheyanu blessing. Ben-Gurion’s diary confirms that he arrived in Tel Aviv on Thursday the 13th in the afternoon.) And if Golda Meir was sent to bring Gruenbaum and turned back in the middle, then it must have been someone else, days earlier, who went to bring Shapira.
I Will Await Him 
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