Neil Rogachevsky on Israel’s Declaration of Independence

Conversations with Bill Kristol

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.