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By Root 2234 0

Failure to order an immediate attack would mean the destruction of the Third Temple and the end of the Jewish state. But the cautious Eshkol temporized, especially since the war option did not have the unanimous support of his cabinet. General Yitzhak Rabin, chief of the general staff, put on civilian dress and journeyed to a kibbutz in the Negev to solicit the view of David Ben-Gurion. Ben-Gurion counseled patience, urging that war be avoided as long as possible. He recommended a strategy of retrenchment, using the term titkhapru, meaning “dig defensive trenches.” He felt that a war at that moment could lead to national disaster. “The chief we once worshipped had lost confidence in the army,” Rabin later told me. His intense disappointment drove him into a depression that, fortunately, lasted only twenty-four hours.

Saul Lieberman was more confident. His argument was based not on military science but on theology—and economics. “The Lord,” he said, “is also a banker. He has invested so much in our people’s history that He can no longer turn away from them without forfeiting His capital.”

On Sunday, June 4, 1967, I felt anxious but content as I went to the graduation ceremony of the Jewish Theological Seminary. The chancellor, Louis Finkelstein, had invited me to deliver the commencement address. In a sense, I was one of the graduates, for I was to receive my first honorary doctorate. The Israeli ambassador, Gideon Rafael, was among the invited guests.

My address was later published in One Generation After, under the title “To a Young Jew of Today.” In it I spoke of commitments and obligations to our own community and to the human community at large, of our common memories and hopes. In the printed text I deleted a brief exhortation, a call to the students to stand by Israel, now threatened by so many enemies. “Should war break out tomorrow,” I told them, “we must come to Israel’s aid.” I was speaking, of course, only of a hypothetical tomorrow.

Very early the next morning I was awakened by Rafael, who asked me how I knew. “Knew what?” I asked sleepily. “That there would be war today,” the ambassador replied. In other circumstances I would have laughed, but I didn’t feel like laughing on that day, one of the worst since 1945. The news was depressing, Jerusalem’s silence ominous. We didn’t know that the new minister of defense, Moshe Dayan, had ordered a strict blackout on news from the front. The only available information came from Arab capitals. Radio Cairo, Damascus, and Amman were jubilant: The Israeli front had collapsed, Beersheba was about to fall, the army was disintegrating, Tel Aviv would soon be in flames.

In fact, the Egyptian air force having been annihilated in the first three hours of battle, Egypt had already lost the war. As yet, the Arabs didn’t know it. Neither did the American public.

In Brooklyn (with the exception of the anti-Zionist Hasidim of Satmàr and the Neturei Karta, who hailed the supposed Israeli defeat), Jews gathered in the Houses of Study to recite psalms. Forty-seventh Street, the heart of the Manhattan diamond industry, came to a virtual standstill as groups formed to discuss the situation. Emergency funds were collected everywhere, from rich and poor alike. Senators and representatives were besieged with requests to intervene. Doctors volunteered to fly to Israel to help their overwhelmed colleagues.

The entire Jewish population now offered its unconditional support to Israel. The Diaspora communities, as if lifted by a tidal wave of solidarity, rose to the occasion. Even intellectuals who had suffered their Jewishness as an embarrassing contradiction now openly proclaimed it. Assimilated Jews forgot their complexes, sectarians their fanaticism. There was a sense of responsibility for the survival of Israel. American Jews called Israeli relatives and friends offering to take care of their small children as long as necessary. Isaac Stern canceled his concerts and flew to Tel Aviv, declaring: “Our enemies say they will exterminate two and a half million Jews. Well, let them add one