On the day of the elections to the First Knesset, 77 years ago, at 5:35 in the morning, Rabbi Moshe Yekutiel Alpert got up and wrote the following words in his diary:
“Early in the morning, my wife, my brother, and I arose... After drinking coffee, we put on our Shabbat clothes in honor of this great and holy day, for ‘This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.’
“After two thousand years of exile, or perhaps even longer—one could say from the six days of Creation until this very day—we had never been privileged to experience a day like this: a day when we could go to the polls to vote in a Jewish state. ‘Blessed is He who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to this time.’
“My wife, my brother-in-law, and I walked to the polling station in District 10, at the Mizrachi Workers’ House on Abyssinians Street, carrying our identity cards issued by the State of Israel... With immense and overwhelming joy, we walked the short distance from our home.
“All along the way to the polling station, I walked as though I were celebrating Simchat Torah, dancing in the hakafot with a Torah scroll in my arms—for I was holding an Israeli identity card in my hand. There were no bounds to the happiness and joy I felt...
“At 6:02 a.m., voting began. With a trembling sense of holiness and sacred reverence, I handed my identity card to the chairman and entered the adjoining room, where the ballot slips of all the political parties were laid out.
“With a trembling hand and a profound feeling of holiness, I took one ballot slip and placed it inside the envelope I had received from the chairman.
“And then came the holiest moment of my life—a moment that neither my father nor my grandfather had been privileged to experience. Only I, in my own lifetime, had been blessed to witness such a moment of holiness and purity. How fortunate I am, and how blessed is my lot!
“I recited the blessing of *Shehecheyanu*—thanking God for keeping us alive and bringing us to this moment—and placed the envelope into the ballot box.
“At 6:28 a.m., we returned home, and I went to pray.
“What a great festival day!
“On this day, I opened a new chapter in our lives.”
(And thanks to my friend A.A., who read this letter to me seven years ago.)
How fortunate we are to have been granted the privilege of choosing our leaders in the only Jewish state that history has bestowed upon us.
And God, as always, will do what is good in His eyes.