Where are you from?

[Shouts from audience]

That’s good.  I got it.  You forgot something.  You all come from great countries, but you all come from here.  All of you, that’s your birthright.  You have to walk around to get it. You walk around here, anyone here named Rachel?  Any Rachels here?  You’re Rachel.  Any Rebeccas? Ah.  Any Leahs?  Any Jakes?  Well, Jacob, Isaac, Abraham, Sarah, Rachel, Leah, there’s one more… Rebecca, right.  The original ones were all here.  We all started here and we came back here.  This is our birthright and this is your birthright.

Have you been to the Wall? You touched them, the stones?  Not yet?  You’ll do it tomorrow.  You’re touching your birthright.  This is your homeland, literally.  This is where we all sprang up from.  This is where the Jewish people forged their identity.  This is where we lived for thousands of years until we were kicked out for thousands of years.  And then we did something no people has done in history.  A lot of people were kicked out and a lot of people disappeared.  We refused to disappear and we wanted to come back to our homeland and we did, against all odds. 

Now we’ve built a great state.  It has a great past and you can go around and you will see all the sites of our wondrous Biblical history and our post-Biblical history.  But you’ll see something else.  You’ll see the future.  This is a country that seizes the future.  Any of you work in hi-tech? Hum, not enough, but you’ll work.  This is a country that works.  People work; they invent things that change life.  You use cell phones?  Anybody here doesn’t use cell phones?  You all use cell phones and you’re using one right now to photograph me.  There’s a chip in there, and software there that is made in Israel.  Sometimes you take medicine, very often medicine that was invented in Israel to save lives.  And you use water in some of your countries in systems that are irrigated by Israel and many many other things.  We’re seizing the future.  All of that is Israel. 

If I had to say what I would expect you to do, first of all enjoy yourselves, that’s the first thing.  But I think you’re doing that anyway.  Secondly, connect with your homeland.  And third, go back to your respective countries and tell the truth about Israel.  There’s so much slander about Israel and the only way to fight a lie is to tell the truth.  Tell them about a country where people are free: free to initiate to work, free to initiate, free to speak.  It’s a country where you can criticize the Prime Minister, although he never makes mistakes.  It’s not obvious you can do that elsewhere.  This is a country in which Arabs have full rights, something they’ve been denied in all the vast lands around us.  This is a country where a woman is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, a woman is a General and a woman in this country can sit anywhere she wants.  That’s our position.  This is a free country. 

And if I said what is the greatest battle that we face?  Of course, we live in a tough neighborhood, and we have to defend ourselves and we have the bravest soldiers in the world to do that.  But the most important battle that we have to fight is the battle for the truth.  All of you can become ambassadors for the truth and ambassadors for Israel. 

You’ve come here because a few years ago some crazy Jews, meshugene, decided, they had this crazy idea to bring tens of thousands of young Jews to Israel, to acquaint them, to get them to see the truth and touch this land and have their hearts touched by it, and some of them are sitting with us today: Michael Steinhardt and Judy Steinhardt, Lynn Schusterman, and they are aided by Charles Bronfman and Sheldon and Miri Adelson and other visionaries.  Everybody thought it was a crazy idea and they came to me with it and I said “I like it.”  But then I said something that was thought equally crazy: that Israel would pay the Diaspora to have Diaspora Jews come here.  This was the first time in the history of Israel that Israel ever invested in the Diaspora.  The Diaspora always invested in Israel.  Now you can invest in Israeli businesses, you’ll do well.  But this was a revolutionary idea at the time that we would actually do this and I’m very proud of the fact that we’re increasing our investment.  Last year 40,000 people came in Birthright.  This year 50,000.

 I think it’s only when you come here that you understand how precious this birthright is.  I have here with me, my friend and colleague, Minister Yuli Edelstein.  He wanted to have that birthright when he was your age, in the Soviet Union, and there was only one problem: even if he could get Michael Steinhardt and Lynn Schusterman to fund it, you couldn’t do that in those days.  In fact, not only could he not come here, for the mere chutzpa of saying that he wants to come here they put him in jail.  He sat three years for that birthright.  So he is here now, a minister in the Israeli Government, in the Jewish government of the one and only Jewish State.  And I want you to understand how precious that is. 

I want you to go back to you countries and tell your families and your friends what you saw here, and tell others.  But I have one more request.  I know you’re waiting for this.  I’m waiting for this too.  I’m waiting for you.  I want you to come back here and make aliyah to Israel and be a part of our country here.  Whether you decide to do that or whether you stay there, be proud of your birthright, Israel. Thank you very much.