Q&A: Independence Day
Independence Day
Question
What place does this day have in your worldview?
Do you celebrate anything special on it, or is it like any other day? Do you say supplications? Or Hallel? Only during the day or also in the evening? Without a blessing or with a blessing? Do you shave on this day? Do you prepare a festive meal for a great day?
Or none of the above?
Answer
In my view, this is a secular-national holiday. I am happy that the state was established and that we have independence. Therefore I do not say supplications, and I do say Hallel. The analogy is the Haredi joke about the Rabbi of Ponevezh, who did not say Hallel and did not say supplications, like Ben-Gurion (who also did not say Hallel and did not say supplications). In my opinion, what he meant was that his attitude toward the day was as a secular holiday, and therefore he did not say Hallel. In my opinion there is no reason to refrain from Hallel even on a secular holiday. Hallel is recited for deliverance from trouble and for victory. But I refuse to accept halakhic practices on this day (a certain kind of blessing from one person to another, a special prayer formula, and the like), except for reciting Hallel. Those enactments are an attempt to create a significant and authoritative Chief Rabbinate for no fault of its own.
As for shaving, I do not shave even on weekdays, but there is certainly room to shave and listen to music on this day, because it is a joyful day.
Discussion on Answer
Rabbi, does that include a haircut as well?
Hallel with a blessing?
A. Do you also permit shaving one’s head?
B. Is Hanukkah also a secular-national holiday? And if not, what is the difference?
Hallel at night with a blessing?
Test
Could you please respond to the above?
To the above *
First of all, because today there is no religious authority that can institute a religious holiday. Indeed, Hanukkah and Purim too are secular holidays in that sense, except that they have halakhic validity because those who instituted them had authority.
Nachmanides is not relevant here, and that command was not fulfilled either, because the conquest of the Land was not carried out by the Jewish people but by a collection of Jews who did not intend it as a commandment. And even if the command was fulfilled, do you establish a holiday every time you fulfill a commandment? Moreover, according to Maimonides does this day have no significance?
You can certainly say Hallel with a blessing. And in my opinion a haircut is also possible.
If today there is no religious authority that can institute a religious holiday, then why can the Chief Rabbinate institute the recitation of Hallel on this holiday? Seemingly that too requires religious authority like any other enactment.
First, who said there isn’t? A rabbi or a community can institute something for their community. But the Chief Rabbinate cannot institute anything. They are just a bunch of corrupt and pathetic bureaucrats. Not rabbis at all.
Independence Day is a national holiday established by the representatives of the public. There is no obligation to do anything on it because the Rabbinate said so — just like American Independence Day or Turkish Independence Day.
Nachmanides, in his gloss to positive commandment 4: “that we not leave it in the hands of the nations or desolate” — meaning Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. So why is the day on which this command was fulfilled after two thousand years of exile a “secular holiday”?