Aron Moss
Question: What is the origin of the phrase 'Am Yisrael Chai'? It seems this has become the catch cry of the Jewish people today. Is it a biblical quote?
Response: The words Am Yisrael Chai - "the nation of Israel is alive" - appear nowhere in the Torah. They are not found in the Talmud or any of the other classic Jewish writings. There is no known source for this phrase. Its beginnings are shrouded in mystery.
The earliest recorded use of this phrase is from 1945. Just days after the liberation of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, a British Jewish chaplain, Reverend Leslie H. Hardman, was leading the survivors in a very moving Friday night service. This was the first public Jewish service in Germany in a decade. At the end of the service, the chaplain called out "Am Yisrael Chai!" which he then translated in old English, "The children of Israel still liveth!"
It seems this was not the first time it was said. Because we find just three years later, when Golda Meir visited the Soviet Union in 1948, fifty thousand Jews greeted her with the call of "Am Yisrael Chai!" It would be hard to believe that back in those days, the saying travelled from Germany to Russia and went viral. The Russian Jews must have known of it before. But from where?
Perhaps these words are not written in any book. Perhaps they are written on the collective soul of the Jewish people. In the depth of our hearts we know that we are Am Yisrael, one people, and that no matter what happens, we are Chai, we are alive, and we will survive.
We said Am Yisrael Chai when we were slaves in Egypt, when we were taken in chains to Babylon, when we were dispersed across the world by the Romans, and when we were expelled from England and Spain. We said it when we were liberated from the Nazi camps in Europe, and when we survived the Soviet oppression. And we say it today in the face of Islamic terror and Western antisemitism.
It is our promise to all Jews who lost their lives for being Jewish, that they live on, because we live on. It is our call to all Jews, wherever they are and whatever their affiliation, that you are all a part of our one nation. And it is our statement to the world, that we stand for goodness, for life, and we are here to stay.
AM YISRAEL CHAI!
