With permission of my good friend Victor Zajdenberg, I have freely translated this short beautiful article

TO “MY GLORIOUS BROTHERS” IN MODI ́IN by Victor Zajdenberg (Buenos Aires, November 2021)

A new date of remembrance and celebration of Hanukkah is approaching, the Festival of Luminaries that recalls the struggle for national and spiritual freedom of the Jewish People, which began in Modi’in and spread throughout the entire territory of Eretz Israel.

“And Yehuda Maccabi and his brothers with the entire Community of Israel resolved that the date of the reopening of the altar was to be celebrated, year after year, for eight days, from the 25 of the month of Kislev, with joy and rejoicing ”. (I. Maccabees, IV, 57).

Halfway between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, in the foothills of Yehuda and Shomron, the creation of a decent urban center was taking place between 1993 and 1994, with a modern infrastructure that would cover all possible services of everything imaginable in the future. The area that we mention had very special characteristics since it was about Modi’in, the small town that emerged in history in 165 (BCE), in the times of Yehuda the Maccabee and the Jewish rebellion against Greek rule.

And in the years mentioned above, the pioneering spirit that characterized the creation of the new State resurfaced of Israel in 1948 building a new city in the same place of the previous heroic one.

Led by my dear sister-in-law Leah Zaidenberg, responsible for planning, installation and control of the educational units of the Ministry of Education for the city that was brewing, we first visited Shoam, to the left of Tzomet Modi’in (crossroads of roads), which was only a few years old and was continuing its unstoppable growth with beautiful Mediterranean-style houses, sports, educational and catering centers.

Then we passed by Mitzpe Modi’in and Mevo Modi’in, very close to the tombs of the Hashmonaim (Maccabees), where the graves of “My Glorious Brothers” (Howard Fast’s book title), by the road that leads to Jerusalem. Immediately then the town of Hamacabim is glimpsed in the name of the heroes of the millennial revolt and later Rehut, with its neat chalets and clean avenues.

Finally when we arrived at MODI’IN in full construction, we were amazed by its magnitude, its conception and its imagination. At the entrance of the city a Huge poster welcomes us: “MODI ́IN, IR HAATID”, “MODI ́IN, THE CITY OF THE FUTURE”.

Dozens of construction companies had divided the construction of the various neighbourhoods and offered their best projects to which were to integrate the initial stage of the city, the first 10,000 inhabitants, until completing the designed capacity of 250,000 souls. Yes OK the original planning foresaw the completion of the first buildings just for Rosh Hashanah, already on August 4, 1996, 25 years ago, the first family of surname Mizrahi, and it was assumed that in the High Holydays the first groups could form many “minianim” (10 people) who would perform the services in the old-new Modi’in.

Everything had been calculated in its smallest details with previous studies in areas such as educational, administrative, municipal, supply and recreational centers carried out by the best counsellors and specialists in each of the aforementioned subjects.

With MODI’IN relives, once again, the millenary history of the Jewish People, embodied in the resurgence of the Zionist ideal and concretized with the rebirth of the State of Israel, the glorious undertaking of the last two millennia. Let’s rescue one of Teodoro Hertzl’s phrases, considered the last of the great prophets of Israel, he expressed: “Those who go to Israel will build much better homes which will be newer than the homes they abandon in the Diaspora ”.

MODI ́IN is an example of modern Jalutziut (pioneering), led by young couples who have assumed it as an unwavering mission in the recovery of their ancestral historical land, Eretz Israel.