‘The Builders and Founders of the City’

Why does no one find it remarkable that in most world cities today there are Jews but no one single Hittite even though the Hittites had a great flourishing civilization while the Jews nearby were a weak and obscure people? When one meets a Jew in New York or New Orleans or Paris or Melbourne, it is remarkable that no one considers the event remarkable. What are they doing here? But it is even more remarkable to wonder, if there are Jews here, why are there not Hittites here? Where are the Hittites? Show me one Hittite in New York City.

If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning.

In 1983, Yehudah Avner, a British Jew who had emigrated to Palestine and later served most of Israel’s prime ministers, was appointed Menachem Begin’s ambassador to the United Kingdom. After 40 years in one of the most informal nations on earth, Avner now found himself back where he had been born, alighting a horse-drawn carriage at Buckingham Palace, “escorted by a chamberlain dressed like the Duke of Wellington,” presenting his ambassadorial credentials to the queen whose subject he had once been. Though Elizabeth II had been greeting ambassadors for many decades, something about Avner struck her as extraordinary. “I do believe this is the very first time I have ever received credentials from a foreign ambassador actually born in this country,” she said. “How did you manage that?”