Her name doesn’t bear the same recognition as Anne Frank, & yet Hannah Senesh is one of Israel’s greatest national heroines. I just finished a biography on her life and diary in 2 days time. It’s that good.// “Hannah Senesh: Her Life and Diary”
A little preview for you ::
A native of Hungary, she moved to Palestine just before World War II and later volunteered to join an elite parachute corps formed by the British. She dropped behind Nazi lines in Yugoslavia where she joined the partisans and later made her way across the border to Hungary to warn the Jewish population of their impending fate. She was captured, brutally tortured, and finally executed in 1944 at the age of twenty-three.
Hannah also wrote poems, I have included my favorite.
Ultimately ::
Her diary helped me understand what Zionism means to a Jew: why they long for the return and unification of the Jewish people to the holy land (Israel//Eretz). She writes,
“This tiny piece of land on the shores of the Mediterranean which, after 2000 years, the Jew can again feel to be his own, is big enough to enable the new Jewish life and modern Jewish culture to be attached to its ancient, fundamental ways, and flourish.”
The things Hannah wrote of in her diary, at my age, broke my heart in many ways. At times, her devotion to Zionism is a greater zeal than I show for Christ. Despite all of her accomplishments, this line in her diary sums up their culmination ::
“Do I believe in God? I don’t know. For me He is more a symbol of expression of the moral forces in which I believe. Despite everything, I believe the world was created for good.”
You & I. What have we done with life? More importantly, does it matter? I know that I haven't faced Hannah's kind of persecution for my faith or my convictions, & yet when that time comes I know that my suffering will not be in vain, for I serve the living & only true God.
For who is God, but the Lord?
And who is a rock, except our God?
Psalm 18
