אָבִֽינוּ שֶׁבַּשָּׁמַֽיִם Prayer for the State of Israel: Introduced after the birth of the modern State of Israel in 1948. A key element of the prayer is the phrase “the first flowering of our redemption.” It means that the restoration of Israel as a sovereign nation in its own land was not merely an event in secular history. It was the fulfillment of the prophetic vision – first stated by Moses in the quoted verse from Deuteronomy – that Israel would one day be gathered from “the furthermost lands under the heavens,” an astonishingly precise prediction of what actually happened. According to the third-century Babylonian teacher Shmuel, “The only difference between this world and the messianic age is subjection to foreign powers” (Berakhot 34b). In this view, Israel’s independence was in itself a redemptive moment, a return to Jewish self-determination, self-government and self-defense under the sovereignty of God alone.