The book Medines Yisroel un Erets Yisroel was first published in installments, in the Buenos Aires newspaper Di Prese. The first installment appeared on December 31, 1949, and the last on August 16th of 1950. Given our world today, I promise not to take 8 months to share the translation from beginning to the end. The ending of the newspaper version appears to be noticeably different from that of the book. When we get there, I’ll take a look at what he changed, and why. But first things first.
This announcement appeared on December 29, 1949. I found the clipping among Simon’s papers in the Yivo archives, pasted into one of his journals. The spelling is phonetic– even the spelling of Simon’s first name has been changed from שלמה to שלוימע. The announcement reads “The Land of Israel or the State of Israel…” That order will be flipped in the book title, but even more importantly, the ‘or’ will be changed to an ‘and’. That is, “The Nation State and the Holy Land.” He will be writing about both, without prejudging (or tipping his hand?) in the title that the two concepts are mutually exclusive.
“…is the title of a series of splendid reports of the current folk life in the State of Israel, written by the well-known writer Solomon Simon, which we begin printing the day after tomorrow in Di Prese. And here is how the first words of his introduction appeared:
The Nation State and the Promised Land 