I7: Jerusalem

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History & Jerusalem

Pick up any book on Jewish history and you will find Jerusalem appearing in nearly every chapter. Even in volumes about world history the index will have a large list of Jerusalem entries spanning thousands of years. It has been conquered and reconquered, time and again, by different cultures, religions and peoples. To own Jerusalem was the ultimate accomplishment. It was different for the Jews: For Christians and Muslims the term "Holy Sites" is an adequate expression of what matters. But Judaism is different. It's religion is not tied to sites, but to the land, not what happened in Jerusalem, but to Jerusalem itself. (Prof. Bishop K. Stendhal) For Jews, to live in Jerusalem was an honour, not a matter of pride. It was a privilege, not a power trip.

1948: A City Divided

In the War of Independence, Jerusalem was besieged and bombarded by the enemy. Fierce fighting occurred in the city, its surroundings, and the roads that led to it. As a result of the war, the eastern part of Jerusalem, including the Old City containing the Western Wall of the Temple, were left in Arab hands. Jerusalem, cut in half by a border, wall was declared the capital of State of Israel for the first time in nearly 2000 years. Governmental, educational, cultural, and industrial institutions were established there.

Jews looked through the cracks of the border wall at the other half of the holy city and recalled the words of King David:

By the waters of Babylon, there we sat down, we wept when we remembered Zion... If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither! Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy! (Psalm 137)

The first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, said: The value of Jerusalem cannot be measured, weighed, or put into words. If a land has a soul, Jerusalem is the soul of the Land of Israel. The battle for Jerusalem is decisive, and not only militarily. The vow made by the waters of Babylon obligates us today as it did in the past. Otherwise we will not be deserving of the name of Israel.

City of Miracles

A story: During Pesach, Shavuot and Sukkot, a Talmudic legend tells us, the Jews who came to the Temple in Jerusalem never found space lacking. People converged there from every corner of the land, and nobody protested that they were cramped up, a miracle that never occurred in the squashed small Chasidic Shuls of Poland and Russia. And did it really occur in Jerusalem? No, said the doubters who did not believe in miracles. But then what? Did they dare contradict the Talmud? Not at all. Jerusalem, too, was overcrowded, stifling, they said, only... no one complained, no one protested. But the doubters missed the whole point! They failed to understand that precisely therein lay the miracle: the miracle of uncomplaining Jews.

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