On Israel Independence Day 1967 two things happened which now seem like
prophecies. In the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook gave an
historic speech in which he lamented: "Where is our Hebron, where is our Shechem?”
And that night, at the Israeli Song Festival, an unknown singer named Shuli
Natan got up and sang for the first time what would later become Israel's all-time
favorite song – Naomi Shemer's "Jerusalem of Gold - Yerushalayim Shel
Zahav" which stirred the hearts of an entire country with longing to
return to Jerusalem's Old City and the Temple Mount.
Just three weeks later, Hebron, the Old City, and the
heartland of Biblical Israel, were suddenly and miraculously restored to the
Jewish People.
Sunday is Yom
Yerushalayim, celebrating the 52nd anniversary of the Israeli
victory in the Six Day War. As a
Floridian, I am especially proud this week as Governor Ron DeSantis, while
making good on his campaign promise to visit Israel on his first foreign trip,
made history by convening a Cabinet meeting in the US Embassy in
Jerusalem. Earlier this year, the
Florida Cabinet issued a proclamation declaring Jerusalem as “Israel’s eternal
and undivided capital.”
On the same day
that Florida’s Cabinet met in Jerusalem, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Zarif
made the news with his most recent untrue tweet: “Al-Quds (Jerusalem) is
neither America's to give away nor Israel's to take.” I partially agree with
Zarif, in that Israel cannot take Jerusalem, for you cannot take something that
already belongs to you. We must call out those who espouse untrue histories
about Israel and Jerusalem. Specifically we must push back on and reject the
narrative that the Jewish right to Israel is a result of the Holocaust. The
Jewish claims to Israel and Jerusalem go back 4,000 years (when God promised
the Land to Avraham), not 75 years.
David Ben Gurion
once said, “If a land can have a soul, Jerusalem is the soul of the Land of
Israel.” Throughout the 2,000 years of Jewish exile and dispersal, the Jewish
People never forgot Jerusalem. In the immediate aftermath of the First Temple’s
destruction, 2,500 years ago, the author of Psalm 137 declared, “If I forget
thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget its cunning.” This quote has
remained relevant and the lived experience of Jews ever since.
As happy as we are
to celebrate Yom Yerushalayim, it is also a time to note that the full
potential of Jerusalem has yet to be realized. In Tehillim 122 we note
Yerushalayim
Habenuyah k’ir shechubra la yachdav
The
built-up city of Jerusalem is like a city that is united
Jerusalem continues to be built-up. As much as I love
visiting that which already exists in Jerusalem, I am always excited to count
the number of cranes one sees across the Jerusalem skyline. And yet the city
still lacks a unity among its inhabitants: secular and religious, and even
differences within the religious Jewish communities.
Today on the
Temple Mount in Jerusalem, Muslims are free to worship, but Jews and Christians
are barred from praying on that site. Yet In Isaiah (56:7) the prophet refers
to a future time when the Temple Mount will be available for prayer for all
nations, as it was in the days of the Beit Hamikdash
כִּ֣י בֵיתִ֔י בֵּית־תְּפִלָּ֥ה
יִקָּרֵ֖א לְכָל־הָֽעַמִּֽים:
for
My house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples
On Yom
Yerushalayim let us express our gratitude for our connection and access to
Jerusalem today, even as we pray for the realization of Jerusalem’s full
potential in the future.
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