Yom Yerushalayim, 28 Iyar 5765
Ki mitzion teze Torah. This is where wisdom goes out to the world. Rome, Athens, Cuzco -- these are monuments to the past. Jerusalem was always the city of the future. Nineveh, Babylon, Carthage -- cities known for their size and their outward beauty, not for their vision.
It was in the streets of Jerusalem that the prophets stalked the market places and synagogues, wild and angry, not just about the condition of their own people, but about the whole world. This is the special power of Jerusalem, that retains its significance not because it is confined, but because it is expansive.
This is not to say that Jerusalem is only for the wise, for prophets and scholars and kings. The city connects that which, in other places, is unconnected. It is a ladder linking Heaven and Earth, a gate through which its lost children can return. It is for all people. The Jerusalem of the mystics and the Jerusalem of the rationalists is one. Spiritual and social perfection are not necessarily incompatible, even if the struggle to realize both is intense and seemingly unending.
Both mystics and rationalists pray the same prayer, that they should have sufficient wisdom -- for which Jerusalem is the world center -- to overcome the accompanying hardships, for which Jerusalem is also the center. Zion, the symbol, and Jerusalem in the flesh are one. Only our eyes have not got used to seeing the connections.
Yet it is not just a matter of seeing. Jerusalem is the heart of the world, connected to all the hearts of the world. There are, for example, many holy cities in the world, but only in Jerusalem do three major religions feel equally at home. The cities of other nations are praised by their inhabitants; Jerusalem is praised by others. This is not to say she is forgotten by her own. Other peoples have a magnetic north, our magnetic point of attraction was always this city. When, in 1967, the undreamable happened, it was not merely the reunification of a city that took place but the reunification of a people, not merely with its past, but quintessentially with its future.
Wednesday, June 7, 1967 (fourth day of the week, 28th day of the month of Iyyar, in the year 5627 of the Hebrew calendar)
The way to the Kotel (the western wall of the Temple Mount) is open. Older troops lead the younger to the sacred place they have dreamed about since 1948. The first Jews reach the Kotel after an absence of 19 years. The feelings are spontaneous and overwhelming even for those who are not religious. A paratrooper raises the Israeli flag sent by the lady in Beit Hakerem. The same flag had flown in the Jewish Quarter at the time of surrender in 1948.
There is a wave of relief for many that is the end of the war. They have reached the finale and the prize, even though scattered sniper fire is still heard.
IDF Chief Rabbi, General Shlomo Goren, arrives with a Torah scroll and a shofar to commemorate this day. When he blows the shofar, shots are fired from the minaret of a mosque. Automatically, all Israelis on the Temple Mount return the fire.
Rabbi Goren blesses the troops and says a prayer for those who have been killed or wounded in the fighting. In addition to religious songs, the troops sing the same songs again and again – "Hatikva" (the national anthem) and "Jerusalem of Gold" (a hit song of Naomi Shemer). Soldiers arrive, pray and sing, to be replaced by others in turn.
