By Rabbi Yair Hoffman of the Five Towns Jewish Times

It is the earliest memory of my life. My sister and I huddled in a bomb shelter with my mother a”h, who was bleeding profusely with a deep shrapnel wound on her shin. It was a wound she proudly carried throughout her life.

It was the Six Day War. At 9:00 AM on June 5th, Jordanian forces bombed Jerusalem. My father z”l had gone to help dig trenches somewhere on a frontline. Later, after he had passed away, I read my father’s entire account of what happened to him, and what happened to us, in a letter he had written his parents.

My father z”l returned quickly to Yerushalayim, and he was one of the very first people to enter the Har HaTzofim campus of the Hebrew University. He described it in remarkably poignant and descriptive terms. It had been abandoned for nineteen years, but it was as if no one had left. This was emblematic of the entire city. It is as if we have never left.

On June 7th, 1967, at 10:00 AM, Lt. Colonel Mutty Gur announced to the nation on the radio, “Har HaBayit BeYadeinu..”

Jerusalem. It is the city, where my parents had met – a city that embodies the greatest love of any people for any city in the history of mankind. It is a love that has existed for thousands of years.

Weddings. At the sheva brachos recited both under the Chupah and after bentching at every Jewish wedding – we say the blessing of Sos Tasis. It is blessing #5 of the seven blessings of a Jewish wedding. The blessing is, “May the barren one rejoice and be glad as her children are joyfully gathered to her. Blessed are You, Hashem who gladdens Tzion with her children.”

Tzion, of course, is Yerushalayim. And from this blessing, we see two remarkable things.

The first thing we see is that the relationship between Yerushalayim and the nation of Israel is more than just an un-severable bond. It is that of a mother and her children.

Yerushalayim, of course, is not just something that is deeply important to us. She is our mother. We will never sell out, sell off, or trade away our mother. It just will not happen.

Throughout the world, wherever Jews are, we pray facing Jerusalem. She is everything to us, and it is only in our literature that Jerusalem plays such a central role in the universe. The Talmud (Sanhedrin 37a based upon the verse in Yechezkel 38:12) describes Jerusalem as the very center, the core of the universe.

2] The second thing we see is that the wording of the final section of the blessing is in the present tense. Hashem gladdens – mesamayach. It is a gladdening, a rejoicing that is happening now. It does not refer to some future Messianic time, but rather a present, ever constant time. Shortly after the Six Day War, Rav Chaim Shmulevitz gave a shmuess to his students at the Mirrer Yeshiva (Hagaddah, RY of Mirrer, p. 226) about the open miracles we encountered in reclaiming Yerushalayim.

The point is that the blessing at every Jewish wedding is that G-d currently gladdens Yerushalayim with her children. The Talmud tells us that whomsoever gladdens a bride and groom it is as if he has rebuilt one of the destroyed homes of Jerusalem. The rebuilding referenced is a current one. So the building projects in Jerusalem are actually mentioned and predicted in the very wording of the blessings recited at every Jewish wedding.

RECENT HISTORY

And speaking of the Six Day War, let’s go back to some recent history.

Yerushalayim. 1967 was very special. Israel defended itself against attackers that wished to annihilate her at ever border. It is special not because we captured the eastern half of yerushalayim. But because we re-captured her and freed her.

It is a very essential difference.

That reunification was the culmination of the prayers of two thousand years – something that our ancestors could only dream of. For the previous 19 years, we American Jews could only access the Kosel as Americans, flying to Amman, Jordan, on an American passport. After 1967, we could visit the Kosel once again through Eretz Yisroel.

Ah, Yerushalayim!

You were once as remote as the stars in the sky to the victims of the Crusades. To the victims of Rindfleish massacres, and to the victims of the Chmelnieki Massacres of tach vetat. Indeed, even to the victims of the pogroms of Europe and to the victims of Auschwitz and Treblinka, you were unimaginable.

But now, we have you.

We must continuously fulfill the words of Isaiah (62:1), “Lemaan tzion lo echesheh, ulemaan yerushalayim lo eshkot!”

MASHIV HARUACH

Rav Mordechai Gifter zt”l used to say that we must all focus on the fact that when Chazal enacted the addition of, “Mashiv haruach omorid hagashem” they did it to correlate with the weather of Eretz Yisroel instead of the individual patterns in all of the far flung places in which the Jewish people ended up. They did so in order that we would always remember her.

Imagine a farmer in a far off land. He needs rain. He adds it in his prayers, but not for the location where he is located. The prayer for rain is for the needs of Eretz Yisroel! Why? So that Eretz Yisroel and Yerushalayim will never be forgotten.

KING DAVID

King David said it best in Tehillim (137:5-6):

“If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let me forget my right hand.

Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you.

If I do not set Yerushalayim at my highest aspirations of joy.”

In these words, King David is pointing out the two tell-tale signs of a stroke. He is essentially saying that he should have a stroke if he does not remember Jerusalem.

The world should dare not tell us to forget Jerusalem in light of these words of King David. The Bible tells us that G-d has said, “Yerushalayim is the city where I have chosen to place My Name (Kings I 11:36).” Indeed, Yerushalayim is mentioned throughout TaNaCh some 650 times and not once, l’havdil in the Koran.

This is the time, fifty years after its reunification, where we stand proud and declare to the world:

“Jerusalem is not some theoretical or symbolic word. We take the Bible seriously. Jerusalem, and Israel are real. They are physical. They are both our possession and the destiny of the Jewish people.”

SYNONYMOUS WITH THE JEWISH PEOPLE

Indeed, Jerusalem is actually synonymous with the Jewish people.

The holy prophet Isaiah says, “Be comforted, be comforted, My people – Nachamu Nachamu Ami (Yishayayhu 40:1-2) , speak unto the heart of Jerusalem – dabru al leiv Yerushalayim.”

Why Yerushalayim?

The answer is because Yerushalayim – all of it – is intrinsically connected with the people of Israel. The prophet further states, “For Hashem has comforted His people – He has redeemed Yerushalayim (Yishayahu 52:9). And also Yishayahu (65:19), “I will rejoice in Yerushalayim and be glad in My people.”

Europe, the United Nations, BDS supporters – take heed and Know that it was always, always ours. Look at Tehillim 102:15, “Her servants desired her stones, her very dust moves them to pity.” We have never, ever, left Yerushalayim, and even when times were difficult, we always pined for her. We pined for her stones, her dust, and her spiritual nurturing.

HOLY SINCE TIME IMMEMORIAL

Jerusalem has been holy to the Jewish people since the dawn of history and before. Where was the binding of Yitzchak? It was on Har haMoriah, in Jerusalem, the place that Hashem shall choose (See Dvarim 12:5).

Maimonides tells us (Hilchos Beis HaBechirah 6:14) that the sanctification that was made in Israel’s First Commonweath still stands and will stand for all time.
He writes, “the sanctity of the [area of the] Mikdash and of Jerusalem emanates from the Shechina (Divine Presence) and the Shechina can never be annulled.”

Part of the bible is the book of Esther. It is, in fact, from this book that we read each year in the month of Adar, on a day that we were saved from destruction. Throughout the world, this book is read by Jews on the 14th of the month. But in walled cities – the book is read on the 15th of the month. In Jerusalem it is also read on the 15th of the month. What is fascinating is that this is not just in the parts of Jerusalem that were around in Jerusalem of old. It is the custom to read it on the 15th even in modern, contemporary Jerusalem.

The message is clear. There are modern day Hamans that blow themselves up, that stab us, that set fire to our trees and forests, and that declare that Jerusalem and Israel do not belong to us.

But they shall join the dustbins of history. And Jerusalem and Israel will endure. Fifty years have passed. May it be united until the arrival of Moshiach!

The author can be reached at [email protected]