The View From the Tower
Yom Yerushalayim May 22, 2009
Rabbi Boaz D. Heilman


Today is Yom Yerushalayim--Jerusalem Day--a national holiday in Israel, instituted 42 years ago to commemorate the unification of Jerusalem in June, 1967.

When I grew up in Israel, Jerusalem was a divided city. I remember, quite a few years ago, going to the wedding of my uncle, a”h, which took place at the YMCA in Jerusalem. The building, a distinctive landmark on King George Street, across from the King David Hotel, was designed by the same architect who designed the Empire State Building in New York City. My brother and I climbed up the stairs of the tower that is the most famous and prominent part of the YMCA complex. From one of the windows up there, we looked out toward East Jerusalem, known as Ha-ir Ha-atiqa--the old city. We looked across the neglected no-man’s land, strewn with rocks and garbage. Beyond this stretch of forsaken and forbidden territory loomed the walls of the ancient city. My brother and I looked at the walls and the distinctive turret called The Citadel, or the Tower of David. I looked and wondered to myself what the ancient city looked like inside those walls, what the Western Wall, which I had only seen in some old photographs in textbooks and prayerbooks, would feel like to my touch. There was no way of answering those questions, at least not then. Jordanian Arab Legion sharp- shooters were positioned at strategic spots along the wall, as well as in The Citadel, their rifles aimed at any brave--or stupid--soul who might be tempted to get any closer. The Old City looked tantalizingly near and yet ever so far away.

Jerusalem had been a divided city since 1948. In 1947 it was designated by the United Nations to be an international city, with guaranteed free access to all who wished to worship at its many holy places. However, in the 1948 War of Independence, the old city became site of fierce fighting. The Jordanians had blockaded the city for months and ambushed many convoys that tried reaching the city with water, food and necessary medical supplies. One ambush, on April 13, resulted in the murder of nearly 80 medical personnel--doctors, nurses, as well as other civilians and fighters guarding the convoy as it was making its way to Hadassah Hospital. Finally, on May 28, the Arab Legion succeeded in overrunning the beleaguered Jewish defenders. The entire Jewish population of the Old City was expelled, while 300 fighters were taken prisoner and sent to Jordan. Arab mobs, prevented from lynching the civilian population as it was fleeing the city, destroyed most of the Jewish Quarter, including all but one of its many synagogues. Some of these synagogues were desecrated and turned into stables, while Jewish cemetery tombstones were used to line latrines, walkways, stairs and other structures.

For the next 20 years, there was one connecting point--the Mandelbaum Gate--that bridged the Old City with the New City. It wasn’t a real gate--more like an improvised break in the tangles of barbed wire that ran down the middle of the neighborhood. On both sides it was guarded by heavily armed soldiers who made sure no Jews crossed over into East Jerusalem. Mostly it was United Nations and other official personnel who went through the “gate.” And so it was that, for almost 20 years, until 1967, Jerusalem was Judenrein--the German Nazi term for “cleansed of Jews.”

It was to be a city of peace. Shalem--Salem, as it was known in Biblical times--had a temple to God since the most ancient of days. Abraham gave a tithe (a 10% tax) to the king of Salem--Malchitzedek, whose Hebraic name means “just ruler.” In the year 1000 B.C.E., King David built his capital in this city and fortified it. He had planned to build a temple to God there, but died before he could accomplish this goal. It was David’s son, Solomon, who realized his father’s dreams, building a temple that stood for nearly 500 years before the Babylonians destroyed it.

When the Judeans returned to their homeland 50 years later, they rebuilt the Temple, which again stood for 500 years--this time it destroyed by the Romans in the year 70 C.E., as they quelled the Judean rebellion. The Romans razed the city of Jerusalem and forbade Jews from returning.

Yet return we did.

Jerusalem changed owners countless times in the ensuing 20 centuries. From the Byzantines to the Moslems, to the Crusaders and back to Moslems, to the Mamluks, the Ottoman Turks and then to the British--warfare and bloodshed caused the decline of Jerusalem to an impoverished and neglected desert outpost whose population relied on charity for survival.

Until the Jews began our return to Israel in the mid-1800’s.

In the last 75 years, the Land of Israel has seen many divisions. Won by Britain from the Turks at the end of World War One, the British took nearly 80% of the Land in 1922 and handed it to the Arabs, to be renamed the Kingdom of Transjordan and to serve as a home for the Moslem Bedouins who lived there. 

In 1947, the United Nations voted to partition yet again the remainder of the Land--the 20% of Israel that had been designated as a homeland for the Jews.

Though with reluctance, the Jews accepted both these partitions; the Arabs refused, instigating war and terrorism time and again.

In June, 1967, as a result of the war known as the Six-Day War, Jerusalem was reunified. Israel conducted hand-to-hand combat so as to minimalize damage to structure as well as civilian lives in the crowded Old City. Since then, the city has remained unified as Israel’s capital. It has seen tremendous growth. No longer divided, you can walk from the YMCA to the Western Wall along tree-shaded promenades. For the first time ever, free access is guaranteed to anyone who wants to visit Jerusalem’s holy sites, no matter what religion or faith they profess. Archeological excavation of Jerusalem’s antiquities takes place all the time now, following the strictest scholarly standards--except for in those areas that are under Moslem jurisdiction, such as the Golden Dome Mosque, built directly over the ruins of Solomon’s Temple. There, in order to erase any record of our Jewish past, the Arabs have been digging indiscriminately, dumping all their finds in a helter-skelter way meant to obscure scientific study and research, meant to erase any proof of Israel‘s historical claim to Jerusalem.

In 2000, at Camp David, then-Israel’s-Prime-Minister Ehud Barak offered Yasser Arafat a Palestinian State. He also offered to divide Jerusalem again, giving parts of the city to the Palestinians. In response, Arafat launched one of the bloodiest chapters of the Arab war against Jewish presence in Israel--the Intifadah.

Modern history has shown that every time Israel has agreed to cede a part of its land or holdings--such as Gaza, Lebanon, or the West Bank--to the Arabs, the move was seen as a sign of weakness and the Arab response was yet more violence and bloodshed.

Now President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton have begun pressuring Israel yet again, demanding that Israel agree to yet another partition, one creating a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem. And what is Israel to get in return? The Arabs insist that they will only begin to discuss peace with Israel after this partition. Until then--nothing. Only more violence, more terrorism, more attacks, more threats from Iran, the Hizbollah, from Hamas--and even from the Palestinian Authority itself, a blood-stained and violent group which the world now dubs “moderate.”

Been there, done that. 

Today is Yom Yerushalayim--Jerusalem Day. It isn’t just a holiday such as Memorial Day here in the States. Here, Memorial Day is a day of picnics, parades, and major sales at stores and car dealerships. Yes, we remember the sacrifices that have enabled us to live in one of the freest and richest countries in the world. In Israel, however, Yom Yerushalayim is more than that. It is a day that teaches us that when someone threatens us, we need to take those threats seriously. That failure to do so can only lead to disaster, catastrophe and--God forbid--expulsions and Holocausts.

On Yom Yerushalayim we remember that Jerusalem is the heart of the Jewish people; that Israel is there for us all, as a place of refuge for those in need of one, and as a source of pride for all the rest of us. Israel is a bastion of freedom, scientific research, artistic and cultural development, a business hub, and--above all else--the only place in the world where Jews can exercise autonomy and self-determination in ways that have been forbidden and impossible to us for the past 2000 years.

The Jews’ deep ties with America go as far back as the history of the United States itself. Among the discoverers of America were Jews; among the soldiers and financiers of the emergent republic were Jews. It was the United States that cast the deciding vote in the United Nations in the 1947 referendum that allowed for the creation of the State of Israel. The historical and emotional ties between the two nations go deep; they cannot, they must not be severed. But we, American Jews, must not let Israel become the world’s scapegoat, or the down payment for a theoretic end to Islamic attacks against the Western world. Yom Yerushalayim teaches us that we must be as strong and as steady as the Citadel of David. 

Ki Mi-Tzion teitze Torah, u-d’var Adonai Mi-Y’rushalayim. For out of Zion comes Torah, and God’s word from Jerusalem.

Kein y’hi ratzon. Amen.