Yerushalayim
by HaRav Shlomo Aviner, Head of Yeshiva Ateret Yerushalayim in the Old City and author of some 250 books.
Down through the generations we swore, “If I forget you, O Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I do not remember you; if I do not set Jerusalem above my chief joy” (Tehillim 137:5-6). In the Exile, this vow was the focus of all our yearnings and emotions. It was what kept us going there. We withstood all the terrible suffering because we knew and we believed: Next year in Jerusalem.
Now the time has come for action. Through Hashem’s kindness, we have returned to Jerusalem. It is all ours, and we must settle the entire walled city with Jews and Jewishness. Obviously, we must not do this at the expense of all the rest of the Land of Israel, G-d forbid, as though Jerusalem were part of the consensus and none of the rest of it is. All of Judea and Samaria is part of the consensus – the consensus of Hashem. One time, the students of our Rabbi, Rav Tzvi Yehudah Kook, informed him that there was thought of transferring the Old City of Jerusalem to a foreign power. He responded, “And what about the Golan Heights?” They thought that they had been misheard, and they repeated themselves: “Master! We said ‘Jerusalem’!” Yet he insisted, “And what about the Golan Heights?” The same thing happened a third time. They were disappointed. Yet Rav Tzvi Yehudah saw everything as one unit, and he taught us that the Mishnah (Keilim, chapter 1) which states that “Jerusalem is HOLIER THAN all the rest of Land of Israel” should really be translated as “Jerusalem DERIVES ITS HOLINESS FROM all the rest of the Land of Israel.” Through the rebuilding of all Israel, Jerusalem shall be rebuilt.
We need go no further than our Sages’ words that Avraham’s covenant with Avimelech [in which he conceded part of the Holy Land to a non-Jewish king] stood as an obstacle to King David’s entrance into Jerusalem. In other words, the “Disengagement” of those days hurt Jerusalem, our holy city (Shmuel 2 5:6-9. See Rashi and Ralbag there and Pirkei D-Rabbi Eliezer, chapter 36). Indeed, already back then, liberating Jerusalem was a complicated, involved matter. This is not surprising, because the greater something is, the more complicated it is. In our own times as well, during the War of Independence, the enormous efforts to liberate our holy city failed. Finally in the Six-Day War, we returned home. Yet that is not enough. It cannot be that the vast majority of the heart of our country will be populated by non-Jews. We have to renew the Jewish presence in Walled Jerusalem. Were we fortunate enough, our government would have taken this task upon itself from start to finish. Yet we were not quite so fortunate, so the task falls not just on the community but also on the individual.
When our Rabbi, Rav Tzvi Yehudah, was asked about the well-known complaint that the “Nachem” prayer of Tisha Be-Av [which is recited in the Shemoneh Esri in the prayer for rebuilding Jerusalem] is not suited to the reality of our times, he would answer that the Old City is still “despised and desolate through the loss of her inhabitants.” It is impossible to go to the Old City and to see the rubble covering the synagogue ruins without bursting out in tears. When they told him that the Jewish presence in the heart of Jerusalem was being renewed, an enormous smile lit up his face. When they enumerated for him the names of the streets in the Old City, he said that they needn’t bother – all of those places, where he had studied in his youth, were etched in his memory. Indeed, our Rabbi, Rav Tzvi Yehudah, studied in the Yeshivat Torat Chaim where Yeshivat Ateret Yerushalayim is presently located. A miracle happened to that building when the Old City fell into the enemy’s hands during the War of Independence. The Arabs broke into all the Jewish homes and destroyed, pillaged and looted all the synagogues. Only this yeshiva survived because the non-Jew who lived below, one of the righteous gentiles of the world, protected it for twenty years. When we returned, he handed the keys over to the Old City’s governor, Chaim Herzog, who later became President of Israel. Chaim Herzog asked him, “How did you guard over this place for so many long years?” and he answered, “I didn’t guard it. It guarded me!” In one of his first visits to the liberated city, Rav Tzvi Yehudah entered the yeshiva. Everything was as it had been – it was only covered over with a thick layer of gray dust.
Thank G-d, the Torah is coming home. Once more, the voice of Torah is heard in the yeshiva. Once more young and old are walking around in the streets of Jerusalem. Yet Jerusalem was never partitioned amongst the tribes (Megillah 26a). Rather, it was built through the merit of all the tribes (Midrash Tehillim 122). It is the city that is “joins all together” (Tehillim 122:3); the city that makes all of Israel friends (Jerusalem Talmud Chagigah 3:6). Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish People. Jews from all over Israel and from all over the world, from all parties, all streams and all opinions are partners in the rebuilding of the heart of the universe. Indeed, Jerusalem is the heart of Israel (Tikunei Zohar 21 and Biur Ha-Gra 56).
