The Conquest of Jerusalem and the Rabbi at the Wall
When you think of the Torah leaders who most influenced American Jewry in recent times, the Rebbe of Chabad, Rabbi Moshe Feinstein, and Rabbi Yosef Soloveitchik stand at the top of the list. In Eretz Yisrael, Rabbi Avraham Yitzhak HaKohen Kook and his only son, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda, were the Torah beacons of the beginnings of Israel’s Redemption. They taught the generation of the ingathering of the exiles to see the Divine Hand in the rebuilding of the Jewish Nation in Israel. Interestingly, even though Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook was the spiritual force behind the Gush Emunim settlement movement in Israel and Torah mentor of the founders of new pioneering Jewish towns in Gush Katif, Judea and Samaria, East Jerusalem, and the Golan, as well as being the “father” of the “kippah srugot” community and head of the powerful Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, outside of Israel he remains relatively unknown. This is due to several factors. Firstly, throughout his life he worked in a modest, self-evasive fashion to edit and publish his father’s abundant writings. He only agreed to assume a public role in his later years after his esteemed father’s passing. Secondly, because very few English speakers learned at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, his teachings were not decimated in English in any organized fashion. Thirdly, much of the Torah establishment in the Diaspora remains non-Zionist in its philosophy and thus his writings, like those of his father, are not found on the shelves of Diaspora yeshivot. In addition he was an uncompromising advocate of Aliyah, a Torah commandment which not everyone yearns to perform.
Among the many innovations which he brought to the Torah world was the Jerusalem Day celebration which he inaugurated at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva. After a celebration at the yeshiva filled with Divrei Torah, at midnight he would lead students through the streets of Jerusalem to dance and offer prayers of thanks at the Kotel. Years later, a student, Rabbi Yehuda Hazani, organized the afternoon flag-waving parade to the Kotel which has become the main celebration of the festive and holy day.
“It is impossible to forget that day,” Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook recalled in a speech he once delivered on Jerusalem Day in the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva. “Already for several days the situation in the city was tense. Many of the yeshiva’s students had enlisted in the war. On the second day of the week, the 26th of Iyar, a student approached me as I was walking to the morning prayer at the yeshiva. He told me that the war had begun, and that the Arab Legion was boasting that it would conquer all of Jerusalem. Rumors reached me about the battles at the outskirts of the city. Someone called me and related in the name of HaRav Shlomo Goren, the Tzahal Chief Rabbi, that our units were advancing and getting closer to the Old City. That was exciting news. Each hour that passed, expectation quickened. One of our students who had enlisted raced back to the yeshiva during a break in the fighting and announced that, tomorrow, with the Almighty’s help, our paratroopers would soon reach the Kotel! All of us were filled with hope and prayer. On the fourth day of the week a bearded army officer knocked on the door of my home with a message from HaRav Goren. ‘The Chief Rabbi of the army invites the Rosh Yeshiva to come to the Kotel,’ he announced. ‘An armored car is waiting outside.’
“HaRav David Cohen, the Nazir, joined us on the way. He too had been invited by his son-in-law, HaRav Goren. The army car progressed slowly through the joyous crowds who were thronging the streets of the city – thousands of singing and dancing people. Many of them had tears of joy in their eyes over the liberation of Jerusalem. On the way the officer told me that the moment the paratroopers had reached the perimeter of the Kotel, a soldier who was a student at our yeshiva, climbed to the top row of stones on the Wall and unfurled an Israeli flag over the heights of the Kotel. His commander promised him a reward for his deed and asked him to state a request. ‘The greatest honor for me,’ he said, ‘is that you send an army Rabbi to bring our Rosh Yeshiva here, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook.’
“The officer also told us that HaRav Goren had been among the first to reach the Kotel. He ran at the front of the troops in the face of fire from Arab snipers who continued to shoot from their hiding places. He clutched a Torah scroll in one hand and a shofar in the other. Fighters who had fought in furious battles cried like children when they heard the shofar blasts of the valiant Chief Rabbi.
“We prayed the first national prayer at the Kotel after a nineteen-hundred year separation, not as individuals, but as representatives of the reborn Medinat Yisrael. The prayer was an utter cleaving to Hashem. Every eye was filled with tears. Soldiers prostrated themselves on the ground in front of the Kotel. Others wedged their fingers between the stones of the Wall. Everyone chanted the Psalm, ‘A Song of Ascent: When the L-rd brought back the exiles of Zion, we were like those who dream.’
“Before we left the liberated city, I was interviewed by radio and television reporters from Israel and from around the world. They wanted to know my opinion on what had transpired. ‘Behold,’ I said. ‘We announce to all of Israel, and to all of the world, that by a Divine command, we have returned to our home, to our Holy City. From this day forth, we shall never budge from here! We have come home!’”
