There is a Midrash that G-d created ten measures of beauty in the world. G-d gave nine to Jerusalem. The one other measure was given to the rest of the world. A purely objective observer may not find this to be so. There are surely other beautiful cities in the world and that objective observer might say even more beautiful, Paris and Prague, Vienna and London. We are no objective observers, however. We find a beauty in Jerusalem when the sun rises there and when it sets; on Shabbat and weekdays. We smell the beauty in the air. We hear the beauty in the language. We find this beauty in Jerusalem because Jerusalem is ours. For us Jerusalem is just how Naomi Shemer describes it in her Yerushalayim Shel Zahav. For us, Jerusalem is Gold.
This Shabbat we begin the fourth book of the Torah, B'Midbar, the story of our sojourn through the Sinai Desert. Soon after Shabbat, on the 28th day of Iyaar, Sunday night and Monday, we celebrate what has become known as Yom Yerushalayim - Jerusalem Day. Yom Yerushalayim celebrates the reunification of the new and old city of Jerusalem in 1967. It is now forty-one years since the Six Day War and that reunification. The Gematria of the number forty-one is Aleph which equals one and Mem which equals forty. Aleph, Mem spells "Im" which means "if." There must be some special meaning to Im - If and Jerusalem this year.
I will never forget those days in June 1967. Israel's Arab neighbors were calling for her destruction and again the world was complicit in its silence. Then, the miraculous happened. Within those six days of war, Israel's heroic soldiers liberated the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordanian rule. Jews had been prohibited from entering the Old City and praying at our Holy Sites. We could only look at the Kotel, the Western Wall from rooftops in the new city. Israel had communicated to Jordan's King Hussein that Israel would initiate no hostilities against Jordan or try to take the West Bank or the old city of Jerusalem unless attacked. Jordan attacked on June 5. One report reads, "By June 8, Israeli troops were gazing at the Herodian stones of the Western Wall, wondering if they should dance, pray or cry. They did all three!" The Shofar was sounded and the words which still echo today were proclaimed Yerushalayim B'yadeynu - Jerusalem is in our hands.
In the book of B'Midbar which we begin this Shabbat we find the story of the Israelites 38 years of wandering in the desert until we reached our destination of the promised land of Israel. Had we wandered only for those thirty-eight years, our people's story would be so much lighter. Over the ages, we have wandered so much more than thirty-eight times thirty-eight years. We lived in cities, towns and shtetls spanning the four corners of the world. One of most amazing parts of that almost interminable wandering is that we never forgot Jerusalem. It was memory, it was myth, it was hope and prayer, it was a dream that never left us. Jerusalem was always part of our collective consciousness. We ended Yom Kippur and the Pesah Seder with the words L'Shanah Haba-ah B'Yerushalayim - Next Year in Jerusalem! After hundreds of years of disappointment, why didn't we delete these words from our prayers? We couldn't. Our spiritual attachment was too strong. Our return to the land of Israel and to Jerusalem is one of the great stories of human history. We could go home again!
The poetic words written by the great 12th century Rabbi, poet, philosopher Yehuda HaLevi in Muslim Spain still resonate with us today. He wrote:
My heart is in the east, and I in the uttermost west--
How can I find savour in food? How shall it be sweet to me?
How shall I render my vows and my bonds, while yet
Zion lieth beneath the fetter of Edom, and I in Arab chains?
A light thing would it seem to me to leave all the good things of Spain --
Seeing how precious in mine eyes to behold the dust of the desolate sanctuary.
Our story is far different from Yehuda HaLevi's. While we are in the west, we find ourselves in no chains. We enjoy life in the freest and most prosperous nation in the world. When we think of Israel, it is not dust of the desolate sanctuary that comes to mind but a modern, dynamic country so very much alive. We do well in savoring our food. Life is good here and yet so many of us find, at least a part of our hearts there. It is this heart connection that we celebrate today on this Yom Yerushalayim.
Janie and I are planning and hoping to return to Jerusalem at the very end of June. In our own way, we know Yehuda HaLevi's yearning. We are looking forward to taking in these many measures of beauty, meeting congregants in Jerusalem and preparing for our Ohev Shalom Israel trip in December. For us, one of the main measures of beauty is experiencing Israel through the eyes and feelings of members of our Ohev Shalom community.
On this forty-first anniversary of Reunification, we return to that Gematra Im - If. If the children of these three faiths could learn to live together and it is a big If, then no other city could compare even to that objective observer. Jerusalem would have the tenth measure as well.
We Jews, have never stopped hoping. Just as we never tire of saying "Next Year in Jerusalem" we will still pray in the evening service "We praise you O lord our G-d who spreads the Sukkah of Peace over us, the people of Israel and over Jerusalem." Amen
Shabbat
Shalom
