Dear Friends,
Probably
no word, image, concept or place so instantly
excites our Jewish souls as Jerusalem, our
ancient, promised City, transformed over millennia
of dispossession into a dream and desire, an idea
that became the symbol of our national redemption,
so long yearned-for, achieved in 1948, but so, so
late in our time... Imagine if we had achieved
independence and sovereignty it only 10 years
earlier, in 1938... Imagine how very different our
modern history might have been...
Our Sages of the Talmud promoted the dual quality of
earthly and heavenly Jerusalem; they witnessed the
end of Jewish national sovereignty, some suffered
its immediate consequences. Our Sages saw a
destroyed City conquered and ruined by the tyranny
of Rome, and began to imagine another
Jerusalem - ethereal, perfect, healing - as a home
to all Jews and all people who will join it upon the
coming of the Messiah. The earthly reality of
an abused and distressed Jerusalem was so sad and
that our Sages sought and found a kind of refuge
in the concept of a redeemed and liberated
celestial Jerusalem. Jerusalem of the Heavens -
Yerushalayim shel Mala - was born to cope
with the devastation of Jerusalem on Earth -
Yerushalayim shel Mata.
Our People's overwhelming desire to return to
Jerusalemflowedthrough the gateway of
Yerushalayim shel Mala to rebuild Jerusalem on
Earth, to redeem the city that had once possessed
"9 parts" of the "10 parts of beauty"
that the Almighty bestowed upon the world, to redeem
our national sovereignty: "Rebuild Jerusalem
speedily in our days" - "uv'neh Yerushalayim
bi'meyrah be'yameinu" and "L'shana ha'ba
bi'Yerushalayim ha'bnuyah" - "Next Year in rebuilt
Jerusalem". The Holy One, blessed be His Name,
was directly linked to this desire; this is Rabbi
Yochanan quoting the Almighty in
Ta'anit 5a:
"The Holy One, blessed be He, declared, 'I shall not
enter the heavenly Jerusalem until I can enter the
earthly Jerusalem'
Without concrete, national redemption, our Sages
imagined God himself unable to relate to an
ideal, ethereal Jerusalem - a Jerusalem disconnected
from the suffering of His people, expelled from that
same promised Capital... How could He... if
in the 3000 years since King David made Jerusalem
the Capital of Jewish Civilization, only the
Children of Israel - no other people, no other
ethnicity, no other religion, no other state - made,
or even aspired to make the City the central hub and
capital of its life. Only the Children of
Israel had made and sought to make Jerusalem their
spiritual Center (the Temples of David and Solomon),
their seat of Government (Royal Palace), their legal
system (the Sanhedrin), their Army, only the
Children of Israel had given or could give Jerusalem
the characteristic elements of a national Capital.
Now, we live that Promise. We live in a wonderful
era of redemption and national reconstruction.
Earthly Jerusalem, rebuilt, beautiful, vital and
rich in culture, is open to the whole Jewish People
and to all men and women to visit and worship in
freedom. The millennia of longing for our return and
the restoration of Jewish life in Israel is
satisfied - we have returned to the regained beauty,
charm and glory of Jerusalem which inspires the
creation, strength, and growth of our People in our
days.
When we celebrate Yom Yerushalayim -
Jerusalem Day - we celebrate our joy of having
regained our national life in the recovery of the
Capital which always united the Jewish People
everywhere, as it did in ancient times when it
united the Northern Kingdom of Israel with Judah in
the South, and today, filling the hearts of Jews
meh'arbah canfot haaretz, from the four corners
of the earth...
So may we celebrate Jerusalem today; may we
celebrate the freedom to walk its streets, to enjoy
its sights, sounds and aromas, to bask in the
extraordinary colors as the light plays upon her
stones, and to return and continue rebuilding her
thresholds. May we feel in this joyous
festival the emotions of hundreds of our generations
who could only imagine her, praise her in their
poems and sing of her in their songs, so that today,
as it were, they enter her narrow passageways and
ascend with us through her ascending footpaths.
Yom Yerushalayim Sameach!
Chazak ve'ematz!
RABBI CARLOS A. TAPIERO
Deputy Director-General & Director of Education
Maccabi World Union
