Special Features
for Parshat Bamdbar

Jerusalem...

YERUSHALAYIM HARIM SAVIV LA V'HASHEM SAVIV L'AMO M'ATA V'AD OLAM: (T'hilim 125:2)

For 3000 years, Jerusalem has been the center of Jewish hope and longing. No other city has played such a dominant role in the history, culture, religion and consciousness of a people as has Jerusalem in the life of Jewry and Judaism. Throughout centuries of exile, Jerusalem remained alive in the hearts of Jews everywhere as the focal point of Jewish history, the symbol of ancient glory, spiritual fulfillment and modern renewal. This heart and soul of the Jewish people engenders the thought that if you want one simple word to symbolize all of Jewish history, that word would be Jerusalem. - Teddy Kollek

“You ought to let the Jews have Jerusalem; it was they who made it famous.” — Winston Churchill, ‘55

Through a historical catastrophe - the destruction of Jerusalem by the emperor of Rome - I was born in one of the cities in the diaspora. But I always deemed myself a child of Jerusalem, one who is in reality a native of Jerusalem. — S.J. Agnon, upon receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature, ‘66

Never before have Arabs made a capital in a... holy city. Take Saudi Arabia. They have Mecca or Medina, to build their capital there. They took a village called Riyadh and turned it into a capital. When the Jordanians had Jerusalem, they built a capital in Amman - not Jerusalem... - Teddy Kollek

It is well known that the name Yerushalayim does not appear in the Qur’an at all. L’HAVDIL, it appears in NACH 659 times (according to the DBS database and search program). In what book of NACH does it appear the most times? Not at all? Here’s what you need to answer those two questions. Yehoshua (9), Shoftim (5), Shmuel (31), Melachim (91), Yeshayahu (47), Yirmiyahu (104), Yechezkel (26), TreiAsar (65), T’hilim (17), Daniel (10), Ezra-Nechemia (84), Shir HaShirim (8), Eicha (7), Kohelet (5), Esther (1), Divrei HaYamim (149).

Divrei HaYamim wins. Besides the 5 books of the Chumash, the name Yerushalayim does not appear in Mishlei and Megilat Ruth. It appears in 7 of the TreiAsar, lead by 41 in Zecharia.

Of the 659 Yerushalayims in NACH, 348 of them a free standing (that is, Yerushalayim, without prefix or suffix). 186 are Bi-rushalayim, 34 are Virushalayim, and 21 are U’Virushalayim. 32 Mirushalayim, and another 3 U’Mirushalayim. 30 Lirushalayim. And 1, only one, Kirushalayim. In addition, there are 5 Yerushalaima, the other way of saying to Jerusalem.

Although we pronounce it Yerushalayim, the common spelling in NACH (without a YUD between the LAMED & MEM) fits better with the composite meaning of the name of the city - YIR’U and SHALEM

Although we spell Yerushalayim with a YUD-MEM at the end, in Tanach, it is spelled without that YUD. That is, 656 of the occurrences of the name. 3 times, only three times, the YUD is used. 1 (of 5) Yerushalayma (Divrei HaYamim), 1 (of 34) Virushalayim (Yirmiyahu), and 1 (of 32) Mirushalayim (Esther).

Note: This letter first appeared as an editorial in the summer of '69 in the Times of Israel (long defunct). This copy is for several people. For the person who knows it well, and needs or wants a booster shot. Needs to smile and cry again at its powerful sentiments. For the person who thought he remembered where his copy is, but cannot find it, and would love to send it to his brother-in-law, cousin, friend, boss, colleague. For the person who might actually never have seen this piece before. And - perhaps mostly - for the person who has forgotten the value of Jerusalem to the Jewish People; for those who would place Yerushalayim on the chopping block or bargaining table.

A Letter to the World from Jerusalem by Eliezer Ben Yisrael

I am not a creature from another planet, as you seem to believe. I am a Jerusalemite - like yourselves, a man of flesh and blood. I am a citizen of my city, an integral part of my people.

I have a few things to get off my chest. Because I am not a diplomat, I do not have to mince words. I do not have to please you, or even persuade you. I owe you nothing. You did not build this city; you did not live in it; you did not defend it when they came to destroy it. And we will be damned if we will let you take it away.

There was a Jerusalem before there was a New York. When Berlin, Moscow, London, and Paris were miasmal forest and swamp, there was a thriving Jewish community here. It gave something to the world which you nations have rejected ever since you established yourselves – a humane moral code.

Here the prophets walked, their words flashing like forked lightning. Here a people who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, fought off waves of heathen would-be conquerors, bled and died on the battlements, hurled themselves into the flames of their burning Temple rather than surrender, and when finally overwhelmed by sheer numbers and led away into captivity, swore that before they forgot Jerusalem, they would see their tongues cleave to their palates, their right arms wither.

For two pain-filled millennia, while we were your unwelcome guests, we prayed daily to return to this city. Three times a day we petitioned the Almighty: Gather us from the four corners of the world, bring us upright to our land; return in mercy to Jerusalem, Thy city, and dwell in it as Thou promised." On every Yom Kippur and Passover, we fervently voiced the hope that next year would find us in Jerusalem.

Your inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions, the ghettos into which you jammed us, your forced baptisms, your quota systems, your genteel anti-Semitism, and the final unspeakable horror, the holocaust (and worse, your terrifying disinterest in it) – all these have not broken us. They may have sapped what little moral strength you still possessed, but they forged us into steel. Do you think that you can break us now after all we have been through? Do you really believe that after Dachau and Auschwitz we are frightened by your threats of blockades and sanctions? We have been to Hell and back- a Hell of your making. What more could you possibly have in your arsenal that could scare us?

I have watched this city bombarded twice by nations calling themselves civilized. In 1948, while you looked on apathetically, I saw women and children blown to smithereens, after we agreed to your request to internationalize the city. It was a deadly combination that did the job. British officers, Arab gunners, and American made cannons. And then the savage sacking of the Old City; the willful slaughter, the wanton destruction of every synagogue and religious school; the desecration of Jewish cemeteries; the sale by a ghoulish government of tombstones for building materials, for poultry runs, army camps – even latrines.

And you never said a word.

You never breathed the slightest protest when the Jordanians shut off the holiest of our places, the Western Wall, in violation of the pledges they had made after the war – a war they waged, incidentally, against the decision of the UN. Not a murmur came from you whenever the legionnaires in their spiked helmets casually opened fire upon our citizens from behind the walls.

Your hearts bled when Berlin came under siege. You rushed your airlift "to save the gallant Berliners". But you did not send one ounce of food when Jews starved in besieged Jerusalem. You thundered against the wall which the East Germans ran through the middle of the German capital – but not one peep out of you about that other wall, the one that tore through the heart of Jerusalem.

And when that same thing happened 20 years later, and the Arabs unleashed a savage, unprovoked bombardment of the Holy City again, did any of you do anything?

The only time you came to life was when the city was at last reunited. Then you wrung your hands and spoke loftily of "justice" and need for the "Christian" quality of turning the other cheek.

The truth is – and you know it deep inside your gut – you would prefer the city to be destroyed rather than have it governed by Jews. No matter how diplomatically you phrase it, the age old prejudices seep out of every word.

If our return to the city has tied your theology in knots, perhaps you had better reexamine your catechisms. After what we have been through, we are not passively going to accommodate ourselves to the twisted idea that we are to suffer eternal homelessness until we accept your savior.

For the first time since the year 70 there is now complete religious freedom for all in Jerusalem. For the first time since the Romans put a torch to the Temple, everyone has equal rights. (You prefer to have some more equal than others.) We loathe the sword – but it was you who forced us to take it up. We crave peace – but we are not going back to the peace of 1948 as you would like us to.

We are home. It has a lovely sound for a nation you have willed to wander over the face of the globe. We are not leaving. We are redeeming the pledge made by our forefathers: Jerusalem is being rebuilt. "Next year" and the year after, and after, and after, until the end of time – "in Jerusalem!"