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Yom Yerushalayim Iyar 5778 • May 2018

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Yom Yerushalayim Iyar 5778 • May 2018 YOM YERUSHALAYIM IYAR 5778 • MAY 2018 CANADIAN EDITION SPECIAL EDITION FOR YOM YERUSHALAYIM (JERUSALEM DAY) “When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time. It is a homecoming.” (Elie Wiesel) This edition is dedicated in memory of the soldiers who fell in defense of Yerushalayim Rabbi Elan Mazer Yerushalayim: The Complete Picture s we celebrate the reunification Below, but there is also a divine Jerusalem, of the holy city of Jerusalem, we a potential of what Jerusalem can be, contemplate the reasons why we Jerusalem of Above. And Jerusalem is lostA Jerusalem some 2,000 years ago, as a model for the whole world, so every well as the ramifications of regaining our To live the idea creation contains its current state and its eternal capital. potential – what it is now and what it could of Jerusalem is be. To “see” completely, to live the idea of The Talmud presents a number of "to recognize the Jerusalem, is to recognize the mundane explanations for the destruction of and the divine in everything; to see beyond the Second Temple and the ensuing mundane and the surface and envisage the potential. exile. The most famous reason is sinat chinam, baseless hatred.1 Another the divine in Therefore, omitting the blessing before explanation – attributed to God Himself learning Torah is to forsake the purpose of – is that we didn’t say Birkot HaTorah, everything the Torah and Jerusalem – to connect the the blessings before learning Torah.2 divine with the mundane. Accordingly, the Rabbi Joel Sirkis4 explains that when we root of baseless hatred may be the inability These explanations are quite puzzling. learn Torah for the wrong reason – whether to see the divine potential in physical The sins responsible for the destruction as an intellectual pursuit, for honor, or as reality. If we view every single person of the First Temple3 seem like valid an escape from other responsibilities – we not only as who they are at the moment, reasons, and we can also understand how separate the divine world from the material but as someone with divine purpose hatred can lead to the breaking apart world. The purpose of Torah study is to and potential, there would be no way we of a nation. But why is omitting Birkot connect to the Divine – to make ourselves could hate them. Rav Kook says Jerusalem HaTorah a valid reason for 2,000 years and every part of our lives more divine. will only be rebuilt when we love each of exile? Furthermore, what is the real Thus, the blessing on the Torah directs individual as an integral part of Am Yisrael’s cause of the destruction? Baseless hatred one’s Torah learning in the right direction, national goal – perfecting the world under or not blessing before learning Torah? towards this ultimate connection. God’s Majesty. This connection is also the essence of So on Yom Yerushalayim we are celebrating Jerusalem. more than just the unification of a city. We are celebrating the unification of a people The Hebrew word Yerushalayim is made with their destiny; a unification of theory .and actuality, of dreams and realization , ׁשָ ֵ ל ם to see, and ,ְירּו :up of two words complete. Hence, Yerushalayim is “to see the complete picture.” Our Sages 1 Yoma 9b. expand on this idea based on the verse in 2 Nedarim 81a. Psalms: “Jerusalem, when built, is like 3 Idol worship, immorality, and murder. a city connected together.”5 And Rabbi 4 1561-1640. Yochanan says: God declares, “I will not 5 122:3. come to the Jerusalem of Above until you 6 Ta’anit 5a. have arrived at the Jerusalem of Below.”6 Rabbi Elan Mazer is the National There is the reality of Jerusalem as we see it Director of Mizrachi Canada A typical scene in the center of Jerusalem today, the physical Jerusalem, Jerusalem of [email protected] 2 Rabbi Doron Perez Torat HaMizrachi Jerusalem: A Tale of Two Cities erusalem is not one city but two. multiplicity, difference. The reality of two This is the key to unlocking the creates complexity. mystery of the Jewish people’s J holiest city. The secret of Jerusalem’s The great challenge of the number two is duality reveals the essence of Judaism itself. whether the potential for difference will create division or unity. Theologically, Jerusalem is at the same time both heavenly and earthly – a physical Will the complexity of contrast at the heart and a spiritual reality, Divine and mundane, of life create contradiction or complete- transient and timeless. ness? Thesis and antithesis can remain irreconcilable opposites or they can fuse in Geopolitically, there is east Jerusalem and beautiful synthesis. west Jerusalem, an upper city and a lower one, a city divided territorially between Because Jerusalem is the epicenter of spir- A soldier and an ultra-Orthodox Jew near the two tribes: Judah (Leah’s child) and Benja- itual life it presents us with this challenge Western Wall min (Rachel’s child). Additionally, the city more sharply than anywhere else. Will the is located at the nexus of the western world heavenly and earthly cities be locked in Will it remain that way? and the Oriental East. eternal conflict or will they become one eternal city of peace and harmony? It depends on us. Philosophically, Jerusalem combines the national and the universal, the ethnic and This is the challenge our Sages see in a cryptic To ensure the city remains geopolitically .united, it must first be united from within “ ְ י רּו ׁשָ ל י ַ םִ ְּכ י עִ ר ׁשֶ חֻ ְּב ה רָ ל ָ ּה :the ethical, the Jewish and the democratic verse in Psalms 122 Jerusalem is like a city that was joined The external political reality is a mirror – יַ ְח ּדָ ו “ .and is a city of both truth and peace together itself. They say this alludes to two image of the internal spiritual one. The fis- Jerusalem has two primary names in Bib- cities, a heavenly one above and an earthly sures which form contrast and conflict ought lical literature – Tzion and Yerushalayim, one below (Ta’anit 5). And they maintain to be forged together as complementary Zion and Jerusalem. The name Yerusha- that the city has the power to transform us all forces creating a complete and united whole. ,engendering friendship– חֲ בֵ רִ י ם – layim itself consists of two words – Yireh into friends and Shalem. understanding and acceptance among all Jews May we merit the ultimate expression of (Jerusalem Talmud, Chagiga 3). spiritual wholeness – the rebuilding of the What is the essence of this duality? Temple – soon and speedily in our days. After the miraculous Six-Day War, and Rabbi Yehuda Loewe, the Maharal of through an extraordinary turn of events, the 1 Tiferet Yisrael 34 Prague, explains1 that two is unique Old City of Jerusalem, the Kotel and the because it is the first number that converts Temple Mount returned to Jewish sovereign the unitary into a multiple; a single into a control for the first time in almost two mil- Rabbi Doron Perez is Head of plural. One is uniform; two is the birth of lennia. A divided city was finally reunited. the Mizrachi World Movement Mizrachi World Movement Chairman Mr. Harvey Blitz Head Rabbi Doron Perez Editor-in-Chief Daniel Verbov [email protected] 54 King George Street, Jerusalem Creative Director Jonny Lipczer www.mizrachi.org Production Manager Meyer Sterman [email protected] Follow us Design Hadas Peretz, Estie Brauner Rabbanit Shani Taragin Double Yom Yerushalayim: Portion The Perfect Prelude to Shavuot om Yerushalayim and Shavuot Presence) in Yerushalayim is a perpetuation were separated and disconnected. Had we are one week apart and so easily of the revelation celebrated on Shavuot. succeeded then, it would have been a sit- associated with each other. On Indeed, the greatest days of celebration uation in which “two were holding on” to YShavuot in 1967, thousands of Jews flocked are associated with Yom Yerushalayim and Jerusalem, each one saying “it is entirely to see and pray by the Kotel for the first Shavuot: mine.” Jerusalem would have turned into time since the reunification of Jerusalem, a source of divisiveness, a cause of quarrel setting the precedent for the custom that Go forth and look, daughters of Zion, and argument… And Jerusalem was… continues today. upon King Solomon adorned with the given to the entire people of Israel… crown his mother made him on the day of Jerusalem comes to increase peace in There are numerous parallels between these his wedding and on the day of his heart’s the world. Therefore, only now (1967), two dates, and many messages to be learned. joy. (Song of Songs 3:11)… on the day when we have all entered through a single Perhaps the most obvious connection is of his wedding – this is the Giving of the gate… only now, when we are all united, that Shavuot is the day the Torah was given Torah… on the day of his heart’s joy – this when a national unity government stands on Mount Sinai and would continue to refers to the building of the holy Temple… at the helm, when our fighting army is a emanate from Yerushalayim – “For Torah (Ta’anit 26b) unified army… when all of our brothers in comes forth from Zion and the word of the Diaspora stand behind us with a single God from Jerusalem” (Isaiah 2:3). Though Perhaps the most timely – and timeless heart, only now have we merited this great the Torah was given on Mount Sinai, our – message to be learned as we celebrate event: He who restores His Shechina to Sages associate Mount Moriah – the Temple these holidays is the message of achdut Zion has restored Jerusalem to us!… As Mount in Jerusalem and where the Binding (unity).
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