Page 15 - Hamizrachi #30 USA 2021 Yom Yerushalayim - Shavuot

TORAT MIZRACHI

in the Koran… There is no more moving
prayer in the Jewish past than that which
expresses the yearning to return to Jeru-
salem… It is much more than a city. It’s
what binds one Jew to another in a way
that remains hard to explain. When a Jew
visits Jerusalem for the first time, it’s not
the first time. It’s a homecoming... I heard
once, in the name of the Chassidic master
Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, that every-
thing in the world has a heart, and that the
heart itself has a heart. Jerusalem is the
heart of our hearts.”

Low Gear
A little story about Yerushalayim, and the
feelings it is meant to arouse in us: Prof.
Nechama Leibowitz, the great Tanach
teacher and Israel Prize Laureate, made
hugged me. We walked together, silently dreamers. At this precise moment we are aliyah during the British Mandate. For
in thought, and then he said to me, almost bonding with the multitudes that prayed the first time, the young 25-year-old im-
in a whisper, the following words: ‘For and wished for this moment for genera- migrant traveled to the city up the hills
my whole life, I have never understood tions. For this very moment we are living and down the valleys we all know. On one
the explanation of the verse תא ’ה בושב right now. In an instant we see everything of the bends, she and her husband saw a
םימלוחכ ונייה ןויצ תביש – “When G-d will that happened in Exile, in the Holocaust, sign at the side of the road: “Stay in low
return the captivity of Zion, we will be like in the underground, in the wars. Every gear.” They both only knew Biblical (and
dreamers.” Now I understand.’ single person who ever prayed, waited, not spoken) Hebrew, and Nechama un-
‘What does the Rabbi understand?’ I hoped. Here it is. Thousands of years derstood that this was a spiritual instruc-
asked. flowing together into this one moment. tion for those going up to Jerusalem: stay
He said: ‘A dream, such is how it works. We are like dreamers.” in low gear, i.e., keep a subdued frame of
A person sees a glimpse of events that mind, humble and lowly, as you enter the
last for a long time. Sometimes, one can The Heart of the Heart gates of the city. “How beautiful,” she said
see in a dream something that would Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize-winning to her husband. “In Eretz Yisrael there are
naturally last for many years, and yet one Holocaust survivor and author, once road signs that remind those making the
sees it in a moment, and in the blink of published a full-page ad in the American pilgrimage to the Holy City to enter it with
an eye the whole picture becomes clear. press. It was during the Obama adminis- humility, in the right spirit.”
An entire era, an entire history, the expe- tration, and Elie Wiesel was urging to stop
rience of generations, flashes past your the pressure on Israel regarding the issue Sivan Rahav Meir and Yedidya Meir are
eyes in an instant. In a dream, we can of Yerushalayim. This is how he tried to popular Israeli media personalities and World
capture the past, present and future in explain the significance of the city: “For Mizrachi’s Scholars-in-Residence.
seconds. That’s what’s happening to us me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above
now, right here. We are entering the Old politics. It is mentioned more than 600 Members of the Mizrachi Speakers Bureau
City, walking to the Kotel, and we are like times in the Bible, and not a single time mizrachi.org/speakers

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