Page 18 - HaMizrachi YmYm 2020 FLIPv3

Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks

Jerusalem
WE NEVER FORGET

here are moments that make first prophecy fulfilled, he knew the remember it at every wedding, in every
Jerusalem feel like no other place second would one day also come true. home they built, and at the high points
Ton earth; when you feel yourself of the Jewish year.
lifted beyond time and space and I remember standing at almost that
embraced, as it were, by zero’ot olam, exact spot and being overwhelmed with I ask myself, how could Jews believe
the arms of eternity. emotion. so much in a city they had been exiled
from for so long? The answer, of course,
For almost 2,000 years, Jews had waited
There is no other place in the world is very powerful and is contained in two
where this happens. I want to share for that moment, and ours was the words in the story of Ya’akov. Recall, the
generation that lived to see Jerusalem
with you three such moments that reunited and rebuilt. We saw the reali- brothers return home and show Ya’akov
changed my life. zation of Zecharia’s prophecy 24 centu- the blood-stained coat of Yosef. Realiz-
ing Yosef has gone, Ya’akov weeps, and
The first took place in 1969. I had ries ago. when the brothers move to comfort
come to study in Israel following the We had lived to see in person what our him we are told, ם ֵ חַנ ְ ת ִ ה ְ ל ן ֵ א ָ מְי ַ ו, Ya’akov
completion of my first degree, and was greatest prophets could only see in a “refused to be comforted.” Why? There
standing on the newly rebuilt Hebrew vision. are, after all, laws in Judaism about the
University campus on Mount Scopus. limits of grief; there is no such thing as
The sun began to set, bathing the whole And I was struck by a question. a bereavement for which grief is end-
landscape in a Divine radiance. less. The answer is that Ya’akov had not
If only Rabbi Akiva had known how yet given up hope that Yosef was still
As I found myself looking down on the long it would take, would he still have alive. To refuse to be comforted is to
Temple Mount, I recalled the famous believed? Rabbi Akiva, a supporter refuse to give up hope.
story at the end of Masechet Makkot, of Bar Kochba, thought the rebellion
when Rabbi Akiva and his colleagues would succeed and believed the Temple That is what Jews did with Jerusalem.
are looking down at the ruins of the would be rebuilt in his lifetime. If Rabbi They remembered the promise that
Temple and see a fox walking through Akiva had seen the devastation, perse- Am Yisrael had made by the waters of
ְ
Babylon, יִני ִ מְי ח ַּ כ ׁ ְ ש ִּ ת םִ ָ ל ׁ ָ שּורְי ך ֵ ח ָּ כ ׁ ְ ש ֶ א ם ִ א,
cution and hatred that occurred as a
the place that was once the Holy of result of the rebellion and after, would “If I forget Jerusalem, may my right
Holies. As the Rabbis wept, Rabbi Akiva he have still believed? The answer is of hand lose its cunning.” We never forgot
smiled and laughed, and when asked course he would, because that is what Jerusalem. We were never comforted.
how he could, Rabbi Akiva retold the Jews did all through the generations. We never gave up hope that one day we
two interlinked prophecies of Uriah – would return and because of that Jews
who foresaw the day when Jerusalem No people ever loved a city more. never felt separated from Jerusalem.
would be ruined – and Zecharia – who We saw Jerusalem destroyed twice,
saw the day it would be rebuilt. besieged 23 times, captured and recap- And when it happened, in 1967, my
tured 44 times, and yet in all those Jewish identity was transformed when
Said Rabbi Akiva, until he saw the first years, wherever Jews lived, they never the world heard, “ּוני ֵ דָי ְּ ב תִי ַּ ב ַ ה ר ַ ה,” “The
prophecy fulfilled, he was not sure the ceased to pray for Jerusalem, face Jeru- Temple Mount is in our hands.” Those
second would be. Now he had seen the salem, speak the language of Jerusalem, three words changed a generation. That

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