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Friday, March 29, 2024

Why Celebrate Jerusalem Day? – Part I

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Celebrating Yom Yerushalayim near the Kotel in the old city of Jerusalem.

The two-millennia love affair of the Jewish People.

In the year 70 CE we lost her.

The Roman army conquered what had been the glory of the Jewish nation for a thousand years. They pillaged Jerusalem, and slaughtered or enslaved every Jewish resident.

Sixty-five years later, the Roman Emperor Hadrian razed the city. On its ruins, he built Aelia Capitolina. The only Jews allowed entrance were Jewish slaves. And the name “Jerusalem” survived only in our prayer books, from which we beseeched God three times a day to rebuild Jerusalem.

When the Roman Empire reinvented itself as the Christian Byzantine Empire in the 4th century, they brought back the city’s name, Jerusalem, but not its Jews. Jews, who still lived in thriving communities in the Galilee and the Golan Heights, were permitted entrance only one day a year – on Tisha B’Av, the day of the destruction of the Holy Temple and of Jerusalem. As a contemporary historian, Jerome, wrote: “The Jews can only come to mourn the city, and they must buy the privilege of weeping for the destruction of the city.”

The Arab conquest in 638 wrested the city from the Byzantines. The Caliph Omar, the Muslim ruler, permitted Jews to return. A large Jewish enclave settled to the north of the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount, of course, was the crown of Jerusalem. The Roman Emperor Hadrian had built a temple to Jupiter on the ruins of the Jewish Holy Temple. The Byzantines had built a church there. Now the Muslims leveled the site and built the Dome of the Rock and the El Aksa Mosque.

The Crusaders conquered Jerusalem in 1099, and killed every Jew and Muslim. Blood flowed knee-deep through the holy streets. Soon the Christians allowed Jewish textile dyers to return. Benjamin of Tudela recorded, “There are about 200 Jews who dwell under the Tower of David.”

A century later the Muslims under Saladin defeated the Crusaders, and Jews once again were permitted free access to Jerusalem. As Rabbi Solomon ben Samson wrote: “We arrived at Jerusalem by the western end of the city, rending our garments on beholding it. … It was a moment of tenderest emotion, and we wept bitterly.”

The Egyptian Mamluks (soldier-slaves) took over the city in 1250. When the famous Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (the Ramban) arrived from Spain he found not even enough Jews to make a minyan. In an epistle to his son he wrote, “I write you this letter from Jerusalem, the holy city… the most ruined of all cities….We found a ruined house with pillars of marble and a beautiful dome, and we converted it into a synagogue…. The houses of the city are abandoned, and anyone could claim them.” The Ramban re-established the Jewish community in Jerusalem and it grew.

In 1516, the Ottoman Turks conquered the city. The sultan Suleiman the Magnificent rebuilt the walls of Jerusalem and encouraged the Jews exiled from Spain (in 1492) to settle there. Less than a century later, however, the Turkish regime became corrupt. They imposed heavy taxes and many restrictions of the Jews of Jerusalem. Nevertheless, drawn by their hearts and their prayers, Jews continued to return to Jerusalem.

By the mid-nineteenth century the walled city of Jerusalem was so crowded with Jews that a few residents suggested moving outside the walls, but without the massive stone protection they would be at the mercy of roving bands of brigands. Sir Moses Montefiore took the first step to solve the problem by building a protected compound outside the walls; twenty intrepid Jewish families took up residence there. Soon other Jewish enclaves sprouted up, and the new city of Jerusalem extended beyond what came to be known as the “Old City” like a bevy of descendants around their Matriarch.

The British vanquished the Turks during World War I, and in 1917, General Allenby marched victoriously into the walled Old City. The British divided the Old City into four quarters: the Muslim Quarter (actually half of the area of the Old City), the Christian Quarter, the Jewish Quarter, and the Armenian Quarter. The designations were spurious; according to the British rulers’ own census, the majority of residents of “the Muslim Quarter” were Jews.

The British maintained the Turkish restrictions on the Jews at the Kotel (Western Wall), the world’s holiest Jewish site next to the Temple Mount itself. Only a narrow alley was accessible for Jewish prayer. Jews were not permitted to bring benches or stools to sit on. Jews were not permitted to put up a mechitza such as existed in the synagogues. Those Jews who dared to blow the Shofar on Rosh Hashana or the end of Yom Kippur were arrested and imprisoned.

Sara Yoheved Rigler

(To be continued next week)

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