Why we rejoice on Yom Yerushalayim

by Sivan Rahav Meir
June 2, 2019

Original article posted at:
http://bit.ly/why-we-rejoice-on-yom-yerushalayim

Out of all the generations, our generation has been 
given the privilege of returning to the city of our 
national dreams

I see three reasons to rejoice today:

First of all, we do not only celebrate the liberation 
of Jerusalem. We also celebrate the rescue of Tel Aviv. 
Those who were here during the days before the outbreak 
of the Six Days War can tell you: The very existence of 
the young State of Israel was in danger in 1967. 
Our 19-year-old country was not only saved; it grew 
several times in size and returned to the biblical areas 
of the Land of Israel.

Second, because it is the fulllment of a dream. 
Nobel Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel once said that Jerusalem 
connects people to each other in a mysterious, inexplicable 
way. “When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the rst time, 
it is not the rst time,” he says, “it is a homecoming.” 
A friend of mine, a new Olah from Ethiopia, told me 
years ago how, as a child in Addis Ababa, every time 
she and her siblings saw a stork ying in the sky they 
used to cry to it: “Stork, stork, how is Jerusalem doing?”

Natan Sharansky once said that when he was convicted 
together with his friends of treason against “Mother Russia,” 
they were asked by the court to sum up their defense arguments. 
Sharansky responded: “I have nothing to say to this court, 
but to the People of Israel and to my wife I say: 
Next year in Jerusalem.” We are living the fulllment 
of a 2,000-year-old prophecy.

Third and most importantly, we are happy today because 
of the enormity of the present challenge, because of the 
great opportunity we have been given in our generation, 
of all generations. We won the lottery, and now, what do 
we do with this prize? Our mission is to turn all this 
energy, all the ancient oaths and yearnings and prayers, 
which are thousands of years old - into something practical, 
to make the Heavenly Jerusalem (ירושלים של מעלה) and the 
Earthly Jerusalem (ירושלים של מטה) united, to make sure 
that this place will indeed herald an alternative society 
to the whole world. We’re on our way there.

Chana Zemer, editor of the Davar newspaper (a famous 
secular newspaper, closed in 1996), wrote in the newspaper 
after our soldiers reached the Western Wall: 
“ובא לציון גואל. Redemption has come to Zion. For two 
thousand years - eighty generations - the Jews turned 
to the East: during every prayer, Shacharit, Minchah and 
Ma’ariv. Thousands of years have not blurred the national 
memory with which a Jew is born, just as he is born with 
all of his bodily organs. All the biblical verses are 
coming alive in front of our very eyes.”

People do not write like this in newspapers anymore, 
and yet we must never forget that the great great 
grandparents of all of us could never have imagined 
that they would ever merit to pay the Arnona city tax 
in Jerusalem, get stuck in traffic jams there, and 
also to quarrel and argue about its character.

We have had the great fortune to do so.