Parashat & Current Events

IN HONOR OF THE 52nd YEAR OF RE-UNIFICATION OF YERUSHALAYIM – YOM YERUSHALAYIM

The following is a translation of a composition by Mr. Yitzchak Navon, in honor of Yerushalayim, written when he was serving as our 5th president.

In June 1967, the Six Day War broke out. Israel’s soldiers fought bravely and won many victories. Soon they reached the Old City of Jerusalem. They prepared to fight for it, and to take it back from Jordan. But they did not know through which of the seven gates to enter. As they tried to decide what to do, each gate begged, one louder than the other, “Enter the Old City through me. Enter the Old City through me.”

“The report notes that the United States now faces five rising challenges—China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and transnational terrorism; yet has fewer military forces than at any time since the end of World War II.”

A report of the National Defense Strategy Commission contains conclusions with profound implications for U.S. national security. In sixty-four pages of plain language, the commission paints an extraordinarily troubling picture of the state of U.S. national defenses, calling our present situation a “grave crisis” demanding “extraordinary urgency.”

Last week I received a disturbing video regarding a kosher sandwich shop in Lakewood New Jersey. The proprietor had hung an Israeli flag on the roof next to a US flag in honor of Yom Ha’Atzmaut. He received a call from the rabbi who gives the hechser on kashrut; that if the Zionist flag was not removed immediately, he would cancel the kashrut certification of the shop. He was not an OU kashrut rabbi but was sanctioned by one of the chareidi organizations in the area.

This “rabbi” reminded me of an interview I heard a while back with a chareidi leader of Yerushalayim who said on the radio that the Israeli flag was just “a shemata (rag) on a stick”.

Our son Mordechai just completed 28 years of intense army service, attaining the rank of brigadier general. As an infantry officer he served in the most dangerous battles on our borders and beyond. He commanded Israel’s most elite units and engaged in many combat missions of which he cannot speak (and probably will never be allowed to).

Towards the end of his military career, he voiced his personal feelings regarding retirement, by quoting the phrase used in the above Mishna: “at the occasion of exiting in peace from the holy of holies”, with the IDF serving as the Holy of Holies of our nation in the absence of the Bet Hamikdash. Because just as the Bet Hamikdash protected Am Yisrael by cleansing us of our sins; today the protector of Am Yisrael as the messenger of HaShem is the holy army of Medinat Yisrael. He said: “Now that HaShem has granted me the gift of leaving the “Holy of Holies” whole in body, soul and mind, I will donate a Sefer Torah to a worthy place”.

Judaism, in general, encourages constructive questioning and debate, but the holiday of Pesach utilizes this mode of education as its main avenue for transmitting to the younger generation the Egyptian slavery experience and its exhilarating feelings of freedom. But however numerous the questions and proposed answers, there is no end to the queries in the multi-faceted relationship between HaShem and his chosen people.

At the seder night I posed the following question…

Approximately three thousand five hundred years ago, seventy direct descendants of Avraham, Yitzchak and Ya’akov left Eretz Yisrael for the exile of Egypt as individuals within a family. Two hundred and ten years later their descendants left Egypt numbering in the millions to return home as a nation. Two thousand years ago we as a nation were exiled from our land to eventually return home as individuals from 100 different lands to merge, coalesce and regroup into the great nation that we are today, as each and every oleh brings with him the richness of their worldly experiences.

The following is an excerpt from my forthcoming autobiography (be’ezrat HaShem) depicting my last day in galut and arrival in the holy land.