Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
Your donation will be tax deductible in the US to the extent allowed by the IRS.
To make a tax-deductible donation by wire transfer in the US, please contact:
Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
To make a tax-deductible donation in Israel, please contact:
Dina Gudai, Israeli Representative
Phone: 074-7800643
Email: dina@schechter.ac.il
Please mail your check to:
The Schechter Institutes, Inc. (a 501(c) 3 tax exempt organization)
Box #3566
PO Box 8500
Philadelphia, PA 19178-3566
Attn: Mr. Avrum Lapin, North American Representative
Toll-free: 1-866-830-3321
Email: schechter@thelapingroup.com
Please indicate the donation is "for your joint Schechter Institutes program."
Checks should be made payable to the Jewish Theological Society of Canada and mailed to:
Jewish Theological Society of Canada
c/o Camp Ramah in Canada
3845 Bathhurst St., Suite 310
Toronto, ON, M3H 3N2
Phone: 416-789-2193, ext. 2139
E-mail: accounting@campramah.com
Please mail a check to:
The Schechter Institutes
Attn: Dina Gudai, Finance Department
PO Box 16080,
Jerusalem, 9116002
Israel
For assistance, please call Dina Gudai at 074-780-0643 (8:00 AM – 3:00 Israel time Sunday through Thursday).
Jerusalem Day, Yom Yerushalayim is now 57 years old. Eitan Cooper shows us this holiday’s importance.
Do we need a holiday for our capital city? Is there a London day? A DC day? An Ottawa day?
Certainly, we need no reminder of Jerusalem:
We pray facing Jerusalem every day.
Mizrach (East) lithograph by D. Sharir (photo: J. Shuman)
We pray for Jerusalem to be rebuilt after every meal.
The happiest day of our lives is customarily tempered with a tear “if I forget thee, O Jerusalem…”
The attachment to this city found in prayer is a longing that went unfulfilled for 1,900 years. A small spot in a wall left unpainted, or a Mizrach hanging. Over the generations it became an abstraction, a daydream. As per the Psalm: “A song of the ascent: When God returned us to Zion, we were as dreamers.”
Then, in 1967, 57 years ago to the day, on June 7 (this rare year the Hebrew and Gregorian calendars are in sync!), Col. Motta Gur, commander of the Paratroopers, burst through the Lion’s Gate and into the Old City, then taking a left turn, entered the Temple Mt., shouting into his two-way radio “Har Habayit B’yadenu” (The Temple Mt. is in our hands!)
Six Day War (1967). Commander Motta Gur and his brigade observe the Temple Mount from Mt. of Olives prior to their attack on the Old City. (Photo: Israel GPO)
The Old City, the Kotel, the Mt. of Olives were ours! After the weeks of drama leading up to the Six Day War came the euphoria after the lightning victory, the mass aliya l’regel up to the Kotel a week later on Shavuot.
In many ancient cities, the holy precinct was found geographically at its apex. The Acropolis of Athens comes immediately to mind. But Athens and Jerusalem present very different ideals. The Bible advocates the destruction of altars in high places. The Temple Mt./Haram al-Sharif sits on a low hill.
Jerusalem 1950 (image Pikiwiki Israel, Library of Congress)
“Jerusalem, mountains surround her, just as God surrounds his people.” You can view this verse best from the City of David, just below the Temple Mt., and appreciate that the people who wrote the Psalms, once lived there.
Perhaps the most remarkable find among the many archeological discoveries down in ancient Jerusalem, is the remnant of a library belonging to “G’maryahu Ben Shafan”, a scribe living in late 7th/early 6th century BCE in Jerusalem, mentioned in Bible in the Book of Jeremiah. Although his scrolls were burned when the City was destroyed by the Babylonians, some dozens of clay seals with his name stamped in them found in a burnt room provide the most striking evidence that this is indeed the city where the Bible was edited and transcribed, where we became the People of the Book that contains the Torah conceived at Mt. Sinai.
And Jerusalem can mean as much to billions of people who don’t live here, as to those of us who do: to the Jews, Muslims, Christians and others, who come to our city as pilgrims. Even to those who will never set foot in it are often passionate about it.
Christian pilgrimage in Church of Holy Sepulchre, (image: Pikiwiki Israel, Yigal Zalmonson 2007)
So, yes – Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day) is the celebration of a miraculous victory in 1967. The Psalm expressed our truth — when God returns us to Zion we really are like dreamers. But the same Psalm returns us to reality just four verses later: Those who plant with tears, will reap with joy.
After the euphoria we must return to the reality of life, to living in and building this city, this country, every day. Can we meet the challenge posed to us by the giants: Prophets, Psalmists and Deuteronomists, who wrote so long ago about their beloved and tragic city? Now that the Temple Mt. is actually in our Hands, what do we do with it? 57 years later we are still trying to figure that out.
Jerusalem poses a constant challenge – which is the seeming impossibility of living up to its heritage. As the poet Yehudah Amichai, in his acerbic style wrote soon after the Six Day War:
Yehuda Amichai, 2017 photo: Yair Medina
“It is sad to be the Mayor of Jerusalem. Terrible… He’ll build and build and build, and then at night the stones of the hills that surround her will come down like wolves…” How true this is for our times!
We have sown in tears, but at harvest time we will reap in joy. There is a time for both.
Yom Yerushalayim Sameach from Schechter!
Front Image: Shlomo Ruder, 2024, Pikiwiki Israel, wikicommons
