Not typos but the Hebrew for "our legs were standing" and the verse continues with "in your gates, the gates of Jerusalem". For millennia this phrase, in prayer or song at gatherings, at festive occasions, spoke to the heart of a Jewish longing. A return to Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, the eternal heart of a beating entity - the Jewish people. In synagogues around the world, in a secret one in the depraved depths of Terezin, in the hearts and souls of millions as they stumbled and were pushed and gassed and burned and tortured and worked to death.
Why? Because the return to Jerusalem meant a return to the heart and soul of Judaism. It is where Abraham was instructed and then prevented from sacrificing Isaac, and for the forbidding of human sacrifice evermore, often a sacrifice of the oldest son to the greedy bloodstained mouth of an idol. Unfortunately, ironically, it seems too many Arabs never caught on to this idea, to the ending of human sacrifice. Where the Jewish religion preached 'living' via the commandments, introduced formal presentations of social justice and morality in all spheres of life. Unfortunately, these values are being opposed by those on the Arab side, those who continue to buy into hate and evil. As Elie Wiesel said, " We have always been hated."
How does one combat this backwards, vicious, blood seeking imperative? How does one stop a wholesale campaign of hate and bloodshed, of the waste of human lives, of the breaking of society and destroying all the positive outcomes of a fair peace. An acceptance of the Jewish State of Israel, alive and well, legitimate, contributing to the world, rather than that continuous screeching how they, the Arabs, wish to declare the area Judenrein, and repopulate with their own. Feet squishing in the blood of the murdered - men, women, children, old and young.
Only days ago, a mother and her two daughters were rammed to the side of the road and then brutally shot at point blank range, shot to a violent death with multiple strikes of bullets. The father and the rest of the family saw this happen in full technicolor, helpless to do otherwise, only to scream in anguish, await medical care, and wonder why yet another Jewish family has been shattered, sacrificed to hate, to incited brutally manifested and implemented hatred. Why has there been no answer here, only anguish.
The family is murdered yet again, as Christine Amanpour declares on her show that these women died in a "shootout", a gun battle between two equally armed opponents. How ugly a statement! How can she buy into that outrageous lie. There was no shootout, only brutal race hatred and slaughter. The Dees family had no weapons. There was no shootout, but the Arab world continues to manufacture its litany of bald faced, brazen lies, akin to the litany of lies of the GOP and extremists of the right, and of the awful Tlaib whose one utterance contains more lies, more hate, more incitement to bloodshed than others do in a lifetime.
The bereaved father wanted to try to understand the unfathomable, why this ugliness took place, the motivations and wishes of the perpetrators and their families. Read and compare the words of both.
Rabbi Leo Dee lost his wife and two daughters last month to cold-blooded murderers. He spoke recently about his desire to understand their killers. “I want to meet the parents and siblings of the terrorists and ask them two questions: What did they think they would accomplish with what they did and what is their vision for the future — what do they want for their grandchildren?
The mother of one of the terrorists gave her answer in a televised interview. “Praise be to Allah for granting him [martyrdom]. We should fight them with our children, with our money, with our families, with our fingernails. We should devour the Jews with our teeth.”
Now understand the title, the deep, eternal longing for Jerusalem, so understandable, so necessary to survival of a besieged people only seeking what all seek - the living of a life in peace, if not with love, then certainly with an absence of hate. "We know what it means to be devoured." Tormented and expelled, slaughtered in every vicious way imaginable. Yerushalayim represents the fulfillment of that longing, of that so desired peace. To be left alone to live their lives in an ancient homeland.
On June 6, 1967, my legs were standing in Jerusalem. My heart was in Yerushalayim. My soul was on the Temple Mount, the site of our Temples, the site of many events in Jewish history. Yes, physically I was in Brooklyn, NY, but viscerally, emotionally, I was 6,000 miles away. In 1969, we added the physicality of the moment to the spiritual, as we visited Israel, as we sat on the cold stone floor before the remnant, the Wall, the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, the Wall of Iron and Blood, the Wall which held within the prayers of thousands of years, millions of hearts.
At that moment, of liberation and of freedom to approach, to worship in its shadows, to return home - there was a unity, a togetherness, of the Jewish communities round the world, secular and religious. It was joined by fellow peace seekers and justice seekers. It was joined by those who understood the meaning of it all.
That togetherness is missing these days and we are all the poorer, the worse off for that absence. We have lost our way, forgotten the truth in our seeking something else, something infinitely worse, and certainly not beneficial to humanity. Our disunity causes delays in facing crucial existential challenges. It shatters our humanity and buoys hate and violence.
That missing, damaged togetherness is what we must seek. For reasons I make clear every single day.
Would that we remember that clearly. Would that we internalize it, deep within our very makeup, every atom, every soul, every iota of what being a human being means, and entails, its demands.
Together. Together. Together.
Only together.
Together.
Together - Together we can achieve it all.
Together we can
HEAL THE WORLD.
HEAL YITZY!
Yitzchak Elimelech ben Chana Sarah
May he be granted refuah shelaymah bimheyrah beyameinu.
May he be granted a timely and complete healing.
May Hashem hear all our voices raised in prayer.
Amen. Amen.
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