The Jewish Connection to Jerusalem
Remembering
Jerusalem permeates Jewish belief, thought, and practice in profound and
powerful ways.
By Rabbi Ed Snitkoff
This article provides
an overview of the importance of Jerusalem in Judaism. The role of Jerusalem is
so important that a single article cannot cover all aspects. In addition to the
examples given here, Jerusalem was of great importance in the Jewish mystical
tradition, especially in the Zohar. The memory of the city was a driving force
that shaped the destinies of great figures in Judaism, such as Yehuda Halevi,
whose poetry reflects his yearning. In modern times, the centrality of
Jerusalem is an important element in Zionist thought.
Building From Broken Shards
With the sound of shattering glass at the conclusion of the
wedding ceremony, generations of Jews were reminded that Jerusalem was
destroyed and the Jewish people were in exile. With this ritual the vow
recorded in book of Psalms was actualized: "If I forget thee Oh Jerusalem,
let my right hand wither, let my tongue stick to my palate if I do not remember
you, if I do not set Jerusalem above my greatest joy" (Psalm 137).
While we are overjoyed for the couple, at the same time, we
remember that this small shattering glass is filled with sad memories mixed
with hopeful dreams.
Beginning to Remember
Yehuda Amichai, a well-known Israeli poet, wrote about
remembering Jerusalem in a collection called "Songs of Zion the
Beautiful":
Jerusalem's
a place where everyone remembers
he's
forgotten something
But
doesn't remember what it is.
This spiritual process of longing to remember and thereby
touch that which is eternal is the essence of Judaism! And this remembering
always connects to Jerusalem in one way or another…
Remembering Jerusalem
While referred to a number of times in early Biblical
accounts from Abraham to Joshua, Jerusalem has been the central city of Judaism
since the year 1000 B.C.E., when King David conquered this small, remote
Canaanite town and made it the capital of his kingdom. With the building of the
Temple by King Solomon following the death of King David, the city becomes the
focus of three pilgrimages each year for thousands of Jews celebrating the
festivals of Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot.
These pilgrimages are in keeping with the command in the Torah to visit and
worship "…in the place that God will choose, for the Lord God blesses you
with produce and blesses the work of your hands and you shall rejoice"
(Deuteronomy 16:16).
Jerusalem is a major focus of Biblical literature and the
likely venue where much of this literature was written and preserved. The kings
of Judah lived and died here, as recorded in the Books of Samuel, Kings, and
Chronicles. Prophets were based in Jerusalem, interpreting the Torah and
establishing the great moral and ethical standards of Judaism. The Book of Lamentations,
often attributed to the prophet Jeremiah, laments over the destruction of First
Temple Jerusalem by the Babylonians in 586 B.C.E. The destruction of the First
Temple and the rebuilding of the Second Temple (60 years later) are recorded in
the books of Kings, Ezra, Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
Continuing to Remember
Following the Biblical accounts, the Second Temple period
added 500 more years of memories. These memories are recorded in many of the
Apocryphal books, such as the books of the Maccabees, relating the events
(mostly in the Jerusalem area) leading to and following the revolt against the
Greeks in the second century B.C.E. (commemorated during the Hanukkah
festival).
With the rise of the Roman Empire, the city of Jerusalem
grew and underwent a major facelift by Herod, the Roman appointed Jewish king
who conquered Jerusalem with a Roman army in the year 37 B.C.E. Rabbinic
literature records hundreds of events, stories, and descriptions of life in
Jerusalem from this period.
Hope from Ruins
After the destruction of the Second Temple Jerusalem, the
memory of the city came to embody the hopes and aspirations of the Jewish
people within the developing tradition of Rabbinic Judaism. Jerusalem was now
an ideal that represented redemption, perfection, and wholeness that Jews would
study about, pray for, and try to spiritually experience from afar. While
Earthly Jerusalem may be in ruins, controlled by foreigners and unreachable,
Heavenly Jerusalem was in every Jew's heart, waiting in the wings for the
Messianic day when the promise of rebuilt Jerusalem would be fulfilled by God.
How were the Jewish people to keep these memories and hopes
alive and part of their lives?
Remembering What Might be Forgotten
A series of "reminders" (rituals, prayers, and
special days) developed in Jewish antiquity, and were designed to keep the
memory of Jerusalem alive from generation to generation, for example:
- Jerusalem
is a central theme in Jewish liturgy and religious poetry. For example,
one of the 19 blessings of the Amidah
(silent prayer central to all Jewish prayer services) reads:
"Return to Your city Jerusalem in mercy, and establish Yourself there
as you promised…Blessed are you Lord, builder of Jerusalem." The
Amidah prayer is traditionally recited three times a day, while facing
Jerusalem.
- Synagogues
traditionally face toward Jerusalem.
- At the
end of Passover seder and at the conclusion of Yom Kippur, we exclaim
"L'shanah haba'ah
b'Yerushalayim--Next Year in Jerusalem." (In Israel, one
concludes, "L'shanah haba'ah
b'Yerushalayim habenuyah"--"Next year in the rebuilt
Jerusalem.")
In addition to ritual
"reminders of Jerusalem," many contemporary Jewish practices,
customs, and beliefs can be traced to Jerusalem, providing a constant
"meta-message" of the primacy of Jerusalem for anyone who scratches
the surface. For example, the order of the synagogue service is modeled after
the daily Temple service (Avodah) in
Jerusalem. The weekly reading of the Torah was established in Jerusalem after
the return from the first exile. The seder meal on Passover is based on seders
held by generations of Jewish pilgrims in Jerusalem. There are many more
examples of home rituals, burial practices, and synagogue practices that can be
traced to Jerusalem.
Remembering Leads to Action
During the centuries following the destruction of the Second
Temple in 70 C.E., the Jewish connection to Jerusalem was mostly one of distant
hope, but there was always a core of people waiting to visit and live in the
city whenever the opportunity presented itself. According to the Church Father
Jerome, the Jews of the fourth century would pay for the special privilege of
entering Jerusalem on the Ninth of Av in order to mourn. The desire to stand as
close to the area on which the Temple stood established the Western Wall area
as a focus of pilgrimage and worship from as early as the seventh century.
In 1099, Jews and Muslims fought the Crusader invasion
together, standing side by side on the walls of Jerusalem. The great rabbi
Nachmanides arrived in the city from Spain between 1265-67, establishing a
synagogue that still exists, the kernel around which the present Jewish Quarter
grew. By 1844, the Jewish community was the largest single community in
Jerusalem, numbering 7,120 people (almost one half of all inhabitants).
In modernity, the powerful pull of Jerusalem is expressed in
the memoirs of Natan Chofshi, one of the early Zionist pioneers who arrived in
the Land of Israel 100 years ago from Russia:
"I used to pray…for the return
to Zion…I particularly recall the prayers during Rosh Hashanah… 'And on that
day the horn will blow proclaiming the return of the lost in Assyria and Egypt
and their return to the holy mountain of Jerusalem.' These were sentences my
father repeated at the holiday table. I was deeply affected by both the content
and the tune of these words, and the tune resounds within me to this day. Thus
I undertook the task of combining my own modest abilities and my best
efforts…to hasten salvation."
And now, in our lifetime, we live with the reality of
Jerusalem as the capital city of the Jewish State of Israel. This did not just
come about on its own, but is the result of the Jewish people's active
remembering of Jerusalem throughout the generations, leading to the deeds of
pioneers such as Nachmanides and Natan Chofshi. In this way, the prophet
Zechariah's words have been fulfilled: "Thus says the Lord of Hosts: The
day will come when old men and old women will populate the streets of
Jerusalem…And the streets of the city will fill with boys and girls at
play" (Zechariah 8:4).
Ed Snitkoff is
Coordinator of the North American Regional Office of the Education Department
of the Jewish Agency for Israel. He served as a congregational rabbi in the
U.S. before moving to Israel in 1992. He is a licensed Israeli tour guide and
lives in Jerusalem.
