It was 45 years ago this Friday, the 26th of Iyyar 5727 (5th June 1967), that the Six Day War began.

Four Arab armies (Egyptian, Syrian, Lebanese, and Jordanian) had started amassing on Israel’s borders on Yom ha-Atzma’ut (Israel Independence Day) of that year; in the next few weeks, they were bolstered by contingents from Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Sudan, and Pakistan.

Though there had been sporadic fighting both on the ground and in the air for weeks, the actual all-out war began on Monday the 26th of Iyyar 5727 (5th June 1967). The day which we have eternalised is the third day of the war, the 28th of Iyyar – the day that Jersualem was liberated. This day has entered our calendar as Yom Herut Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Liberation Day).

This day is often colloquially called simply “Yom Yerushalayim”, Jerusalem Day, but this is a grievous error. The Tanakh has only one reference to “Yom Yerushalayim”: “Remember, O HaShem, for the sons of Edom, Yom Yerushalayim (‘the Day of Jerusalem’), when they said ‘Destroy, destroy!’ to its very foundations” (Psalms 137:7).

That is to say, Yom Yerushalayim was the day when the Edomites destroyed Jerusalem. We celebrate the 28th of Iyyar as Yom Herut Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Liberation Day).

It is a fundamental principle of Judaism that history is not random, that ma’asei avot siman la-banim (“the actions of the Forefathers are portents for their sons”).

The Midrash (Tanchuma, Lekh Lekha 9) tells us that “G-d gave an omen to Abraham, that everything that happened to him would happen to his descendants”, and then proceeds to show how every important event in Abraham’s life would later be mirrored by events in Israel’s national history. The Ramban extrapolates from this that “everything that happened to the Forefathers is a portent to their sons” (commentary to Genesis 12:6).

It behoves us therefore to ask: what events have happened in our history on this date?

The Torah records that shortly after the Exodus and before the Giving of the Torah, “Amalek came and fought with Israel in Rephidim” (Exodus 17:8). It does not specify the date of Amalek’s attack, but it does give us sufficient information to estimate fairly precisely.

They had arrived at the Wilderness of Sin, between Elim and Sinai, on the 15th of Iyyar (16:1). The next day the manna began to fall; that was a Sunday (Seder Olam Rabbah 5). The manna fell for six days, and on the sixth day – Friday – they collected a double portion (Exodus 16:2:27). Hence that Shabbat was the 22nd of Iyyar.

The next day, Sunday 23rd of Iyyar, the Israelites came to Rephidim (Exodus 17:1; Seder Olam Rabbah 5), where they complained about the lack of water; there Moshe struck the rock at G-d’s command to bring forth water (Exodus 17:5-6).

The next event recorded is Amalek’s attack, though (as we noted) the Torah does not specify the date of this attack.

The next event whose date we know is the Israelites’ arrival in the Sinai Desert, on the 1st of Sivan (Exodus 19:1; Targum Yonatan ad. loc.; Shabbat 86b; Mekhilta de-Rabbi Yishmael, Yitro – Masechet Bachodesh 1).

Hence Amalek’s attack occurred some time between the 24th and the 29th of Iyyar 2448 (1312 B.C.E.).

It is only in our generation of redemption that we have begun to close the circle. We all remember the 28th of Iyyar as the day on which we redeemed Jerusalem; but at least two other significant events happened on the same date in recent decades.

On the 28th of Iyyar 5699 (May 17th 1939), the Parliament of Great Britain, by 268 votes to 179 against, officially adopted the White Paper as colonial policy. This was Britain’s conversion of Palestine from the Jewish National Home into the super Jewish death-trap: according to the policies of the White Paper, Jewish immigration into Palestine was limited to 50,000 for the five-year period 1940-1944 (10,000 immigrants per year), with a supplementary quota of 25,000, spread out over the same period, to cover refugee emergencies, at the British High Commissioner’s discretion. Meanwhile, there was to be no limit at all on Arab immigration.

At the end of that time, further Jewish immigration would depend on the consent of the Arab majority. Jews were also to be forbidden from buying land. After 10 years, in 1949, instead of partitioning the land, the whole of Palestine would become independent, with Palestinian Jews and Arabs sharing power in proportion to their numbers.

The White Paper (published half a year earlier, on November 9th 1938 – just as the horrors of Kristallnacht began) was designed to abort the Jewish renaissance in the Land of Israel: it deliberately put the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine) under the control of the Arabs, who made no secret of their intentions to exterminate any Jewish presence at all.

So the 28th of Iyyar was the day that the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel was deliberately and cold-bloodedly jeopardised

23 years later, the 28th of Iyyar 5722 (a few minutes before midnight on May 31st 1962), the State of Israel hanged one of the Amalekites of the generation – the Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann (y”sh).

And five years after that, on 28th of Iyyar 5727 (May 7th 1967), Israel redeemed Jerusalem from one of the most vicious foreign occupations in history. During the nineteen years in which the Old City of Jerusalem was under Jordanian Arab occupation, not one Jew had been allowed to set foot therein.

Of the city’s fifty-nine synagogues, fifty-eight were destroyed.

The Hurva Synagogue, built the Ramban (Nachmanides) in 1267, was blown up by the Jordanian Army on May 25th 1948; the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, which dates back to Biblical times, was desecrated, its tombstones torn up and used for Jordanian Army latrines.

Eleven Arab and Moslem states had arisen to exterminate Israel and all the Jews therein, on about the same date that Amalek had attacked Israel in the desert 3,279 years previously. And in our generation of redemption, as with the generation of redemption from Egypt, G-d led His nation to victory.

It is no coincidence that Parashat Behukkotai invariably falls during the three-and-a-half week period between Yom ha-Atzma’ut (Israel Independence Day) and Yom Herut Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Liberation Day), whether it is read alone (as it is this year in Israel) or together with Parashat Behar (as it is this year outside of Israel).

Parashat Behukkotai, with its promises of blessings for keeping the Torah and its warnings of curses, culminating in exile from the Land, for violating the Torah, is the essence of the manual for dwelling in the Land of Israel: “If you will walk in My statutes and keep My commandments and do them, then I will give your rains in their right times; then the Land will provide its produce, and the tree of the field will provide its fruit… You will eat your bread to satiety while you dwell securely in your Land. And I will provide peace in the Land, and you will lie down with no one to terrorize you; I will make the dangerous animals cease from the Land, and no sword will pass through your Land. You will pursue your enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword” (Leviticus 26:3-7).