Rabbi Shlomo Aviner is head of Yeshivat Ateret Yerushalayim
“This is the day the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it" (Psalms 118:24).
Since the establishment of the State, day and night we rejoice. And even though there are problems and troubles that cause sadness, overall we are joyful. “The Lord has done great things for us; we were joyful" (Psalms 126:3).
And as a result of our return to Jerusalem, we rejoice even more. “I rejoiced when they said to me: Let us go to the House of the Lord" (Psalms 122:1). “Jerusalem that is built, like a city joined together. There the tribes ascended, the tribes of God, a testimony to Israel" (ibid. 3-4).
One must remember that for two thousand years this city lay in ruins. Not only was it destroyed, it became a worldwide symbol of destruction, especially of the destruction of the People of Israel.
When Napoleon conquered Prussia about two hundred years ago, even though in the end they drove him out, the conquered felt a burning humiliation that their great and powerful kingdom had been defeated by mere Frenchmen. Someone had to be blamed. Who was guilty? Of course, the Jews, as usual.
Therefore, when they saw a Jew in the street, they beat him mercilessly and shouted at him: Hierosolyma est perdita - Jerusalem is lost. Your Jerusalem is lost and you are lost.
Therefore, if you meet a Prussian, show him Jerusalem and tell him: Ah, ah, Jerusalem is lost?! Not so. Jerusalem is ours forever!
About two-hundred years ago, a devout French Catholic, Chateaubriand, traveled and arrived in Jerusalem. In his book From Paris to Jerusalem, he glorified Christianity and degraded the People of Israel, especially the people dwelling in Zion, the few remnants left in Jerusalem:
“Compared to the new Jerusalem" (thus Christianity calls it) “emerging from the desert, shining with light, cast your eyes between Mount Zion and the Temple, and see that other small people (the Jews) living apart from all the inhabitants of the city. It is the special object of all contempt, lowering its head without complaint. It suffers all insults without demanding justice. It absorbs all blows without groaning. They (the gentiles) demand its head, and it presents it to the sword.
“If one member of this excommunicated society dies, another goes at night to bury him secretly in the Valley of Jehoshaphat in the shadow of Solomon’s Temple.
“Enter the dwellings of this people and you will find it in dreadful poverty, parents reading to its children from a mysterious book which the children will read to their own children when they have a family of their own. What it did five thousand years ago, it still does today.
“It has witnessed the destruction of Jerusalem seventeen times, and nothing discourages it. Nothing prevents it from turning its gaze toward Zion.
“When one sees the Jews scattered over the face of the earth according to the decree of God, one is certainly astonished. But to be astonished in a supernatural way, one must see them in Jerusalem.
“These legitimate owners of the Land of Judea are now slaves and strangers in their own land. One must see them under every torment waiting for the king who will redeem them. Broken and crushed beneath the cross that rules over them and is fixed upon their heads, hidden beside the Temple from which not one stone remains.
“The nations persist in their blindness. The Persians, Greeks, and Romans have disappeared from the face of the earth, and this small people that preceded them still exists without mixture amid the ruins of its homeland. If any nation bears the mark of a miracle, it is surely this one."
And behold, we are here, answering him: Ah, Jerusalem is lost?!
Thank God, we returned to Jerusalem, which is characterized by two things: love and faith.
Love - “There the tribes ascended, the tribes of God, a testimony to Israel" (Psalms 122:4). “Jerusalem that is built, like a city joined together" (ibid.).
“All Israel are companions" (Blessing of the New Month). It is not true that there are religious and secular, right-wing and left-wing, Haredim and Zionists. We are one people.
Certainly there are differences between individuals, but regarding the essence of the matter, regarding the soul, regarding the Divine light that makes Israel a nation, there is no difference. We are one people.
In exile perhaps we forgot this. Therefore day and night we must remember: “And who is like Your people Israel, one nation in the land" (II Samuel 7:23).
This must be repeated again and again. What unites us is infinitely greater than what separates us. What unites us is Divine - the soul. Whereas what separates us is human, dependent upon man’s free choice. But with eyes filled with love, we are one.
In Jerusalem there is love, “like a city joined together."
The second thing which binds us to Jerusalem is faith.
The healing of the nation from its illnesses comes through increasing faith. The people dwelling in Zion are sick, but they are gradually being healed until they will reach complete recovery. Nonetheless, incomplete healing is also healing. There is complete repentance, but incomplete repentance is also repentance. There is complete redemption, but incomplete redemption is also redemption.
But complete healing, complete repentance, and complete redemption come through the study of faith, the depth of faith. The study of Emunah found in the words of the Psalms and teachings of the Kuzari, the Maharal, the Ramchal, and in the writings of Rabbi Kook and his son HaRav Tzvi Yehuda.
Of course, all areas of Torah are holy - every book, every page, every line, every word. They are stamped with a supreme Divine seal.
But the healing of the nation comes through studying the depth of faith, the deepest depth, the inner depth, the soul-depth of Jerusalem.
A nation needs an army. A nation needs a state. A nation needs an economy. A nation needs politics. A nation needs organization. A nation needs order.
But above all, and within all, a nation needs a soul.
The soul dwells here - in Jerusalem.
The soul is faith, and through our study of faith it appears within the nation.
As our teacher, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, explains in the book Orot, our program is “two which are four": love and faith, Torah and mitzvot. Out of love and faith, Torah and mitzvot will appear more and more.
The Gemara tells about a sage who connected redemption to prayer, and a smile never left his face the entire day (Berachot 9b).
So too with us: when our redemption was joined to our prayers, from then until this very day we rejoice, and we continue to rejoice more and more until the complete redemption through the wonders of the Lord for His people and His inheritance. Rejoice with Jerusalem. Rejoice over the wonders of the Lord!
[Transcribed by Rabbi Mordechai Tzion]