‘On Jerusalem Day’

Foreigners came to Your inheritance, 2000 years ago, smashed your walls and destroyed you, O city of righteousness, Jerusalem! Your children were tortured, defiled, and exiled to the ends of the earth. You remained a widow separated from your children, and crushed under foreign rule. The remnants of the heroes of Massada sacrificed their lives by the solemn oath of battle, but still you fell into Ishmaelite and Crusader hands for hundreds of years.

By the streams of our exile we wept, we remembered your suffering and pain. But in our hearts (as Judah HaLevi once said) you were always the focal point and spiritual heart of the nation. We longed for you, we dreamt about you and wove dreams for you, we prayed for you. “For Jerusalem Your city,” three times a day we poured out our hearts in tears and prayers. We have been orphans separated from a loving mother, left for centuries in exile. Until thirty years ago — thank G-d! — our brave young men rose up.

The first time I walked through your outskirts, O Jerusalem, some thirty years ago, I saw you bathed in tears, hurting, plaintive, and with a mournful countenance. Then the underground’s valiant young men fought, without regard to personal safety, courageously losing their blood, against the conquerors, the British soldiers of occupation. You then appeared fettered and shackled while the soldiers of the CID — of the glorious crown of the British Empire — had you in their grasp. In those days, the British maintained their stronghold on the land; how depressed we were, our freedom being scorned, with little or no hope for our liberty.