Yom Yerushalayim - Jerusalem Day: the anniversary of the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem

At sundown on May 21st we celebrate Yom Yerushalayim, the anniversary of the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem in 1967. For the first time in thousands of years the entire city of Jerusalem, the holiest city in Judaism, came under Jewish sovereignty. The destruction of Jerusalem began thousands of years of mourning and longing for Jerusalem, as we were reminded just a few weeks ago when we concluded our Seders with the words “Next year in Jerusalem.” Living in a time of the reunification of Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish state should be a joyous celebration countering thousands of years of destruction and exile. (http://tinyurl.com/2mowqa)

You can listen to the historic and dramatic sounds of Israeli Defense Forces entering the Old City of Jerusalem and reclaiming the Western Wall on June 7, 1967, including the sound of Army Chief Chaplain and Brigadier General Shlomo Goren sounding the shofar, soldiers saying prayers, including the shehechianu, singing HaTikvah and crying. A transcript is also available. Visit http://tinyurl.com/23a4ej.

Under Jordanian occupation between 1948 and 1967, Jews were refused entry to the Old City and Jewish monuments were systematically destroyed. In 1967, Egypt provoked another pan-Arab war against Israel (the Six-Day War) by ordering UN peacekeepers out of the Sinai Peninsula and blockading the Straits of Tiran. When Israeli soldiers recaptured Old Jerusalem a few days later, they discovered that the Jordanians had not only dynamited synagogues. They had used Jewish tombstones to pave roads and built latrines (http://tinyurl.com/3x6lqs).

Yet, soon after the victory of 1967, Israel unilaterally gave control of the Temple Mount to the Islamic Authority of Jerusalem — the Waqf. Jewish prayer is still forbidden on the Temple Mount and the battle in Israeli courts to allow Jews the freedom to pray on the Mount continues. In 1996 the Waqf changed the accepted status quo that was kept for generations. Without oversight of archeologists or assessment of damage to the Temple Mount and its history, the Waqf converted two ancient underground Second Temple Period structures into a new large mosque. The two structures, known as Solomon’s stables and the Eastern Hulda Gate passageway, were never mosques before. The new mosque extends over an area of 1.5 acres and is the largest mosque in Israel. It is able to accommodate 10,000 people. Thousands of square-meters of the ancient Temple Mount were dug up by tractors, paved and announced as open mosques. In November 1999, the Waqf opened what it called an “emergency exit.” The exit expanded into a gaping hole, 18,000 square feet in size, and up to 36 feet deep. Thousands of tons of the ancient fill from the site, subsequently found by Israeli archeologists to contain artifacts dating as early as the First Temple Period, were dumped into the Kidron Valley.

What has been found in the crushed rubble discarded by the Waqf? Arrowheads shot by Babylonian archers 2,500 years ago, coins from the Jewish revolt that preceded the destruction of the Second Temple by Roman legions in 70 CE, and a bulla, or seal impression that bears the name Gedalyahu Ben Immer Ha-Cohen, suggesting that the owner may have been a brother of Pashur Ben Immer, who is described in the Book of Jeremiah as a priest and temple official.

You can learn more about the archaeological destruction of the Temple Mount at www.har-habayt.org and about the Temple Mount Antiquities Salvage Operation at http://templemount.wordpress.com.