40 Years: The Days of Jerusalem & Hebron

  40 Years: The Days of Jerusalem & Hebron

By Yossi Baumol

“When G-d restored the return to Zion, we thought we were dreaming.” (Tehillim 126).  It seems like a dream today, but people tend to forget the unbelievable power of the events of 40 and 41 years ago.

First of all, came the prophecies. On Israel Independence Day, 1967, weeks before the war broke out, two things happened which in retrospect were accepted by the people as prophecies of the great impending victory. In the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook gave his historic speech: “Where is our Hebron, where is our Shchem?  That night, at the Israeli Song Festival, an unknown singer named Shuli Natan got up and sang for the first time what would later become Israel’s all time favorite song – Naomi Shemer’s “Jerusalem of Gold - Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” which stirred the hearts of an entire country with longings to return to Jerusalem’s Old City and the Temple Mount.

Just three weeks later, Hebron, the Old City and the heartland of biblical Eretz Yisrael were suddenly and miraculously restored to an incredulous Jewish People.

The miracles didn’t stop there. In the years that followed, the aftershocks of the war shook the very foundations of the Jewish people throughout the world, bringing about a phenomenal rebirth of Jewish pride, faith and confidence.

Economically speaking, Israel went from being a poor, third-world backwater country in constant recession, to today’s economic powerhouse. (President Bush recently asked PM Olmert for advice on how to cut the national deficit!)

In Devarim 30, the prophecies of our return to the land and our return to our faith are intermingled, literally sentence by sentence. After the Six Day War, these twin prophecies began to be fulfilled in tandem . The mass Aliyah movements – in the US, but even more so, in the Soviet Union - were born as a result of the Six Day War. The Teshuva movement, basically non-existent in Israel and in the Diaspora until then, flowered and grew at the same time. Suddenly, Jews in Israel and the Diaspora were exhibiting unbelievable pride and self-sacrifice for the land and for the Torah.

Orthodox Jewry in Israel, which until that time was divided between the faithful Ultra-Orthodox who shunned public involvement and the National-Religious camp which served as the non-committed “caboose” of the Zionist Labor movement, underwent a deep and crucial transformation.

40 years ago, G-d’s promise to Rachel Imenu: “And the sons shall return to their borders” came true along that very same road connecting Jerusalem and Hebron. Kfar Etzion and Hebron spearheaded the settlement movement. The initial Jewish settlement of Hebron at the Park Hotel, exactly forty years ago, became the settlement movement’s “Mayflower”. Anyone who wanted to be counted as a settlement leader claimed to have spent that first Pessach in Hebron with Rabbi Levinger.

Why did the return to Jerusalem and Hebron have such a profound effect on the Jewish people? More than anyone else, Rabbi A. Y. Kook sought to teach us the religious significance of the land. His most basic teachings relates to the “mission statement” for all Jews, handed down to Avraham at the beginning of Lecha Lecha.  He explained that this mission has two basic stages:

1) Become a great nation.

2) Only as a great nation can we serve as a model and the conduit of blessings for the entire world.

Jerusalem represents stage two – when all nations will unite in praise of Hashem.

Hebron represents stage one – the stage of nation building!

This is where our founding fathers and mothers made their homes and chose to be buried.

This is where Chushim, the son of Dan, got the courage to stop Esau and chop off his head at the entrance to the Mearat HaMachpela.

This is where Calev went to draw the strength to overpower the 10 spies who turned their backs on Eretz Yisrael.

This is where King David went for the first 7 ½ years of his reign over the land.

This is where the settlement movement was born after the Six Day War.

This is where even today, the struggle for Eretz Yisrael is fought day in and day out with unending self- sacrifice and determination.

From the days of Avraham’s first calling, described in Parshat Lech Lecha, down until last year’s purchase of “Beit HaShalom”, featured on the front page of the Sunday NY Times – Hebron is where we must go to build our nation.

This is why the return of what some people consider “merely real estate” has had such a far ranging effect on our nation. Not only does the place have a special significance – the time does as well. It is no accident that these landmark events of nation-building – in 1948 and again in 1967 took place in the month of Iyar. Rabbi Chaim Falagi, a great 19 century Kabbalist wrote in his commentary on “Ethics of Our Fathers”: “It is suitable that we read “Pirkei Avot” during Iyar, because the letters of Iyar stand for our Avot - Avraham, Yitzchak, Yaakov and Rachel…we should make every effort to give Tzedaka during the month of Iyar to the “Kupah” of Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb.”

Every Friday night, in Lechu N’rannena we quote G-d who says: “For 40 years will I struggle with that generation and I will say, they are a nation of confused hearts and knew not my ways”. Although this passage in Tehillim 95 seems to refer to the Jews who left Egypt, it is interesting to note that it is written in future tense. The Talmud brings this passage when it says – “the times of Mashiach are 40 years”.

For 40 years, G-d has been showering us with blessings – the burgeoning Israeli economy, the growth of Torah, the Aliyah movements, the Teshuva movements – all these blessings stem from the land and from its resettlement 40 years ago. For 40 years, a “nation of confused hearts” refuses to see this and tries to give away the source of all our blessings.

Let us hope and pray that this stage will soon be over, that the lessons of Hebron will be learned, that we will succeed in building our nation as it should be, so that we can move on to the next stage, showering bounty and blessings on all the nation of the world  - from the Temple Mount  in Jerusalem.

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Yossi Baumol is the executive director of the Hebron Fund and was formerly the director of The Jerusalem Reclamation Project