Season 1: Episode 30 - 50th Jerusalem Day

Generated automatically from the audio and lightly corrected. It may contain errors; the recording is the authority.

In the din and tumult of the age, the still, small voice of Jerusalem remains our only music. There are many subplots that we can follow in our story, but if we trace the track of Jerusalem, it just might take us home. And I'm Rav Mike Foyer. This is the Jewish Story. Special Jerusalem Day episode. I have to say that I'm really excited. This is a historic time, and as a person who loves history, I have a deep sense that you can't miss the moment to talk about what's happening, what was, what is, and what will be. So I have a very simple question I want to start with. What's in a name, to borrow a phrase? Because the Midrash, that great compendium of rabbinic thought, teaches us that Jerusalem has 70 names.

If you want to understand such a thing, you have to realize that to the sages, numbers were not about math. They were a language, a language which was meant to represent a symbolic comprehension of the whole dynamic of creation. So what exactly is the number 70? In my understanding, it's the sum total of all the possible approaches to any object or idea. It's all the angles of perspective. That's why we say there are 70 faces to the Torah, 70 languages, 70 nations. And the number 70 is particularly fit to speak about names. Because, you know, a name can be as much about the one who uses it as it is about the one whom it names. Think about it. You may have a name, but there are those who love, who give you special names.

You have nicknames that associate with certain times and people in your life. You have a professional title, all kinds of things. because a name reveals an intimacy of relationship. In a deeper sense, the Hebrew language actually reveals the secret of what it is to name something because the word for name in Hebrew is Shem and it shares the exact same letters with the word for their, Shem. Shem and Shem. Now remember that the first thing which Adam, the first man, did once he was created was to name all the creatures And that's because we actually bring ourselves into being by locating and labeling the world around us. If I can name something outside of me, I can locate myself. Because if we want to exist in the fullest sense, then that happens in relationship.

And Jerusalem begins before the beginning, at the evinjtia, the foundation stone. like the Gemara tells us and it was called foundation and he taught because from it the world was founded the Gemara continues we've learned according to the one who says the world was created from Zion for it is taught the world was created from the middle as it says when the dust was poured into a mass and the clods cleaved together now what does it mean that the world was founded from one place from the middle and that this was Zion. This is the foundation stone which precedes any city. I'll tell you, it's an assertion that the fundamental purpose of creation is relationship. You know, the great assertion of Am Yisrael is that the world was created something from nothing.

That means the world isn't simply an accretion of pre-existing elements. It's a product of God's desire that there be. That there be in order that creation offer God the only thing which he cannot have on his own, so to speak, and that's relationship. In Jerusalem, the place from which the world was founded, is the first expression of that desire that there be in order that there can be relationship. It's the ultimate sham, the ultimate over-there-other, that helps me to be more than I am. And it has many, many names. Now, if we're going to talk history in the traditional sense, it's important to note that the first appearance of Jerusalem as Jerusalem is in what's called the execration text. It's a fun word, you can use it with your friends.

These are texts that were discovered in Egypt, comprised of two groups from the 18th and 19th centuries before the Common Era. There are curses written there in the Egyptian script, basically condemning the rulers of Jerusalem and other cities in the land of Canaan, because they were the enemies of the Egyptians. And this time period is more or less the same time period that the Canaanites were in the land, and was the time, of course, of our forefather, Abraham. Now, before we get too far in the story, it's important to be clear. The name Jerusalem does not appear in the Torah, in the five books of Moses. However, it's hinted at rather strongly. And there are two very important stories I want to touch quite briefly, in order to get at not only the root of the name, but its significance, and how its past in many ways sets the stage for its future.

And those two stories center around Avraham. Because the first place where you might look to to find the story of Jerusalem is in a strange incident. After Avraham rescues his nephew Lot from the war of the four kings and the five kings, for those of you guys who are biblical buffs, he goes to a city called Shalem. And there the king of that city, Melchizedek, Melech Shalem. and by the way, the word in Hebrew for city is ir, so ir shalem, you can already start to hear it coming through. He comes out and he greets Avraham with bread and wine, because Melchizedek is a priest of the Most High God, and there's a very strange and enigmatic exchange which happens between them. Truth is, the details of it lie beyond our story, but the key is that Melchizedek hands off the priesthood and the name of a very important place to Avraham, and that name is Shalem and Shalem in Hebrew means wholeness now there's a second story hold that side for a minute the second story is probably familiar to most listeners that's the story of the binding of Isaac now this is a story which deserves several shows in and of itself and I have a lot to say about it at other times but for now we have to recognize that the binding of Isaac is a story of what happens when one's understanding of the world is inadequate to their experience.

God tells Avraham that Isaac will be your future. Now take him and bind him and sacrifice him on the rock. Those two things don't work together. And yet Avraham moved forward holding this impossibility and what emerges from it is a new name. A new name of God. Because in the beginning of the story he says, Elohim yireh. That God of the world sees us, he says to his son. and after he's stopped from the sacrifice, he says, Hashem Yireh, the four-lettered name of God, Sees. And that's a revolution that deserves some contemplation. But what's most important is that he renames the place Yireh, Will Be Seen. So its name was Shalem, Wholeness, Perfection. And Avraham renames it Yireh, Will Be Seen. and the sages tell us that when God wanted to give a permanent name to this special place, he was in a quandary.

Because Melchizedek, the person who had named it Shalem, was a very righteous man. In fact, the sages say he was a descendant of Noach. And Avraham, of course, is Avraham, no explanation needed, and he calls it Yireh. So God says, what am I going to do if I call it Shalem? Avraham will be upset. If I call it Yireh, Melchizedek will be upset. Yireh, Shalem, Yireh, Yerushalayim. and so the name of Yerushalayim is actually an attempt to integrate between two opposites to a sense of perfection and wholeness and completion and a sense of expectation and a future orientation of what will be seen and this carries forward throughout all of Jerusalem's history now, we may have set the stage a little bit but as I said, the name of Jerusalem is not stated in the Torah However, there is a critical definition given to her nonetheless through a very strange name, which sticks, and it is the place which the Lord your God shall choose.

Makom Asher Yivchar. It's the place which God chooses. And the word place, Makom, is often identified with the city of Jerusalem. And the Rambam, the great sage of the 12th century, gives us three reasons why the name of the city remained hidden. He says, this is in the more Nebuchadnezzar, if you want to look it up, he says, first of all, if the nations of the world had known that that's where prayer was received and offerings found favor, each one would have wanted to seize it, and there would have been tremendous struggle and bloodshed. The Rambam knew that as soon as the sanctity of Jerusalem was revealed, that the world would struggle over it. Sound familiar? Second, he says, since the Canaanites, then in the land, had a promise that Israel would come and displace them they would have attempted to destroy this place that was going to be so sacred to them Because of course if Al Mishra wants it then so many of the nations of the world don't want them to have it.

And third, says the Rambam, the Jews would have begun to argue with each other. The tribes would have each wanted it to be within their possession. We saw already in the wilderness how they fought over who got to be the priests. Therefore, the Rambam says that the Torah hid the place and simply called it that, the place. In other words, in order to preserve the Yer, that Obin visionary element that Avraham names will be seen, the place couldn't be specified. However, in order to allow for a real relationship, which could ultimately make creation whole, it has to be a specific place, because remember, there's no such thing as a relationship with an abstraction. You have a relationship with a person, with a thing, not with abstract infinity.

And therefore, it couldn't be named, but rather its name had to emerge at the proper time in history. And indeed, it takes hundreds of years after the tribes cross the Jordan River until there comes one person whose name will forever be associated with Jerusalem, and that is, of course, King David. Now, he captures what he calls Zion, and he renames it Ir David, the city of David. it seems a bit chutzbedek, a bit of pride to rename what is going to be the eternal capital of the Jewish people, the footstool for the throne of God on earth after his own name. But you should understand, it has nothing to do with personal pride. Rather, it's the fulfillment of the vision of the city itself in microcosm.

Because David's relationship to God is all about making the vision of the divine kingdom manifest in flesh and blood. and by renaming the city Ir David and making it such a manifestation of his own personal relationship with God he sets the mold for what this relationship can look like on the macrocosm listen to the words of the Malbin great 19th century sage he's commenting and he says in the book, in the Chronicles 2 Debra Yamin, in the 6th chapter you can look it up, 5th and 6th line it says in the voice of God since the day that I brought my people out of the land of Egypt I chose no city out of all the tribes of Israel to build a house that my name might be there. Neither did I choose a man to be prince over my people Israel.

Now I choose Jerusalem that my name might be there. Notice it's God's name which is there. And I choose David to be over my people Israel. So Mabim explains that to unify the people of Israel, we need two things. One, people have to become one body. And that's what happened, he says, through Jerusalem. Like the verse in Psalms says that, it's the built-up Jerusalem that was joined together with itself. The tribes go up there and they become one. And through all the tribes going, each one facing one place, all the tribes going to one center, all the limbs, he says, are unified to become one encompassing body, and Jerusalem is its heart, pumping the spirit of life through it all. He says, number two, the people are united through the kingship of the house of David, which establishes a leadership that encompasses everyone.

Because the kingship of David, he says, was to this encompassing body, like the brain is into the individual body. And he goes through and he says, by the way, if Jerusalem is the heart, Am Yisrael is the body, Jerusalem is the heart, the king is the head or the brain, he says the holy temple of course, is the soul. And so David captures the city. Solomon infuses it with its soul when he builds the temple, and the first temple period lasts for 410 years. It's this period in which the kingdom of God is meant to be embodied in a kingdom of flesh and blood, with Jerusalem as its heart and divine soul. And it's this period, which in the words of our master and teacher of Avam Yitzchakon, Cook, says that the godly ideal and the national ideal were united in their fullness.

But Cook points out that we are not a religion, nor are we a nation in the simple sense. We are a covenantal people. And the true primary vessels for God's manifestation in the world are the godly ideal in the Torah. And the national ideal in the people in the two are really two sides of the same coin. It was during the first temple period that they found their fullness of relationship. But after David's son Solomon dies, the kingdom he's built can't hold together. and it splits in two and the northern kingdom which calls itself Israel is cut off by their own rebel kings from the intimacy of the divine relationship which is really available only in Jerusalem and they slide quickly into idolatry and are swept away by history.

All that's left of the northern kingdom is the legend of the ten lost tribes and the promise that one day the exiled tribes will return to Jerusalem. By the way, walk the streets You'll see some of their faces. Meanwhile, the southern kingdom of Judah is still holding out, sometimes expanding, sometimes contracting into a city-state bounded by the walls of Jerusalem. Because despite all the difficulties of the first temple period, as long as the heart is sound, there's life in the body. And if Jerusalem is the heart of the divine kingdom on earth, then the prophets are its voice. Sometimes the prophets speak in the voice of God to the people, and sometimes in the voice of the people of the God, but Jerusalem is always their focus.

And it's in the words of the prophets that the majority of these 70 names of Jerusalem appear. By the way, the truth is, I found over 100 names of Jerusalem in the Tanakh, and you can check out, just send me an email at robmike at thelandofisrael.com or you can find me on Facebook and I'll send you a link to an amazing source, resource actually, on over 700 sources on Jerusalem. it's good to do some learning this week. But either way, the prophets represent the height of the development of the wholeness of Israel, the clow, as Ralph Cook calls it, the all-embracing, the kings, the temple, the voice of God. It doesn't get bigger than that. But they're railing against the failure of the individual, of the prat, of their personal morality to live up to this all-embracing holiness.

Because the 70 names of Jerusalem in the Mouths of the Prophets demand that every individual lives up to the existence of such divine grace that it's possible to embody the kingdom of God on earth. Right? But not surprisingly, it doesn't work out. But, hang on. Before we go there, it's also important to add one more thing. It's the prophets who begin to widen the scope of relationship between Israel and the world, and between Jerusalem and the nations. Really, to me, the most moving statement of this is in Yishayahu, in Isaiah, when he says that, first of all, Am Yisrael is now no longer simply a people in its land with their intimate relationship to God, but are actually God's eternal witnesses to existence testifying in order that the whole world can be filled with God's light.

This is the proof that ultimately one God, one world, the role that Israel is meant to play is to let people know. And Isaiah, of course, announces God's joy that in the future that my house will be called a house of prayer for all peoples. unfortunately however the grandeur of the clow of this all-encompassing grace of a kingdom embodied in flesh and blood wasn't sufficient to transform the individuals and the prophets failed to shift the people's behavior you know there comes a point when the people's behavior is so corrupt that to maintain the symbols of God's kingdom on earth the temple, the kings, the prophets actually contradict his kingship. I mean, imagine someone at the height of the rot of the kingdom of Judea had walked into the land and said, Whoa, what's going on?

These people are worshipping idols. They're murdering each other in the streets. It's mayhem. And we said, well, but the temple is here. I mean, God has chosen us. Well, it's one of two things. Either there is no God would be their conclusion, or if there is a God, I don't have anything to do with him. And so therefore, as soon as those symbols contradicted God's kingship rather than expressing them, they had to go. And what replaces it is exile. And it's in exile, specifically in Babylonian exile, which is the first national taste of exile, where Jerusalem first shows its power as the ultimate sham, as the ultimate over there, through all of its names. Because Jerusalem becomes the spiritual compass toward which we as a people, and eventually the whole world, will orient.

Now remember, exile is actually rooted in the idea that I belong somewhere else. If the Jews had gone out of Jerusalem without the promise that they would return, then they simply would have become Babylonians. In the same way I see this challenge amongst my students from North America today that they are no longer in exile They don see themselves as other than where they belong And therefore they challenged to construct a Jewish identity which can be rooted in where they are Good luck with that. History proves it's not a simple task. Because exile is rooted in the idea that I belong somewhere else and that somewhere else is Jerusalem. And it's Daniel, that last fruit of the richness of the first kingdom, who's the first one to turn three times a day toward Jerusalem to pray.

And he shows us that that somewhere else where we belong, that Shem, which we give so many Shemot, so many names to, is Jerusalem. And when the exiles return under the ages of Cyrus the Great, the Persian king who sends us home, it is a return to Jerusalem, to Zion, Zion. We call it Shibat Zion. but it's also there that the fight for Jerusalem really first begins. If you look in the fourth chapter of Ezra, you'll see this story. It says, When the adversaries of Judah and Benjamin heard that the returned exiles were building the temple to the Lord God of Israel, they approached Zerubel and the chiefs of the clans. The Jews came back, and they began to rebuild. And the nations that had been there said, Hey, you're back!

That's great! We've been worshipping your God for 70 years! You're going to build a temple? Give up! Let us help you. Now here's a question. The Jews are coming back broken, exiled for 70 years. They barely managed to scrape together the momentum and the money to go back at all, much to the horror of their leadership who believes that this is actually the fulfillment of the divine promise. Most of them want to stay home and back in Bavel. They don't want to come back and face the difficulties of rebuilding. And then suddenly they're surrounded by the peoples of the land who offer to help. Now it seems that this was a chance to fulfill the words of Isaiah. Beiti, Beetzvilagikare, the call of me, my house will be a house of prayer for all peoples.

All the people want to help us rebuild the house. Shouldn't we do it? But the truth is, what they say is no. It's not for you and us to build a house to our God, but we alone will build it to the Lord God of Israel. We weren't ready. Because in order to have a healthy relationship with the world, in order to be that light to the nations, and in order to make it God's house, God's house, but for all peoples, we have to have a clear sense of ourselves and our relationship to God. We have to have our own name. And so, we built walls instead of bridges. And it began the long fight. Now the second temple period, 420 years according to our tradition, is a deep and rich history, and I advise you to go back and listen to the rest of the Jewish story if you want a little bit of insight on it.

What's important for our purposes now is to know this was no longer the kingdom of God embodied in flesh and blood. As the sages teach us, the divine presence didn't come back to rest when Jerusalem and the temple were rebuilt. In their eyes, this return was a way station. It was an interim time of preparation for the great exile ahead, which, please God, we're seeing the end of even now. In Rav Kook's vision, it was the time of the perfection of the individual. If the first temple had been about that greatness of the whole, remember, prophets, kings, temple, and people killing each other and worshipping idols in the streets. Now, the second temple period, even though there are no prophets or kings, and the Divine Presence doesn't rest in the temple, nevertheless, the individuals are building up the Torah on a level which we can't imagine.

These are the masters of the Mishnahh. They will be the backbone of our Torah to this very day. They're the ones that shape the Torah into a portable homeland, into a playing field for a conversation that we're still engaged in now, which has transcended geography and chronology to the point that I can speak to people who lived 2,000 years ago in a land that I'll never see. It's an astounding time of the development of the individual. It's also, of course, the period when the great empires of the world, of late antiquity at least, begin to place their mark on the city. Persia, Greece, Rome. Again, if you want the whole story, go back and listen or Google it. but there were no new names. The sages, for all the time they spent in the Second Temple Period, did not give the city new names.

We have Zion, and we have Jerusalem, but the new names would have to wait until after the destruction. And maybe, maybe it was the very lack of unity which caused the destruction, by the way. The sages teach us that it was Sinat Chinam, the causeless hatred, the inability to put our individuality aside and unite for the collective sake of Jerusalem that caused the city to be destroyed. Remember, the city burns from within before the Romans ever break her walls. And let that be a lesson to us. Individuality is a very important value. And in truth is, like we said, if there are 70 facets to the Torah, then it means every one of us has to be exactly who we are when we come to the Torah. Otherwise, there's something lacking from the Torah itself.

Nevertheless, the less. There's one Torah. There's one people. There comes a time when we have to put our individuality on the back burner and work collectively for the sake of the city. But that was something that they could not do, and so the city burned. And like I said, it might be that very lack of unity which meant that there could be no new names which stuck. Because even if every individual had in their heart their own personal name for Jerusalem, none of them would have the impact to last. and so the second destruction came at the hands of the Romans. Now, at this point, we've got to give a little spoiler alert for the Messianic future, because this, of course, was a time of great Messianic fervor.

Of Cook's vision was that the first temple was the time of the klal, of the wholeness, the embodiment of the kingdom of God in flesh and blood on earth. The second temple was a time of the prat, of the individual, in which all the great moral, ethical, and legal and spiritual visions of the prophets could be internalized by individuals and worked down into the details of law to the point in which my behavior personally could reflect the kingdom of God. The kingdom of God moves within, and I express it in every action. The vision of redemption will be that the two are reconciled, harmonized. So the sages didn't add any name to Jerusalem in her destruction. But they added something to her status as spiritual compass.

And that was as a vessel for our tears. Because from that moment of destruction onwards, no house would be completed, no wedding fully joyous, because our mourning for Jerusalem casts a shadow to this very day over all our joy. And not only were we crying for her in all our long exile, we believe that she's crying for us. Listen to this story from Psikteravati. Jeremiah said, When I was coming up to Jerusalem, I lifted up my eyes and saw a woman sitting on the mountaintop. Her clothes were black and her hair unkempt. And she cried, Oi, oi, who will comfort me? And I cried, Oi, oi, who will comfort me? And I said to her, If you're a woman, then speak with me. And if you're a ghost, then go away. She answered and said to me, Don't you recognize me?

I'm the one who had seven children. Their father went away to the land across the sea, and just as I was going up to cry for him, a prophet came and said to me, the house collapsed on your seven children, and they've died. And I don't even know who I'm crying for. And I answered and I said to her, you're no better than my mother Zion, Zion, who made a pasture for the beasts of the field. And she said to me, I am your mother Zion. I am she. And the Mitrash goes on and ends, saying flesh and blood built you, and flesh and blood destroyed you. When in the time to come, says the Lord, I will build you. Because thus it is written, the Lord is the builder of Jerusalem. He will gather the outcasts of Israel.

And here we have the essence of exile as is expressed in the story of Jerusalem's destruction. One is, It's because of our sins that we were exiled from our land. It wasn't the Romans who destroyed the temple. It wasn't even the physical acts of the Jewish rebels. It was our sins. Now, this is not just a falling into Jewish guilt. It's an assertion of historical agency, that we are the masters of our own destiny through our ability in our daily lives to embody the kingdom of God on earth. And when we are able to do that, then that kingdom will return. However, it's also a sense that the next time around it's going to be God that builds the city. There's a healthy dose of fatality in that, in the sense that, though we have agency, we're not in charge.

And of course, the other necessary ingredient of exile, lots of weeping. You know, as we've spoken about over the course of this story, the great revolt that destroyed the temple was not one, not two, but three rebellions against Rome, while the rest of the Mediterranean world was basking in the relative calm of the Pax Romana In our fierce need for sovereignty over Jerusalem we Jews were fast proving ourselves to be the indigestible element of the Roman Empire And it's important to put a finger on this strange notion that our divine mission requires sovereignty over particular geography. And that centers on Jerusalem, and of course at its heart, the Temple Mount. if you find it strange that so few square meters of territory are so passionately contested, you just need to understand that it goes to the heart of who we are.

So finally, in their discuss, the Romans broke us and scattered our bodies to the four winds. They renamed our land Palestina, Palestine, which causes us grief to this very day, and they renamed our beloved city, Elia, Capitalina, a new name for Jerusalem, dedicated to false god Jupiter whose shrine was built on the Temple Mount. Now it's at this point where the fledgling Christian church actually began to come into its own distancing themselves from their Jewish roots for reasons that we're not going to go into right now. And Jerusalem, of course, was always significant to the early church. It played a critical role in the ministry of Jesus and the stories of early life and death, of course. But they wouldn't give a name to Jerusalem for another 200 years.

When in the 4th century the Emperor Constantine became the first Christian Emperor, and his mother, the Empress Helena, meets Bishop Macarius of Aelia Capitolina. And he tells her at length about the misery of Jerusalem and the sad state of the holy sites. And in the year 326, she leaves with the blessing, authority, and tons of cash from her son, the Emperor, and goes on a journey of discovery. And there, together with the bishop, she identifies locations of the crucifixion and burial of Jesus, many other events associated with his last days in fact she's the one who establishes the traditions of all of the main Christian sites followed to this very day and so Jerusalem became a place of pilgrimage a holy city a destination for spiritual tourism but not a living center for the holy people now this is critical because it's the disembodiment of exile that makes Jerusalem into the holy city and Israel the Holy Land, as opposed to the homeland.

And if I want to say it a little deeper, I would say that it's actually, in exile, holiness is a detachment from the world. And even further, the belief that holiness means a detachment from the world is exile itself. Islam continues this trend. When they conquer the city in the 7th century, they give it its own name, Al-Quds, which literally means the Holy One in Arabic. Now go back and listen to episode 15 if you want the full story, but just know that it was a Jewish convert to Islam, Kaab, who showed the Muslim conquerors where to put their dome, right on top of the temple. Don't be nervous. I could take you on a tour of the 2,000 years of exile, but we've got to grow things to a close. So once again, in order to do that, I'll use the words of Rabbi Yud HaLevi, the poet laureate of Am Yisrael, a man who sang more passionately for Zion than perhaps any other, and of course who died at her gates.

He understood that the longing for Jerusalem was a mainstay of exile. And furthermore, he knew that as much as we wept for her, we longed to believe that she cried for us as well. As he says in his perhaps most famous poem, Zion, won't you ask after the welfare of your prisoners who seek your welfare and are the remnant of your flock? and how he culminates his words in the Kuzari in his great work of Jewish faith. When he says, the verse in the Psalms, you will rise, have mercy on Zion, for there is time to favor it. The appointed season has arrived, your servants desired its stones and favored it. Thus, he says, this means that Jerusalem can only be rebuilt when Israel yearns for it to such an extent that they embrace her stones and dust.

And I want to tell you that we live in a time when that yearning has begun to actually bear fruit. Now, I'm not going to review all the struggles of the last 200 years, but it is certainly worthy of note that the Jewish national movement chose the name Zionism. Zion, Zion, Jerusalem. Because it's our ability to stitch diverse individuals and communities together from around the world back into a wholeness of nation that revolves around our collective longing for this city. Just look at the map of the War of Independence in 1948. From a strategic perspective, it was absurd to attempt to capture Jerusalem. It looks like a kidney bean. If you haven't seen the map, go look at it, what they call the West Bank, and see how Jerusalem is a finger stuck into what was then hostile territory.

And it seemed an outrageous waste of blood and treasure in a worm which might have been doomed from the outset. And yet, if you want to know why, Ben-Gurion and the other leaders of the supposedly secular Zionist movement fought so fiercely to hold on to at least what they could of the city. Ben-Gurion made it very clear in one of his early speeches in 1949 to the Knesset. He said, We regard it as our duty to declare that the Jewish Jerusalem is an organic and inseparable part of the state of Israel, as it is an inseparable part of the history of Israel, of the faith of Israel. And his generation, and those after him, gave Jerusalem a new name. borrowed from our history perhaps but to a certain degree knew nonetheless Jerusalem of gold because if the state came to us as the poet says on a silver platter through the sacrifice of so many Jerusalem came to us through the gold of our dreams and so here we are and you know I have to tell you sometimes I like blink my eyes and rub and look around and say am I really here?

because no matter what complications, mess, dramas, dreams, nightmares, you name it, whether it's the trash in the streets, the strikes, the issues of other people, etc., etc., etc., you have to remember, I have to remember, that all of my ancestors, all of my ancestors, every single one of them, for the last 2,000 years would have crawled on hands and knees until they bled to be where I'm sitting now. And this is the highest joy and a tremendous responsibility. And so I say, as the eyes of the whole world are on us, as people of the three faiths of the children of Abraham are seeking their holiness and struggling to control the city, and as we as a reborn people have the incredible merit to celebrate 50 years of the reunification of our eternal capital, what is its new name?

What's the name that will once again allow us to locate ourselves in relationship to the center? The name that will reconcile the prot and the cloud, the particular and the universal, and harmonize these forces which are so in conflict today, tearing the world apart. Well, I look back, as always, to the words of the prophet from Isaiah 62. A nation shall see your victory. It's so important that the world should know that the victory of 1967, whatever you may think about his consequences, came from God. and every king your majesty, Mr. Trump, Mr. Putin, dear Prime Minister, majesty belongs to God, and you shall be called by a new name which the Lord himself shall bestow. That the new name of Jerusalem is going to come straight from God.

Because if the future is to have hope, they may have to see the present as a miracle and are coming home to this city of our dreams as the giving of a new name, a new relationship with God. And how are we meant to respond? Well, for there, I look to the end of the book of Ezekiel. And the very last line says, And the name of the city from that day on shall be the Lord is there. The Lord is Shem. Shem, Shem, name and there. So may we merit to know that God is with us as we are here together in this great and holy city. I just want to thank you and invite you to join the people who support this show and make it free and available to everyone out there. You can join them in supporting it by going to www.patreon.com and finding my M.

Foyer page to hit the donate button. Or you can send me a message at RobMikeFacebook and I can give you the details there. I want to thank the folks at the Land of Israel Network for all their hard work in getting this word out to the world. I want to thank Pardes Institute. that's p-a-r-d-s dot org dot i-l for giving me the opportunity to touch so many hearts and minds of young Jews out there and I also want to thank Sulem Yaakov because it's my home now thank you for listening I'm Rob Moy and this is the Jewish story