With Sunday's arrival of Yom Yerushalayim, I can't help but sweetly reminisce about my years living in the Old City of Jerusalem. So many songs have captured the beauty of Yerushalayim. Yehoram Gaon, Naomi Shemer, SAFAM, Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Yaakov Shwekey and many others have recorded stunningly exquisite tunes that capture our national relationship with Jerusalem, causing me to tear up every time I hear them. But to my mind, few of these gorgeous tunes can match the lyrical eloquence and musical flourishes of Abie Rottenberg's anthem which he composed for the third Journeys album (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGRfnaDL7KM).


He captures the city's essence. Here is a snippet of his song/poem.

Where else in this world can you find a wall,
Whenever you touch it – it touches you
Reach for its stones, they're moist with the tears
Of our hopes and our dreams that we know will soon come true.

Yerushalayim – the place to live
Yerushalayim – harim saviv (mountains surround her)
Yerushalayim – Ir shel Shalom (the city of peace)
Yerushalayim – we're going home.
Yerushalayim – the sky so blue
Yerushalayim – we turn to you.
Yerushalayim – ir shel shalom
Yerushalayim – we're going home!

But the city of peace – with that word in its very name – has not seen peace in quite a while. The hope for true tranquility is mentioned in this week's parsha as a consequence of following the Torah.

"ונתתי שלום בארץ ושכבתם ואין מחריד והשבתי חיה רעה מן הארץ וחרב לא תעבור בארצכם" (ויקרא כ"ו:ו)
“And I will give peace in the land, and you shall lie down, and none shall make you afraid; and I will remove evil beasts from the land, nor shall the sword go through your land” (Vayikra 26:6).

Rashi, quoting the Midrash (Toras Kohanim 2:3) stresses that the blessing rendered in this verse does not merely promise the avoidance of war and all that entails. Militaries will not even pass through one's land.
In this context, Me'am Loez reminds us of one of the saddest stories in Jewish history: the saga of Yoshiyahu. It could have been a Shakespearean tragedy. Perhaps the Bard learned his tragedy genre from this dejected story in Tanach. On Tisha Ba'v we recall this story. Rav Aharon Soloveichik has said that if one only has time to recite one Tisha B'av elegy, it should be the tragic narrative about Yoshiyahu and his demise. Rashi (Divrei Hayaim II 35:25) relates that this narrative (based on M'lachim II, chapter 23) needs to be recalled during every tragedy.

Pharaoh N'cho sent a message to the young king Yoshiyahu that he planned to attack Assyria (modern day Iraq) and it would be necessary for his troops to pass through Israel. Yoshiyahu sent his troops to Megiddo to prevent Pharaoh N'cho from entering the land. The result of this strategic move was catastrophic.

Why did Yoshiyahu decide to stand up to the Egyptians? King Yoshiyahu's biography will be instructive. But first, his grandparents.

The righteous king Chizkiyahu received a prophecy that he will sire wicked children. He opted not to marry. The prophet Yishayah (Isaiah) counseled him to marry, and offered his daughter as his wife. Indeed, the wicked Menashe resulted in this holy union. Menashe was one of the most irreverent, irreligious and distant kings from God we ever had. Menashe substituted his name for Moshe's in the Torah scroll in the Holy of Holies. Menashe killed his wives when they became pregnant. Nonetheless, born into this utter vacuum of righteousness was Yoshiyahu, who was wholly unaware of God and His Torah. Yoshiyahu's story of return to his roots is remarkable and inspiring. Tradition records that when he ascended the throne as a youngster, there was but one uncorrupted Torah scroll in all of Israel. He opened it up and the Torah was rolled to the admonition, the blessings and curses. He immediately undertook a massive return to God, which triggered a mass religious renaissance in Israel. People assumed he was the messiah.

Yoshiyahu assumed since he had increased the presence and reverence of God in Israel, the blessings of the Torah would apply for the entire generation. As such, a foreign sword would not pass through his country. Yirmiyahu witnessed the death of Yoshiyahu, whose last words were “tzadik HASHEM Hu ki pihu marisi, The Lord is righteous; for I have rebelled against his word (Eichah 1:18). The prophet Yirmiyahu eulogized Yoshiyahu:


"רוח אפינו משיח ה' נלכד בשחיתותם, אשר אמרנו בצלו נחיה בגויים" (איכה ד:כ)
“The breath of our nostrils, the anointed of the Lord, was taken in their pits, of whom we said, “Under his shadow we shall live among the nations” (Eichah 4:20).
Although this verse finds its source in Tanach's most somber volume, the author of the famous Shabbos zemer Tzur Mi'shelo, opted to end the third stanza with these words, as a pining for redemption.

When Yoshiyahu was mortally wounded at Megiddo, the Navi tells us (M'lachim II 23:30) that post mortem, he was transported from Megiddo to Jerusalem where he was buried. Yoshiyahu wanted to be buried in the capital city, in his ancestral sepulcher.
I can't help but think about Jerusalem – our most holy city – when this verse is read and during this time of year. Sunday we will celebrate the Jubilee (49!) anniversary of the reunification and liberation of Jerusalem. The ancient maps of the Middle East showed how Jerusalem and Israel were at the crossroads of civilization. Merging two continents, Canaan/Palestine/Israel was a commonly trespassed region. We Jews have suffered greatly being “in the way” of incoming armies and hoards who decided to alter their missions to commit pogroms or attempted genocide. Until 1967, there were foreign soldiers in the Holy City. Everything changed with Uzi Narkiss' three word declaration that changed world history: har habayit b'yadeinu, the Temple Mount is in our hands!

Tragically, we still see plenty of weapons in Israel needed to defend our Holy Land. I still remember my first bus ride sitting next to a very tired IDF soldier. We sat in a row with two seats. I was at the window. He sat next to me and immediately fell asleep. The top of his M-16 assault rifle was peeking through his knees. I made sure his magazine was unattached to the rifle before I was able to relax. While I felt pride and experienced excitement sitting next to an armed soldier, (but of course, I was too cool to show my excitement!), I was also sad that the reality of a Jewish homeland dictated such a status quo. I was sad that there was a need for weapons, far from the reality with which I was accustomed back in the Northeast US. Today, our enemies from within continue to attack us randomly with knives and any weapon they can find.

Yoshiyahu's death ended perhaps the greatest period of national outreach in Jewish history. Jews were returning to God en masse. His hubris in thinking he was the chosen one represented his very downfall, his fatal flaw to use vocabulary from high school English literature. The victory in 1967 had the same emotions, but in a different order. There was existential fear, which was followed by elation that introduced messianic discussions. What also followed was an uptick in Jewish involvement, Torah study and closeness to God. It wasn't just the countless secular soldiers who saw battlefield miracles that could only be described as miracles. They witnessed the matriarchs and patriarchs standing with them on the banks of the Red Sea, in tanks in the Sinai, and accompanying teenaged paratroopers descending Mount Scopus towards the elusive Old City. Even the self-described “secular” Yitzchak Rabin, the IDF Chief of Staff during 1967, ultimately named the battle “The Six Day war”, referring not to the duration of the war, but as a reference to the timeframe for God's Creation of the Universe. The very name of the war was the future prime minister's recital of Kiddush, testifying to the Divine formation of the world.

We Jews have forever prayed for peace. Jerusalem, whose very name denotes that desire, is the heart of the Jewish people. Imagine the elation when that heart began beating on its own, after centuries of life-support, when the life-saving pulses of the Jewish people came from foreign sources.

The bridge of Abie Rottenberg's song is more prayer than song.

Dreams of past splendor and whispers of glory
Your walls tell your story, your song waiting so long
For the time when our tears will be stilled,
Our prayers fulfilled,
Our city rebuilt.


Amen.