Drinking Jerusalem

A strange vision...I seem to see the city of Jerusalem, David's city in all it's raging glory, with the dirt of centuries clinging to it. And what 's amazing is that I seem to be able to drink it all in, to breathe it all in..the smells the sounds, the blood, the tears, all of it.

Maybe it's because of the recent spate of terrorist attacks there..no, it isn't.Such things have happened through the ages, from one enemy after another.

It's because there seems to be a consensus among people who could care less and don't understand what Jerusalem means that the Jews have to sacrifice half of it with the idea that they will somehow get a little bit of peace for a change in trade.

Think about it - the Kotel, the placed where religious Jews believes G-d's spirit dwells closest to the earth, the Temple Mount, the ancient site of the Holy Temple..all judenrein because somebody else says so.The old streets, the gates. the old synagogues, even the Christian churches. all under the heel of foreigners who will destroy them, just as they destroyed synagogues and holy places when they held it last. Just the way they destroyed Joseph's Tomb, and the way they destroy any Jewish relics on the Temple Mount in an attempt to erase the Jew's connection with Jerusalem.

Why should the Jews give it up? Has the world done anything, ever to see that the Jews were able to share even a part of Jerusalem? Never. If anything, they've tried to help take it away.

Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. They've paid that butcher's bill many times over. For centuries, Jews in the most dire of circumstances dreamed of it, prayed for 'next year in Jerusalem'...it sustained them in the house of their enemies, and no one has the right to take it away..not Condi Rice, not Mahmoud Abbas, not even Ehud Olmert or Tzipi Livni.

It doesn't belong to them and it's not theirs to take give away.

As I drink it in, I sense all of the ruach, the spirit of the Jews who have lived and died there and I know as sure as I write this that if the Jews allow themselves to be forced into giving up Jerusalem, the whole heart will go out of Israel. There might as well not even be an Israel anymore.

What amazes me even more is that the Jews have had David's Holy city back in their hands for forty years now and have refused to make it their own by rebuilding the Beyt Hamikdosh, the Holy Temple.I remain convinced that many of the problems and dangers Israel faces today stem from that one instance of neglect of duty.

Instead, all that remains is the Kotel, the one wall left to the Jews to remind them of the glory that was and the glory that can still be.And Israel is even being pressed to give that away!If they do, it will not buy peace...only contempt, for who could respect a nation that would sell its heritage?

Tomorrow is the Ninth of Av, when Jews traditionally lament the siege of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple.

That's worthy of tears...but even more sorrowful is the thought of it happening again, not because Israel is conquered, but because some would be willing to try to bargain away something they don't own in the first place.

The future and the past don't exist independently...frequently they shake hands with each other and grin sardonically as they pass on the streets of time. To affect one is to affect the other as the dance of history goes on.

Selah.