Don’t Desecrate Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day
It is not hard to think of times and places where intimidating marches took place, whose threatening, violent rhetoric forced Jews to shutter their stores and hide in their homes. When such awful marches take place in our day, we fully expect the Jewish community and their allies to severely criticize the authorities charged with maintaining the peace if their best solution is to cave in to the violent bullies and insist that Jews stay home so as not to instigate the marchers.
It is hard to stomach that if we replace the word ‘Jews’ with ‘Arabs’ in our opening sentence, we have an accurate description of what happens every year when the Jerusalem Day flag parade marches through the Muslim Quarter. And it is upsetting that the criticism we would expect to hear from the world should a Jewish community anywhere suffer in this way (and they do), is barely heard here. But I think it is hardest for the soul of Jerusalem to see herself being celebrated in a way that represents the desecration of her deepest message for us.
Whenever criticism is voiced of the violent behavior of the group that marches through the Moslem Quarter- not a new phenomenon, but one that has gotten steadily worse from year to year in every way- the response is frequently: Why are you focusing on a tiny minority, when 98% of the celebrations of Jerusalem Day are peaceful and inspiring? Why focus on the weeds, they say, look at the garden! But whoever wants to see this phenomenon as merely weeds needs to be the first to take responsibility for it, before the weeds take over the garden. If you ignore them, you can’t be surprised when people look at your garden and find it repulsive.
Repulsive is exactly what it is- behavior that repels and distances people from Jerusalem and from celebrating her day. I always loved Jerusalem Day, but last year, for the first time, although I feared that it might damage my love of the day, I decided that I needed to see what happens in the Moslem quarter with my own eyes. I hoped that perhaps it is exaggerated by the media, perhaps it’s not really so bad. It was worse. Hours and hours before the police were to enforce the shuttering of shops, there were already rowdy bands of young men intimidating, banging, spitting, surrounding elderly men while singing insulting songs, trying to demonstrate their power and their ownership over the place.
The irony is that their demonstration of power was actually a demonstration of the weakness of Israeli sovereignty. The police, who are meant to possess the monopoly on the use of force in a functioning society, tried in vain to to do their job, to maintain order and to protect civilians from violent anarchists with kippot and tzitzit. At times, the police would begin to chase one of the youth who had crossed some imaginary line from violence and bullying to too much violence and bullying. This would often cause the others to turn their anger and even violence towards the police. “Who do you think you are to try to stop us? Are you traitors? We are the masters of this house.” At the end of the day, they were right. On the day celebrating the regaining of Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, these youth were undermining it.
But even more painful than their insult to sovereignty is the insult to Jerusalem. Jerusalem’s message to us, rooted in her past and in her future, is that we cannot own her. What the Shemita year declares every seven years, “for you are strangers and residents with me.” Jerusalem declares every day. Jerusalem was not divided amongst the tribes, and the sanctity of Jerusalem never ceased, because it was not dependent on conquest, nor on settlement, but only on God’s presence. The story of Jerusalem in the Torah begins with Abraham’s meeting with Malkitzedek king of Shalem, who blesses Abraham and God. The rabbis understood that Shalem is Jerusalem, and Radak explains that he was called Malkitzedek because “Jerusalem is the place of justice and peace, and cannot tolerate iniquity, theft, and abominable acts for very long.” Jerusalem’s destiny is to be a “house of prayer for all nations.” The march through the Muslim quarter as it takes place today represents the antithesis of Jerusalem. It should not be allowed to desecrate the celebrations of this holy day.
