
בס"ד
Rabbi Moshe Dov Casper
1916-1988
On the occasion of his 30th yahrzeit – 10 Teveth 5778 (28 Dec 2017)
Rabbi Bernard Moses Casper was born and educated in London. He obtained his rabbinic ordination in Israel. During the Second World War, he was commissioned as senior chaplain to the Jewish infantry brigade in the British army. Rabbi Casper held a number of important posts in the rabbinic and educational fields, and was Dean of Student Affairs at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1963, he was appointed as chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of Johannesburg and Federation of Synagogues of South Africa. He retired to Jerusalem in 1986 and passed away on the 10th of Teveth in 1988.
In 1983 the South African Zionist Federation hosted a panel discussion on the subject of the future of Jerusalem with a Protestant clergyman, Reverend Bond and Archbishop Cassidy on behalf of the Papal Nuncio. Rabbi Casper was asked to present the Jewish position which has been transcribed. This is an eloquent and emotional response relevant to the present debate on Jerusalem.
“No other nation in the whole of history has wept for Zion.”
Madam Chairman, Archbishop Cassidy, Reverand Bond, Ladies and Gentleman,
In 1954, at the close of a visit to Israel, a very distinguished theologian and prelate Monsignor Francesci said some very warm words just as he was about to leave the country. He said, among other things, “We understand that the Hebrew people has a spiritual connection with us; that their strange survival goes beyond the customary norms by which an ordinary nation evolves. And we Christians, if we have not lost the sense of Christianity, cannot but perceive to what a profound extent modern Israel is linked to our own salvation.”
I can’t help feeling that those are sentiments which perhaps explain why it is possible for a panel such as this arraigned before you here this evening and that we should be able to meet together in order to discuss what might be considered the best steps for the future course of Jerusalem and its situation. Jerusalem has occupied a central position in the life of the Jewish people for 3,000 years indeed, and more. Now this central position of Jerusalem in Jewish history, religion, law, and tradition, is fully recognized by enlightened world opinion. In the 1944 edition of the Westminster Dictionary of the Bible prepared by Christian theological authorities, Jerusalem is described in the following words: The sacred city and well known capital of Judah, of Judea, of Palestine, and of the Jews throughout the world.
We have come here this evening to talk apparently about the future of Jerusalem. Yet, surely, so far as we are concerned, for those who are the privileged ones sitting as members of your discussing panel, as far as we are concerned, we are believers, all of us, and surely we would agree that the future of Jerusalem has already been determined long ago by the authority wherewith, no less than Scripture itself! We are not going to quibble with what is written, for example, in the Book of Samuel. In the Second Book of Samuel we are told how David, after he was appointed king after he had reigned for seven-and-a-half years in Hebron, moved to Jerusalem and took Jerusalem from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of his kingdom because it was in a very convenient position. It was high up in the mountains surrounded by hills. It was very good to defend. It was possible from there, because of its relevant position to Judea and Samaria [and] because of the fact that it was in the position between the south and the north of the country, it was possible for him to rule the whole of the country. All of the twelve tribes and turn the twelve tribes into one nation to unify the people. And so he made Jerusalem the capital of all Israel. His son, King Solomon, sanctified it. And I want to say very clearly that it was King Solomon who sanctified not only the place in which the Temple itself was built, but he sanctified the whole of the city. If you look in the Book of Kings in the third chapter, you’ll find the words which tell us how he married a strange wife, the daughter of pharaoh. “And he brought her to the City of David until he had finished building his house and the House of the Lord and the wall of Jerusalem roundabout.” The city was known as Ir David, the City of David. It was known as Metzudat David, the Fortress of David, because David actually lived for a while within that fortress so that he should be safe. It was known as Tzion [Zion], and of course it was known as Yerushalayim [Jerusalem]. And the texts which I have quoted refer to Jerusalem in all of those terms.
When King Solomon had finished building the whole of the Temple and he had assembled all of the people and consecrated the Temple, and prayed a very long and distinguished prayer which you will find in the eighth chapter in the Book of Kings. He referred there to “Their land which Thou gavest to our fathers…HaIr, The City which you have chosen.” The City which you have chosen, “ And also this House which I have built for Thy Name.” So Solomon consecrated the city as a whole. Not merely a Temple Mount.
Well, in order to eschew and avoid a long historical record here just now, you know that after some few hundred years that commonwealth and state was destroyed. It was destroyed in the year 586 before the Current Era. It was in relation to that you have heard from both Archbishop Cassidy and Reverend Bond, the psalmist spoke that magnificent psalm which I’m sure all of you know: By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down, yea we wept when we remembered Zion.” No other nation in the whole of history has wept for Zion. “If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, let my right hand be cut off.” Which other nation in the world has had that kind of sentiment? Zion, Jerusalem, was the soul of the nation.
It wasn’t very long, perhaps half a century, barely half a century after that destruction that the whole of the Babylonian empire was itself conquered by the Persian empire of that time, ancient Persia, and the new emperor, Cyrus, issued his famous edict of which you will read in the first few verses of the Book of Ezra, as well as in the Book of Chronicles and elsewhere in which he says: “Now I be made emperor over all these nations.” And he calls upon the Jews within his kingdom, within his empire to rise up and go back where? To go back to Jerusalem! To rebuild that city of Jerusalem. “He has, (He meaning G-d) has chosen me to build Him the House in Jerusalem.” “Who is of His people that want to go back, let them go back.”
Jerusalem and the people. Which people? The Jewish people. The Jewish people all in exile. Go back to the city which is yours. Already at that time there was a clearly established link between Jerusalem and the Jewish people. And you know that it wasn’t very long after that that Nehemiah, we are told, was charged to go back also in order to re-assist in the rebuilding of the walls of the city. The walls of the city of Jerusalem. If we are talking in terms of the future of Jerusalem, we must turn our minds back to what has been said in that relevance by Scriptural sources. I was very happy indeed to hear many of the quotations that were advanced here this evening by both my distinguished fellow panelists. Let me also just mention one or two. You’ll forgive me if I hesitate a little. I have got them in Hebrew and I’ll have to translate while I go. Well, there’s a few known words from Isaiah: “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people. Dabru al lev Yerushalayim, Speak to the heart of Jerusalem.” It’s all in one verse. The people and Jerusalem. Again, the 27th chapter: “It shall come to pass in that day, there will be a great shofar sounded and those who are lost in the land of Assyria [Ashur if you like] shall come and those who are oppressed and scattered in the land of Egypt.” They should all come back. Vehishtachavu laKodesh, “and they will worship to the Lord in the holy city on the holy mountain beYerushalayim, in Jerusalem.” Who shall come back? All the scattered ones of the people of Israel. Again in the 52nd chapter: “You open, broad places of Jerusalem, open your mouths and speak forth with song, [all of you together], for the Lord has comforted His people, He hath redeemed Jerusalem.” His people and Jerusalem. His people and Jerusalem. Over and over again. His people and Jerusalem. Psalms 88: “Bonei Yerushalayim Hashem, The Lord doth build Jerusalem. He will gather in the scattered ones from Israel.” Perhaps one more from Zachariah. In the eighth chapter. I will read it to you in English. I’ve jotted it down: “I will save my people from the east country, and from the west country, and I will bring them and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.”
So our dream for the future is the prophetic dream for the future. When we read Scripture we read it meaningfully and directly. No roundabout ideas and suggestions as to what it might have meant or what it could be suggested to mean, later on, a thousand years later or something like that. We read it directly straight as it says. We understand it. Jerusalem, or Zion, is spoken of very frequently as, well the Jewish people I should say, are spoken of very frequently as the Daughter of Zion. In the year 70 when the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and the Second Jewish Commonwealth, Jerusalem itself was orphaned. Its mother people was scattered into exile and Jerusalem was orphaned. And from then it was ruled by a succession of foreign rulers and conquerors, step-fathers and step-mothers and Jerusalem was treated by them as the proverbial orphaned child. It was beaten; neglected. It was left desolate, dirty, despoiled, devastated, uncared for. The Romans not only destroyed it, but razed it to the ground and brought a plowshare to go over its ground. Why, they even tried to change its name to aelia capitolina so that the very name Jerusalem should be forgotten. Then came the Byzantines. You’ve heard about them a little bit. Byzantine rulers began to look back. After their conversion to Christianity, they began to look back to Jerusalem. And they went and tried to mark out certain places and certain spots in the city in which certain events according to their tradition had taken place which were of sacred meaning to them. And they wanted to mark those spots with chimes, with churches, with convents, with monasteries, and to make them places that you have heard, places of pilgrimage. As Archbishop Cassidy made clear to us just know, they didn’t just think of Jerusalem as a place where people could live in. It was thought of mainly as a spiritual center so that they wanted to have a link with those special spots which meant something to them because of their older tradition.
And after the Byzantine period well, came the Arab-Moslem period. And what happened during that period? Please note: that was only in the 7th century, 638 of the Current Era. Why, for so much as we are concerned, that is only around the corner. Jerusalem had already been the capital of Israel for over 1,000 years before that and the world had accepted it as the capital of Israel for all of that thousand year period. When the Arabs ruled it, they didn’t regard Jerusalem as their main city. There main city was Mecca and there second city was Medina. At first there was a suggestion with Jerusalem, some sort of connection with it, but Mohammed turned away from Jerusalem and turned towards Mecca and from then on the followers of Islam turn to this very day when they pray, they turn in the direction of Mecca, not of Jerusalem. Only Jews turn in the direction of Jerusalem when they pray. In the direction of Jerusalem and nowhere else!
The Arab Moslems did in fact build that very beautiful building that we see, known as the Dome of the Rock. It’s a very fine, big mosque. The Dome of the Rock. I think they built it in 690 or something like that in the Current Era, but they never encouraged people to go there for their pilgrimage. When their followers went on a pilgrimage, and to this very day when they go on a pilgrimage, they have to go and make their hajj as they call it, to Mecca. Not to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not even the capital city when they ruled the country. Do you know they built themselves an additional, special new town which should serve them as their main city, the town of Ramle. I hope Archbishop Cassidy will forgive me if I read a few words written by another Christian theologian, Professor Stendow, published in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin of 1967. He writes as follows: “For Christians and Moslems, the term holy sites is an adequate expression of what matters. Here are sacred places hallowed by holy events. Here are the places for pilgrimage. But Judaism is different. Its religion is not tied to sites, but to the land. Not to what happened in Jerusalem, but to Jerusalem itself. And that I can’t help feeling is a fundamental difference between Judaism and the other religions. As far as Judaism is concerned, the whole of Jerusalem is holy and sacred and fundamental to its belief. The whole of Jerusalem.”
A little bit later, in 1099, the Crusaders came and they became the foreign conquerors, the new foreign conquerors and rulers of the land. Their period was marked by what? By murder and pillage. They tried to prevent Jews from coming into the city of Jerusalem altogether. The Jews managed with a bit of bribery and they were allowed in sometimes for special occasions like Tisha b’Av. And then in 1517 the Turks came on the scene. And the Ottomans ruled it as part of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years, from 1517 until 1917, when the British came towards the end of the First World War under General Allenby. They marched in and took possession of it. During the whole of that period of the 400 years, Jerusalem was nothing more than a backwater, so far as the Ottomans were concerned. It was a neglected, distant province. And even during the time when the British took charge, from 1917 until they gave it up in 1948, there was discrimination against Jews too. I’m sorry to have to say it, but it is true. I’ll give you one or two illustrations. The majority of the population during the whole of that period was Jewish. Jerusalem has had a majority Jewish population for well over 100 years; nearly 150 years, yet they insisted that the mayor of Jerusalem must always be an Arab. The climax to all this came in 1948 and for the nineteen years that followed right up until 1967. That is the period marked by what is called Jordanian rule. I suppose it should be called more correctly, the rule by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan because it was Transjordan which unleashed war and conquered that part of Jerusalem. I mean the old, original part of Jerusalem in 1948 and they also conquered all the rest of the territory on the West Bank, about which we’ve heard something about this evening. The euphemism for Samaria and Judea. They conquered it and misruled it for nineteen years. They trodded it down.
It’s not easy to speak about that period without a certain amount of emotion. During the whole of those nineteen years Jews were literally forbidden to enter the city of Jerusalem. I’m not talking about the new city outside the confines of the walls. I’m talking about the original, Old City of Jerusalem which is now in our hands. Almost all of the synagogues were reduced to rubble. On the Mt. of Olives, some 38,000 stones, tombstones, in that ancient cemetery of Jewish sacred interest were pulled up and broken and used for terrible purposes – for making roads, for building bunkers, and for constructing, if you’ll excuse me, latrines. Sacred scrolls of the law, which had been preserved for hundreds of years were torn and burnt and destroyed and left lying as part of the rubbish. There was an attempt made during that time period to obliterate every trace of the Jewish past. The city was divided and it was disfigured. It was made Judenrein; the only time in the whole of its history when that was successfully carried out. Where was the voice of protest at that time with regard to the Jewish holy places? We waited in vain to hear such a voice of protest, neither from a lay source nor from any spiritual source of international consequence did we hear any word in this regard.
In the light of this historical record, I am driven to ask the question, is there any other nation apart from ours that has any basis for a claim to rulership over the holy city? Is there any other faith, any other group of people, any other central authority that has an entitlement to say how the city as a city should be ruled and controlled? Never! In 1967, came the end of what might be termed the Arabization policy. There was an end to all bans and restraints at that time and the beginning of freedom of movement for everybody. There was a religious freedom to all faiths and an accessibility to all the holy places was immediately guaranteed.
I had the privilege of being in Jerusalem in those days. And I remember when the wall dividing the Old City from the New City was pulled down. I remember how thousands upon thousands of people – Jews, Arabs, Moslems, Christians – how they all came down to see each other. Each one wanting to see what it was that he had been denied the site of for nineteen years. Not only Jews, [but] Arabs living in Israel flocked to the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque to pray for the first time in nineteen years. It was for them a homecoming too, in a way. Christians from Israel who had had difficulty as Archbishop Cassidy had had in crossing from the New City of Jerusalem to the Old City, were now free to do so, and have thank G-d, been free to do so ever since.
Now, something very special has been said with regard to the internationalizing or the policy otherwise [known as] the internationalization of the city of Jerusalem. I want to voice what appears to me to be the basis of Jewish, and more particularly of Israeli objections to this policy which has been proposed and apparently is still the avouched policy of the Holy See. Let me go through this very quickly. First, we claim that there are Jewish rites in this city, which are historic rites going back 3,000 years, and that can likely not be set aside and there is nobody else in the world that can claim that. Secondly, if we had any sort of international control, there would presumably have to be an international body to control it – a commissioner, a counsel; some governmental machinery in order to control it of an international character would it not necessarily and inevitably reflect the politics of the states comprising that body? And if it is to be under the auspices of the United Nations, for example, would we wish a country like Russia to have a direct say in the control of the holy city?
The safety of the holy places, I want to emphasize, does not require a policy of internationalization. The government of Israel, soon after 1967, after Jerusalem came back into Israeli hands, the government of Israel made it abundantly clear that the holy places would be respected of all religions and it’s a wonderful thing to say that to this very day sixteen years have gone by [and] I don’t think there has ever been a period in the entire history of the city of Jerusalem where there has been such openness and such freedom of worship and of religious tolerance and of availability and accessibility of all holy places and shrines to all the people who are interested in these things. Why to suggest that there should be an internationalization of Jerusalem because there are holy places in it? One might as well suggest that Italy should give up and internationalize the city of Rome because The Vatican is in it. True, it’s a very important center and seat. There is no reason whatsoever, it seem to me, to encroach upon the civil liberties of Jerusalem’s population because of holy places. Israel, the government of Israel, has granted administrative powers. The government of Israel says that we don’t want to rule the holy places of India, or any one of the great faiths or religions. They must rule the holy places themselves. We grant them administrative rights and powers and let them arrange what has to be arranged and let them manage their affairs. On the contrary, the government of Israel has assisted in restoring many of the damaged places of worship, [and] other holy places; of putting them into a play, a situation of dignity, and of honor and of reverence, without, at all, a policy of internationalization.
The present system, which in fact has been in existence all these last several years, a decade and a half, this is a system which is one of a peaceful coexistence: men and women of all faiths intermingle freely. There is a regularity and normalcy of social and commercial intercourse in the whole of the city. People do business together. People talk together. They have cultural activities together. They go into the streets together. Go into the marketplaces and you will see them all mingling, thousands of them together, crowds of them together. They laugh and they sing together. It is true that there are problems as well. Can you tell me one country in the world where there are not problems? But I would say that this is the first time in 2,000 years that there has been such an air of peaceful coexistence in the holy city of Jerusalem. The first time in 2,000 years such as we find today. Why? It reminds me again of that verse in Zachariah. Look at what he says: “Thus said the Lord of Hosts, there shall yet old men and old women sit in the streets of Jerusalem. Every man with his staff in his hand for very age, and the broad places of the city shall be filled with boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.” That’s what we have! That’s Jerusalem today.
One last word, please. We are facing a world today which seems to be threatened with lengthening shadows. I want to say that we’ve had evidence of it only a few days ago on our own doorstep, in Pretoria of that darkness. In the midst of that sort of darkness, the time is ripe for us to join hands and to build and strengthen and expand that holy city of Jerusalem to be the beacon of light that it was intended to be so that it may illumine the world. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Not only in a few words, but by having people live together in that atmosphere of coexistence to which I was referring a little while ago. This very Sabbath, we Jews in our synagogues will be reading from prophetic writ that we quote: “Sing out and rejoice, Oh! Daughter of Zion for I come. Behold I am coming and I shall dwell in the midst of thee, said the Lord. And the Lord shall cause Judah to inherit his portion in the holy land. And he shall choose Jerusalem again. Be silent all flesh before the Lord for He is waked up from His holy habitation.” Let us all join hands in promoting that openness and freedom of the city of Jerusalem. And let a free and united Jerusalem proclaim redemption to all mankind.
Rabbi Casper Affixing Mezuzah at Jaffa Gate July 1, 1968
Prepared for publication by Moshe Kahan
Rabbi Moshe Dov Casper
1916-1988
On the occasion of his 30th yahrzeit – 10 Teveth 5778 (28 Dec 2017)
Rabbi Bernard Moses Casper was born and educated in London. He obtained his rabbinic ordination in Israel. During the Second World War, he was commissioned as senior chaplain to the Jewish infantry brigade in the British army. Rabbi Casper held a number of important posts in the rabbinic and educational fields, and was Dean of Student Affairs at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. In 1963, he was appointed as chief rabbi of the United Hebrew Congregation of Johannesburg and Federation of Synagogues of South Africa. He retired to Jerusalem in 1986 and passed away on the 10th of Teveth in 1988.
In 1983 the South African Zionist Federation hosted a panel discussion on the subject of the future of Jerusalem with a Protestant clergyman, Reverend Bond and Archbishop Cassidy on behalf of the Papal Nuncio. Rabbi Casper was asked to present the Jewish position which has been transcribed. This is an eloquent and emotional response relevant to the present debate on Jerusalem.
“No other nation in the whole of history has wept for Zion.”
Madam Chairman, Archbishop Cassidy, Reverand Bond, Ladies and Gentleman,
In 1954, at the close of a visit to Israel, a very distinguished theologian and prelate Monsignor Francesci said some very warm words just as he was about to leave the country. He said, among other things, “We understand that the Hebrew people has a spiritual connection with us; that their strange survival goes beyond the customary norms by which an ordinary nation evolves. And we Christians, if we have not lost the sense of Christianity, cannot but perceive to what a profound extent modern Israel is linked to our own salvation.”
I can’t help feeling that those are sentiments which perhaps explain why it is possible for a panel such as this arraigned before you here this evening and that we should be able to meet together in order to discuss what might be considered the best steps for the future course of Jerusalem and its situation. Jerusalem has occupied a central position in the life of the Jewish people for 3,000 years indeed, and more. Now this central position of Jerusalem in Jewish history, religion, law, and tradition, is fully recognized by enlightened world opinion. In the 1944 edition of the Westminster Dictionary of the Bible prepared by Christian theological authorities, Jerusalem is described in the following words: The sacred city and well known capital of Judah, of Judea, of Palestine, and of the Jews throughout the world.
We have come here this evening to talk apparently about the future of Jerusalem. Yet, surely, so far as we are concerned, for those who are the privileged ones sitting as members of your discussing panel, as far as we are concerned, we are believers, all of us, and surely we would agree that the future of Jerusalem has already been determined long ago by the authority wherewith, no less than Scripture itself! We are not going to quibble with what is written, for example, in the Book of Samuel. In the Second Book of Samuel we are told how David, after he was appointed king after he had reigned for seven-and-a-half years in Hebron, moved to Jerusalem and took Jerusalem from the Jebusites and established it as the capital of his kingdom because it was in a very convenient position. It was high up in the mountains surrounded by hills. It was very good to defend. It was possible from there, because of its relevant position to Judea and Samaria [and] because of the fact that it was in the position between the south and the north of the country, it was possible for him to rule the whole of the country. All of the twelve tribes and turn the twelve tribes into one nation to unify the people. And so he made Jerusalem the capital of all Israel. His son, King Solomon, sanctified it. And I want to say very clearly that it was King Solomon who sanctified not only the place in which the Temple itself was built, but he sanctified the whole of the city. If you look in the Book of Kings in the third chapter, you’ll find the words which tell us how he married a strange wife, the daughter of pharaoh. “And he brought her to the City of David until he had finished building his house and the House of the Lord and the wall of Jerusalem roundabout.” The city was known as Ir David, the City of David. It was known as Metzudat David, the Fortress of David, because David actually lived for a while within that fortress so that he should be safe. It was known as Tzion [Zion], and of course it was known as Yerushalayim [Jerusalem]. And the texts which I have quoted refer to Jerusalem in all of those terms.
When King Solomon had finished building the whole of the Temple and he had assembled all of the people and consecrated the Temple, and prayed a very long and distinguished prayer which you will find in the eighth chapter in the Book of Kings. He referred there to “Their land which Thou gavest to our fathers…HaIr, The City which you have chosen.” The City which you have chosen, “ And also this House which I have built for Thy Name.” So Solomon consecrated the city as a whole. Not merely a Temple Mount.
Well, in order to eschew and avoid a long historical record here just now, you know that after some few hundred years that commonwealth and state was destroyed. It was destroyed in the year 586 before the Current Era. It was in relation to that you have heard from both Archbishop Cassidy and Reverend Bond, the psalmist spoke that magnificent psalm which I’m sure all of you know: By the rivers of Babylon there we sat down, yea we wept when we remembered Zion.” No other nation in the whole of history has wept for Zion. “If I forget thee, oh Jerusalem, let my right hand be cut off.” Which other nation in the world has had that kind of sentiment? Zion, Jerusalem, was the soul of the nation.
It wasn’t very long, perhaps half a century, barely half a century after that destruction that the whole of the Babylonian empire was itself conquered by the Persian empire of that time, ancient Persia, and the new emperor, Cyrus, issued his famous edict of which you will read in the first few verses of the Book of Ezra, as well as in the Book of Chronicles and elsewhere in which he says: “Now I be made emperor over all these nations.” And he calls upon the Jews within his kingdom, within his empire to rise up and go back where? To go back to Jerusalem! To rebuild that city of Jerusalem. “He has, (He meaning G-d) has chosen me to build Him the House in Jerusalem.” “Who is of His people that want to go back, let them go back.”
Jerusalem and the people. Which people? The Jewish people. The Jewish people all in exile. Go back to the city which is yours. Already at that time there was a clearly established link between Jerusalem and the Jewish people. And you know that it wasn’t very long after that that Nehemiah, we are told, was charged to go back also in order to re-assist in the rebuilding of the walls of the city. The walls of the city of Jerusalem. If we are talking in terms of the future of Jerusalem, we must turn our minds back to what has been said in that relevance by Scriptural sources. I was very happy indeed to hear many of the quotations that were advanced here this evening by both my distinguished fellow panelists. Let me also just mention one or two. You’ll forgive me if I hesitate a little. I have got them in Hebrew and I’ll have to translate while I go. Well, there’s a few known words from Isaiah: “Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people. Dabru al lev Yerushalayim, Speak to the heart of Jerusalem.” It’s all in one verse. The people and Jerusalem. Again, the 27th chapter: “It shall come to pass in that day, there will be a great shofar sounded and those who are lost in the land of Assyria [Ashur if you like] shall come and those who are oppressed and scattered in the land of Egypt.” They should all come back. Vehishtachavu laKodesh, “and they will worship to the Lord in the holy city on the holy mountain beYerushalayim, in Jerusalem.” Who shall come back? All the scattered ones of the people of Israel. Again in the 52nd chapter: “You open, broad places of Jerusalem, open your mouths and speak forth with song, [all of you together], for the Lord has comforted His people, He hath redeemed Jerusalem.” His people and Jerusalem. His people and Jerusalem. Over and over again. His people and Jerusalem. Psalms 88: “Bonei Yerushalayim Hashem, The Lord doth build Jerusalem. He will gather in the scattered ones from Israel.” Perhaps one more from Zachariah. In the eighth chapter. I will read it to you in English. I’ve jotted it down: “I will save my people from the east country, and from the west country, and I will bring them and they shall dwell in the midst of Jerusalem.”
So our dream for the future is the prophetic dream for the future. When we read Scripture we read it meaningfully and directly. No roundabout ideas and suggestions as to what it might have meant or what it could be suggested to mean, later on, a thousand years later or something like that. We read it directly straight as it says. We understand it. Jerusalem, or Zion, is spoken of very frequently as, well the Jewish people I should say, are spoken of very frequently as the Daughter of Zion. In the year 70 when the Romans destroyed the Second Temple and the Second Jewish Commonwealth, Jerusalem itself was orphaned. Its mother people was scattered into exile and Jerusalem was orphaned. And from then it was ruled by a succession of foreign rulers and conquerors, step-fathers and step-mothers and Jerusalem was treated by them as the proverbial orphaned child. It was beaten; neglected. It was left desolate, dirty, despoiled, devastated, uncared for. The Romans not only destroyed it, but razed it to the ground and brought a plowshare to go over its ground. Why, they even tried to change its name to aelia capitolina so that the very name Jerusalem should be forgotten. Then came the Byzantines. You’ve heard about them a little bit. Byzantine rulers began to look back. After their conversion to Christianity, they began to look back to Jerusalem. And they went and tried to mark out certain places and certain spots in the city in which certain events according to their tradition had taken place which were of sacred meaning to them. And they wanted to mark those spots with chimes, with churches, with convents, with monasteries, and to make them places that you have heard, places of pilgrimage. As Archbishop Cassidy made clear to us just know, they didn’t just think of Jerusalem as a place where people could live in. It was thought of mainly as a spiritual center so that they wanted to have a link with those special spots which meant something to them because of their older tradition.
And after the Byzantine period well, came the Arab-Moslem period. And what happened during that period? Please note: that was only in the 7th century, 638 of the Current Era. Why, for so much as we are concerned, that is only around the corner. Jerusalem had already been the capital of Israel for over 1,000 years before that and the world had accepted it as the capital of Israel for all of that thousand year period. When the Arabs ruled it, they didn’t regard Jerusalem as their main city. There main city was Mecca and there second city was Medina. At first there was a suggestion with Jerusalem, some sort of connection with it, but Mohammed turned away from Jerusalem and turned towards Mecca and from then on the followers of Islam turn to this very day when they pray, they turn in the direction of Mecca, not of Jerusalem. Only Jews turn in the direction of Jerusalem when they pray. In the direction of Jerusalem and nowhere else!
The Arab Moslems did in fact build that very beautiful building that we see, known as the Dome of the Rock. It’s a very fine, big mosque. The Dome of the Rock. I think they built it in 690 or something like that in the Current Era, but they never encouraged people to go there for their pilgrimage. When their followers went on a pilgrimage, and to this very day when they go on a pilgrimage, they have to go and make their hajj as they call it, to Mecca. Not to Jerusalem. Jerusalem was not even the capital city when they ruled the country. Do you know they built themselves an additional, special new town which should serve them as their main city, the town of Ramle. I hope Archbishop Cassidy will forgive me if I read a few words written by another Christian theologian, Professor Stendow, published in the Harvard Divinity Bulletin of 1967. He writes as follows: “For Christians and Moslems, the term holy sites is an adequate expression of what matters. Here are sacred places hallowed by holy events. Here are the places for pilgrimage. But Judaism is different. Its religion is not tied to sites, but to the land. Not to what happened in Jerusalem, but to Jerusalem itself. And that I can’t help feeling is a fundamental difference between Judaism and the other religions. As far as Judaism is concerned, the whole of Jerusalem is holy and sacred and fundamental to its belief. The whole of Jerusalem.”
A little bit later, in 1099, the Crusaders came and they became the foreign conquerors, the new foreign conquerors and rulers of the land. Their period was marked by what? By murder and pillage. They tried to prevent Jews from coming into the city of Jerusalem altogether. The Jews managed with a bit of bribery and they were allowed in sometimes for special occasions like Tisha b’Av. And then in 1517 the Turks came on the scene. And the Ottomans ruled it as part of the Ottoman Empire for 400 years, from 1517 until 1917, when the British came towards the end of the First World War under General Allenby. They marched in and took possession of it. During the whole of that period of the 400 years, Jerusalem was nothing more than a backwater, so far as the Ottomans were concerned. It was a neglected, distant province. And even during the time when the British took charge, from 1917 until they gave it up in 1948, there was discrimination against Jews too. I’m sorry to have to say it, but it is true. I’ll give you one or two illustrations. The majority of the population during the whole of that period was Jewish. Jerusalem has had a majority Jewish population for well over 100 years; nearly 150 years, yet they insisted that the mayor of Jerusalem must always be an Arab. The climax to all this came in 1948 and for the nineteen years that followed right up until 1967. That is the period marked by what is called Jordanian rule. I suppose it should be called more correctly, the rule by the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan because it was Transjordan which unleashed war and conquered that part of Jerusalem. I mean the old, original part of Jerusalem in 1948 and they also conquered all the rest of the territory on the West Bank, about which we’ve heard something about this evening. The euphemism for Samaria and Judea. They conquered it and misruled it for nineteen years. They trodded it down.
It’s not easy to speak about that period without a certain amount of emotion. During the whole of those nineteen years Jews were literally forbidden to enter the city of Jerusalem. I’m not talking about the new city outside the confines of the walls. I’m talking about the original, Old City of Jerusalem which is now in our hands. Almost all of the synagogues were reduced to rubble. On the Mt. of Olives, some 38,000 stones, tombstones, in that ancient cemetery of Jewish sacred interest were pulled up and broken and used for terrible purposes – for making roads, for building bunkers, and for constructing, if you’ll excuse me, latrines. Sacred scrolls of the law, which had been preserved for hundreds of years were torn and burnt and destroyed and left lying as part of the rubbish. There was an attempt made during that time period to obliterate every trace of the Jewish past. The city was divided and it was disfigured. It was made Judenrein; the only time in the whole of its history when that was successfully carried out. Where was the voice of protest at that time with regard to the Jewish holy places? We waited in vain to hear such a voice of protest, neither from a lay source nor from any spiritual source of international consequence did we hear any word in this regard.
In the light of this historical record, I am driven to ask the question, is there any other nation apart from ours that has any basis for a claim to rulership over the holy city? Is there any other faith, any other group of people, any other central authority that has an entitlement to say how the city as a city should be ruled and controlled? Never! In 1967, came the end of what might be termed the Arabization policy. There was an end to all bans and restraints at that time and the beginning of freedom of movement for everybody. There was a religious freedom to all faiths and an accessibility to all the holy places was immediately guaranteed.
I had the privilege of being in Jerusalem in those days. And I remember when the wall dividing the Old City from the New City was pulled down. I remember how thousands upon thousands of people – Jews, Arabs, Moslems, Christians – how they all came down to see each other. Each one wanting to see what it was that he had been denied the site of for nineteen years. Not only Jews, [but] Arabs living in Israel flocked to the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque to pray for the first time in nineteen years. It was for them a homecoming too, in a way. Christians from Israel who had had difficulty as Archbishop Cassidy had had in crossing from the New City of Jerusalem to the Old City, were now free to do so, and have thank G-d, been free to do so ever since.
Now, something very special has been said with regard to the internationalizing or the policy otherwise [known as] the internationalization of the city of Jerusalem. I want to voice what appears to me to be the basis of Jewish, and more particularly of Israeli objections to this policy which has been proposed and apparently is still the avouched policy of the Holy See. Let me go through this very quickly. First, we claim that there are Jewish rites in this city, which are historic rites going back 3,000 years, and that can likely not be set aside and there is nobody else in the world that can claim that. Secondly, if we had any sort of international control, there would presumably have to be an international body to control it – a commissioner, a counsel; some governmental machinery in order to control it of an international character would it not necessarily and inevitably reflect the politics of the states comprising that body? And if it is to be under the auspices of the United Nations, for example, would we wish a country like Russia to have a direct say in the control of the holy city?
The safety of the holy places, I want to emphasize, does not require a policy of internationalization. The government of Israel, soon after 1967, after Jerusalem came back into Israeli hands, the government of Israel made it abundantly clear that the holy places would be respected of all religions and it’s a wonderful thing to say that to this very day sixteen years have gone by [and] I don’t think there has ever been a period in the entire history of the city of Jerusalem where there has been such openness and such freedom of worship and of religious tolerance and of availability and accessibility of all holy places and shrines to all the people who are interested in these things. Why to suggest that there should be an internationalization of Jerusalem because there are holy places in it? One might as well suggest that Italy should give up and internationalize the city of Rome because The Vatican is in it. True, it’s a very important center and seat. There is no reason whatsoever, it seem to me, to encroach upon the civil liberties of Jerusalem’s population because of holy places. Israel, the government of Israel, has granted administrative powers. The government of Israel says that we don’t want to rule the holy places of India, or any one of the great faiths or religions. They must rule the holy places themselves. We grant them administrative rights and powers and let them arrange what has to be arranged and let them manage their affairs. On the contrary, the government of Israel has assisted in restoring many of the damaged places of worship, [and] other holy places; of putting them into a play, a situation of dignity, and of honor and of reverence, without, at all, a policy of internationalization.
The present system, which in fact has been in existence all these last several years, a decade and a half, this is a system which is one of a peaceful coexistence: men and women of all faiths intermingle freely. There is a regularity and normalcy of social and commercial intercourse in the whole of the city. People do business together. People talk together. They have cultural activities together. They go into the streets together. Go into the marketplaces and you will see them all mingling, thousands of them together, crowds of them together. They laugh and they sing together. It is true that there are problems as well. Can you tell me one country in the world where there are not problems? But I would say that this is the first time in 2,000 years that there has been such an air of peaceful coexistence in the holy city of Jerusalem. The first time in 2,000 years such as we find today. Why? It reminds me again of that verse in Zachariah. Look at what he says: “Thus said the Lord of Hosts, there shall yet old men and old women sit in the streets of Jerusalem. Every man with his staff in his hand for very age, and the broad places of the city shall be filled with boys and girls playing in the streets thereof.” That’s what we have! That’s Jerusalem today.
One last word, please. We are facing a world today which seems to be threatened with lengthening shadows. I want to say that we’ve had evidence of it only a few days ago on our own doorstep, in Pretoria of that darkness. In the midst of that sort of darkness, the time is ripe for us to join hands and to build and strengthen and expand that holy city of Jerusalem to be the beacon of light that it was intended to be so that it may illumine the world. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem. Not only in a few words, but by having people live together in that atmosphere of coexistence to which I was referring a little while ago. This very Sabbath, we Jews in our synagogues will be reading from prophetic writ that we quote: “Sing out and rejoice, Oh! Daughter of Zion for I come. Behold I am coming and I shall dwell in the midst of thee, said the Lord. And the Lord shall cause Judah to inherit his portion in the holy land. And he shall choose Jerusalem again. Be silent all flesh before the Lord for He is waked up from His holy habitation.” Let us all join hands in promoting that openness and freedom of the city of Jerusalem. And let a free and united Jerusalem proclaim redemption to all mankind.
Rabbi Casper Affixing Mezuzah at Jaffa Gate July 1, 1968
Prepared for publication by Moshe Kahan