Read Online A Durable Peace by Benjamin Netanyahu - Free Book Online
Authors: Benjamin Netanyahu
Ads: Link
ingathering in
the Land of Israel. The Jewish religion—with its cycle of bitter fast days mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, its thrice-daily
supplications to “gather up the exiles from the four corners of the earth,” and its smashing of the glass at every joyous
occasion “lest I forget thee, O Jerusalem”—became the repository for their memory of an inspiring past and a hope for a better
future in their ancestral home. 34
This concrete attachment of a particular people to a particular place distinguishes Judaism from all other religions. Catholics,
for example, do not pray, “Next year in the Vatican.” In other religions, pilgrimages are periodic journeys to holy sites
where the faithful can achieve a heightened sense of communion with God. But when in a hundred different lands, century after
century, Jews prayed, “Next year in Jerusalem,” they meant something entirely different: not merely an individual’s desire
to return to a holy site for prayer, but the wish of an entire people to return and rebuild its life in its own national home,
of which Jerusalem was the heart. 35 This powerful longing was so unique that it was sometimes dismissed as the pitiful gasp of a dying race. It was nothingof the kind. The persistent yearning to return was an expression of the very life force of the Jewish people, the idea that
held it together, a distilled defiance of its historical fate.
The final undermining of the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel was followed by an unbroken centuries-long tradition of
intellectual and popular longing for restoration of Jewish sovereignty, most frequently evoked in religious themes. Pick a
century at random, and you will find not only wide expression of this Jewish yearning among the common people but moving poetic
and philosophic longings penned by virtually every leading man of genius. Thus in the tenth century, the Jewish philosopher
Saadia Gaon:
May it be your will, O Lord our God, that this era may mark the end of the dispersion for your people the House of Israel,
and the time for the termination of our exile and our mourning. 36
In the twelfth century, the great Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi, writing of Jerusalem, in Hebrew, from Spain:
O great King’s city, mountain blessed!
My soul is yearning unto thee
From the furthest West.
And who shall grant me, on the wings of eagles,
To rise and seek you through the years,
Until I mingle with your dust beloved
The waters of my tears? 37
Later in the same century, the philosopher Moses Maimonides declared that the return to Israel was the only hope of an end
to Jewish suffering at the hands of the Arabs, of whom he writes that “Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate
us as much as they.” But he promises,
The future redeemer of our people will… gather our nation, assemble our exiles, [and] redeem us from our degradation. 38
In the thirteenth century, the scholar Nahmanides went further, ruling that the return to live in the Land of Israel was an
obligation morally binding on every Jew 39 —a stricture he would dutifully fulfill by coming to the land and helping to rebuild the Jewish community there that had been
nearly annihilated during the Crusades.
By the sixteenth century, the idea of a Christian-Jewish alliance taking the land back from the Moslems elicited enthusiasm
from many Jews in Italy and some of the Marranos (Christians of Jewish descent) of Portugal. 40 Jewish exiles from Spain rebuilt the Jewish quarter in Hebron, and the Portuguese Jew Don Joseph Nasi rebuilt the city of
Tiberias with the permission of the sultan. This wave of return also sparked an unprecedented intellectual and cultural revival
in the Galilee city of Safed, which drew between ten thousand and twenty thousand Jewish immigrants by the end of the century.
The renowned Rabbi Yehuda Leowe of Prague, known as the Maharal, was no less clear that full-scale Return would have to come:
Exile is a
the Land of Israel. The Jewish religion—with its cycle of bitter fast days mourning the destruction of Jerusalem, its thrice-daily
supplications to “gather up the exiles from the four corners of the earth,” and its smashing of the glass at every joyous
occasion “lest I forget thee, O Jerusalem”—became the repository for their memory of an inspiring past and a hope for a better
future in their ancestral home. 34
This concrete attachment of a particular people to a particular place distinguishes Judaism from all other religions. Catholics,
for example, do not pray, “Next year in the Vatican.” In other religions, pilgrimages are periodic journeys to holy sites
where the faithful can achieve a heightened sense of communion with God. But when in a hundred different lands, century after
century, Jews prayed, “Next year in Jerusalem,” they meant something entirely different: not merely an individual’s desire
to return to a holy site for prayer, but the wish of an entire people to return and rebuild its life in its own national home,
of which Jerusalem was the heart. 35 This powerful longing was so unique that it was sometimes dismissed as the pitiful gasp of a dying race. It was nothingof the kind. The persistent yearning to return was an expression of the very life force of the Jewish people, the idea that
held it together, a distilled defiance of its historical fate.
The final undermining of the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel was followed by an unbroken centuries-long tradition of
intellectual and popular longing for restoration of Jewish sovereignty, most frequently evoked in religious themes. Pick a
century at random, and you will find not only wide expression of this Jewish yearning among the common people but moving poetic
and philosophic longings penned by virtually every leading man of genius. Thus in the tenth century, the Jewish philosopher
Saadia Gaon:
May it be your will, O Lord our God, that this era may mark the end of the dispersion for your people the House of Israel,
and the time for the termination of our exile and our mourning. 36
In the twelfth century, the great Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi, writing of Jerusalem, in Hebrew, from Spain:
O great King’s city, mountain blessed!
My soul is yearning unto thee
From the furthest West.
And who shall grant me, on the wings of eagles,
To rise and seek you through the years,
Until I mingle with your dust beloved
The waters of my tears? 37
Later in the same century, the philosopher Moses Maimonides declared that the return to Israel was the only hope of an end
to Jewish suffering at the hands of the Arabs, of whom he writes that “Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate
us as much as they.” But he promises,
The future redeemer of our people will… gather our nation, assemble our exiles, [and] redeem us from our degradation. 38
In the thirteenth century, the scholar Nahmanides went further, ruling that the return to live in the Land of Israel was an
obligation morally binding on every Jew 39 —a stricture he would dutifully fulfill by coming to the land and helping to rebuild the Jewish community there that had been
nearly annihilated during the Crusades.
By the sixteenth century, the idea of a Christian-Jewish alliance taking the land back from the Moslems elicited enthusiasm
from many Jews in Italy and some of the Marranos (Christians of Jewish descent) of Portugal. 40 Jewish exiles from Spain rebuilt the Jewish quarter in Hebron, and the Portuguese Jew Don Joseph Nasi rebuilt the city of
Tiberias with the permission of the sultan. This wave of return also sparked an unprecedented intellectual and cultural revival
in the Galilee city of Safed, which drew between ten thousand and twenty thousand Jewish immigrants by the end of the century.
The renowned Rabbi Yehuda Leowe of Prague, known as the Maharal, was no less clear that full-scale Return would have to come:
Exile is a
Similar Books
