Last Sunday I was privileged to lead a tour of the Old City of Jerusalem. My group was 45 members of the beautiful synagogue in Herzliya where I now pray. Knowing that I work at the Sephardic Educational Center in the Old City, they asked if I can lead them on a tour of the Jewish Quarter. I picked a date, booked a bus and prepared a tour of the Old City titled “Jerusalem: From Destruction to Redemption.”
Our journey featured the Chamber of the Holocaust and King David’s Tomb on Mount Zion, the Zion Gate, the Sephardic Educational Center’s Spanish Courtyard and Beit Ha-Rishon L’Ziyon (plus a delicious lunch!), the Four Sephardic Synagogues, the Hurba Synagogue, the Kabbalist’s Yeshiva, the house of the Sephardic Rabbi Getz (the original “rabbi of the Kotel”), the Menorah in the Jewish Quarter, and Minha prayers at the Kotel.
My opening words to the group: “Today we will go deep into the DNA of the Jewish people.”
I quoted S.Y. Agnon’s famous statement from his Nobel Prize speech: “As a result of the historic catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed Jerusalem and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile. But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem.”
As Jews, all of us are somehow “born in Jerusalem.”
The last stop on our “DNA journey” was “The Jewish Quarter Defenders Monument.” This touching memorial pays tribute to 48 heroic fighters who fell in the battle for the Old City in 1948. They were buried there in a mass grave, and in 1967, their remains were taken for proper burial on the Mount of Olives cemetery. Many of these fighters were Sephardic residents of the Old City, amongst them 18 students from the Sephardic Talmud Torah (today’s SEC building). These heroes were actually born in Jerusalem.
As a tribute to their heroism, I read a statement by Sephardic Chief Rabbi Benzion Uziel, in response to yeshiva students who asked him for an exemption from joining the war in 1948:
“How can you ask for such a thing? Were it not for my old age and illness, I would pick up a rifle and hand grenade and defend my Jerusalem, the place I was born, my neighbor’s homes, the streets and alleyways of the Old City and the Yohanan Ben Zakkai synagogue. How can you raise such an outrageous request while everyone else is fighting? This is a war of life and death. It’s a mitzvah to fight. Remove these baseless ideas from your minds and go join the fight.”
Rabbi Uziel’s words send a powerful message to the Haredi “yeshiva world” – 1948 and 2024.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Daniel Bouskila is the international director of the Sephardic Educational Center.
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