Dear friends,
It”s almost impossible for me to speak about Jerusalem. And the reason for that is that I have two different “Jerusalems” in my mind. The particular Jerusalem and the transcendent Jerusalem.
Jerusalem of daily life. And the sublime Jerusalem, the eternal one. There is a Jerusalem below and a Jerusalem above. How can they both be united? How can one speak about both of them together?
On January 10th, 1971, I was born in Hadassah Ein Kerem Hospital, located in one of the most beautiful places in this holy city.
I spent my first years of childhood like any average Jerusalemite kid: Feeling jealous of the relatives who lived in Tel Aviv because they had the beach. But with or without the beach, I loved my childhood, I loved my neighborhood and I loved my city from the depth of my soul.
Jerusalem of the 70″s had everything a child could ask for. I lived in a brand new neighborhood, to which “the new Israelis” had arrived. People whose parents came from every corner of the globe, Jews from Muslim countries, Jews from European countries, children of parents from Yemen, Persia, Kurdistan, Morocco. And children from quieter houses, whose parents escaped the Nazi crematoriums.
We had everything we possibly wanted. Jerusalem of the 70s was the most successful Jewish integration factory in the world. No one took themselves too seriously, in every building, in every floor, behind every door, lived parents who had a funny accent which was totally different from the accent of the parents of the kid who lived across the hall.
We all joked about each other, and we all laughed at the Hebrew mistakes our parents made, because none of us understood the huge difficulty of their immigration experience. None of us understood that we were a special generation, a generation of redemption, a generation of Jewish Israeli children who experienced independence and freedom after 2000 years of persecution. A generation who took it for granted that this city and this land were ours forever.
It was a trivial matter for us. We were not at all aware how lucky we were, to have been born into such an incomprehensible privilege. Jerusalem was not holy for us. It was familiar and safe and sweet like the chocolate cake that all the mammas in the neighborhood used to bake for Shabbat, familiar like fuzzy slippers on a cold winter day, like the promise at dawn that fulfilled itself every day anew.
Jerusalem was wonderful to us in wintertime and in summertime. I remember our small living room window on a freezing February, and how we used to get up in the middle of the night to look through it in hope to see the snow that the weatherman had promised.
Jerusalem in springtime meant almond trees growing everywhere, and green almonds that we picked and brought home for our mother to wash and sprinkle with salt. Jerusalem in summertime meant the open fields to which we were sent in order to leave old bread for the birds, because no parent agreed to throw it away.
Jerusalem in summertime meant summer vacation, in which we used to go to Baba”s grocery store every morning for chocolate milk and a bun. It meant cool breeze in the evenings while eating watermelon with salty cheese on our little porch surrounded by mountains.
The Jerusalem of my childhood was the world”s most varied culinary supplier. No one had any money for restaurants, but Jerusalem was the first to offer the tastiest fusion kitchen in the world: If you felt like having a Kurdish Kubeh after school, you”d go to Liat”s parents. If you wanted Romanian mamaliga after school, you”d go to Danny”s house. If you wanted Moroccan fish after school, you”d go to Noa”s house. If you wanted chicken soup with Lokshen after school, Maya”s house was excellent. If you felt like Persian rise with vegetable stew, my home was the best place.
The problem was that despite all this rich fusion, we sometimes just wanted a hamburger, and that was a little bit more difficult to find.
The Jerusalem I grew up in was the Jerusalem below, in which every stone, every tree, every street were familiar.
The Jerusalem in which I walked with sandals or boots, where I swinged on every swing, where I fell in love for the first time in kindergarten and then really fell in love in high school.
Jerusalem was close, every pathway was a friend, every mountain was a home, Jerusalem was like a womb to me.
How can one connect between this Jerusalem and the holy, eternal Jerusalem? It”s a little bit like being raised by a loving and beloved mother, who is totally, utterly your mother, but also, accidentally, a queen. And Jerusalem is first and foremost a queen.
Only in recent years, I have realized that my natural, normal, familiar childhood was also – and maybe mainly so – a huge and important part of a prophecy.
That I was the prophecy. That my parents were the prophecy. That my neighbors were the prophecy.
We were all the prophecy which seemed impossible 2000 years ago, and we were all fortunate enough to have become its manifested fulfilment in our simple, normal lives.
When our prophets wrote, thousands of years ago, that one day deserted Jerusalem, a derelict place where no one has lived for centuries, would become a place where elderly people sit on benches, loving couples get married and children play in the streets – they meant me.
In every playground, on every swing, during every daydream under an olive or almond tree, in every simple walk to Baba”s grocery store in the summer vacation to buy chocolate milk and a bun – I was fulfilling a prophecy.
And only now, in this phase of my life, when I am standing here in front of you as a representative of the Israeli government – only now I manage to unite the particular with the transcendent. Between the prophecy and life itself.
Jerusalem is many things for me, but first and foremost it”s a miracle. A revealed miracle of God that is being fulfilled in front of our eyes every day anew.
And I thank God so much for the right he has given me, to fulfil this miracle.