Yom Yerushalayim 5784

The incredible victory of the Six Days in 1967 was among the most glorious moments in contemporary Jewish history, and quite possibly in all of Jewish history. The euphoria that the Jewish people experienced in the wake of that event was unprecedented; many who remember those days testify that people really felt the Mashiach was coming imminently.

With time, of course, the harsh realities of life asserted themselves and it became clear that not only did the war not solve all of our existing problems, it also presented us with a whole new set of challenges – some of which we're still grappling with 57 years later. And then, the bubble of exhilaration burst completely in the 1973 Yom Kippur War, which began with what was recognized (at least until this past Simchat Torah) as the worst military failure in Israel’s history. It took just six years for the exhilaration of the Six Days to transform into the despair of unfulfilled expectations.

But this doesn't have to mean that those perceptions of redemption were incorrect. It’s just that, as we have learned throughout our history, things take time. Today, 57 years later with the struggle far from over, if we compare our current situation to 1967 it’s clear that those incredible Six Days were indeed miraculous and significant – and that the ups and downs of the 57 years that followed have been equally miraculous and significant. We're getting there, slowly but surely.

Rav Zvi Yehuda Kook zt”l once expressed this idea by interpreting a verse in Shir HaShirim / Song of Songs(9:9): “דומה דודי לצבי”, “My Beloved [interpreted here as a reference to God's revelation at the time of the redemption] is like a gazelle.” What does that mean?

Rav Zvi Yehuda asks us to imagine a gazelle leaping to the top of a nearby mountain. Those who were waiting for it are ecstatic, because it instantly materialized tantalizingly close to them, suddenly and totally unexpectedly. Undoubtedly, they tell themselves, it will reach us, in virtually no time at all!

But then, shortly thereafter, the gazelle vanishes, as rapidly and strikingly as it had first appeared. Those who had awaited its arrival are crushed; they feel abandoned. What they don’t realize, though, is that the gazelle is out of view because it has simply descended to the valley on the way to the next hill, where it will soon reappear, even closer than before.

This, explained Rav Zvi Yehuda, is how the redemption works. There are Six Days moments, when the approaching redemption appears suddenly and dramatically in clear sight. And there are other moments where it just as suddenly becomes hidden – but only as part of the descent leading to the next appearance, which will be even more dramatic and uplifting than the last one.

Yom Yerushalayim same'ach!

Swords of Iron | Day 241