'To divide Jerusalem is to divide
the Jewish people for generations
to come. It is to sap the Jewish
people of its strength and vitality'

Why not divide Jerusalem? If peace depends on redividing a city, isn’t saving of human life more important than the physical boundaries of sand and stone? It seems that Israel has given an awful lot for all of it to be placed in jeopardy simply because we’re not willing to grant sovereignty over Arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem.

It is true, too, as Jerusalem’s detractors often point out, that Jews never said, “next year in Ras el-Amud.” But then again, Jews never said, “next year in Ra’anana,” and yet nobody would consider giving up that beautiful, bustling town on Israel’s coast.

When I was a little boy growing up in Scranton, Pennsylvania, I kept a baseball cap in my cubby in the hallway cabinet next to the door. Jewish kids just didn’t go out in Pennsylvania¹s coal-mining town with kippot on their heads. Judaism was, at best, something for the indoors. All that changed after the reunification of Jerusalem in the Six Day War. The only use I’ve ever had for a baseball cap since then is to protect my receding hairline from the sun.

Jerusalem is more than just a city. Jerusalem belongs to the concept of Judaism’s eternal message and to the survival of the Jewish people. There is no rational explanation for the continued existence of the Jewish people. It is unprecedented for a nation exiled from its homeland to remain a nation. Jews were not only exiled from their homeland but were spread all over the world and in most places were persecuted, their bodies tortured and their souls tempted. It is certainly unprecedented to actually return to their original homeland and rebuild a Jewish commonwealth after having survived those experiences.

Until the re-establishment of the State of Israel, there was a triumph of survival ­ that, in and of itself a wondrous accomplishment. But following May 15, 1948, there was a declaration of Jewish eternity. The tribulations of the past had given birth to the promises of the future.

Throughout that long and arduous exile, Jews turned thrice daily to Jerusalem and said, “May my eyes behold the return to Zion.” It lifted them up out of their dispersion and degradation, and sent their souls soaring to their source of inspiration and hope. Jews got married and broke a glass under the canopy to remind themselves that Jerusalem was in a state of destruction and that the home they were about to build would have fragile foundations if it wasn’t embedded in a burning desire and practical commitment to build the national home as well. In death and in mourning,comfort was conveyed to the bereaved with the wish that they be consoled with the rebuilding of Zion.

The Hanukka menora was lit from Tashkent to Buenos Aires in the same style and order as the menora that stood in the Temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. When Jewish families gathered and remembered the exodus from Egypt on Passover’s Seder night, they concluded with a clarion call: “Next year in Jerusalem.” The message was it’s not enough to leave the Diaspora, Jerusalem must be rebuilt as well.

When the State of Israel was reborn, all those efforts, all those prayers, all those hopes, and all those dreams were proven not to have been for naught. For the skeptics, life became difficult. But the vindication of Jewish faith was still on shaky ground because the embodiment of that faith, the State of Israel, was still in existential danger. Her neighbors made no secret of their intention: to destroy her and with that destruction, to annihilate the faith and the belief system that the state had proved valid.

Then came the Six Day War. It’s not very popular in an age when information is beamed across the world in seconds to talk about miracles. Yet the fact is that nations don’t defeat nations who come to destroy them in six days, certainly not against overwhelming odds. As a result, the resurrection of the Jewish people and the revitalization of the Jewish faith were no longer hanging in suspension. A nation that a mere generation earlier was used as raw material for Nazi passions at Auschwitz had now successfully ensured the physical survival of the Jewish state and all it stands for. No wonder that Israel’s foreign minister at the time declared that Israel must never retract to its previous status of untenable existence when he called the pre-67 borders,” Auschwitz borders.”

The eternal message of Judaism, too, was now granted sure footing atop the united walls of Jerusalem’s Old City. Tragically, battle fatigue, terrorism, and the hardships of international pressures contributed to the creation of a new generation of Jews with short memories and nowist impulses.

Colloquially, they’re called new historians and post-Zionists. To the new historians, Israel was born in sin. For them, no unilateral withdrawal is too great and no capitulation too severe to redress the successes of 1967. To the post-Zionists, nothing at all must be allowed to get in the way of transforming Israel into a lifeless copycat state denuded of its strength, Jewish character, and unique cultural aspirations.

As long as Jerusalem remains united, the goals of those postmodern thinkers are unattainable. It is not peace that motivates them. For no concessions until now, and there have been many, have brought Israel peace. On the contrary, our magnanimity has been matched with bombs, bullets, and bloodletting. There is therefore no reason to assume that any further capitulation to Arafat¹s extortion will bring us peace ­ not when Jerusalem is turned into a Berlin of the Cold War or worse, into a Belfast or a Beirut.

Why not divide Jerusalem? Because to divide Jerusalem is to divide the Jewish people for generations to come. It is to sap the Jewish people of its strength and vitality. To divide Jerusalem is to retreat from peace, because if there is no internal peace, the Jewish people will not have the fortitude to reach external peace either.

The hundreds of thousands of Jews and some Christian friends who gathered at the Jaffa Gate came to rally for just that, for the kind of unity that will ultimately bring true peace. When I stood with them amid the majesty of the Old City walls I donned my “One Jerusalem” hat and pledged to do whatever humanly possible to ensure that never again will Jews have to keep baseball caps in the cubby holes by their front doors.

The writer is the former director of One Jerusalem.

Courtesy of The Jerusalem Post International Edition