Rabbi Michael Siegel

An eighty year old couple was having problems remembering things, so they decided to go to their doctor to make sure nothing was wrong with them. When they arrived at the doctor's office, they explained to the doctor about the problems they were having with their memory.

After checking the couple out, the doctor told them that they were physically fine but might want to start writing things down, making notes to help them remember things. The couple thanked the doctor and left.

Later that night while watching TV, the old man got up from his chair and his wife asked, "Where are you going?"

He replied, "To the kitchen."

She asked, "Will you get me a bowl of ice cream?"

"Sure."

Then his wife asked him, "Don't you think you should write it down so you can remember it?"

"No, I can remember that."

"Well, I also would like some strawberries on top. You had better write that down cause I know you'll forget that," his wife said.

"I can remember that, you want a bowl of ice cream with strawberries."

She replied, "Well, I also would like whipped cream on top. I know you will forget that. You had better write it down."

With irritation in his voice, he said, "I don't need to write that down, I can remember that." He went into the kitchen.

After about 20 minutes, he returned from the kitchen and handed her a plate of scrambled eggs.

She stared at the plate for a moment and said, "I knew that you would forget.  Where is my toast?"

Memory is not only a problem for individuals; it can also be a problem for a people, and with less humorous results.

Last Wednesday was a remarkable day on the Jewish calendar, it Yom Yerushalayim, the day on which we commemorated the 40th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem.  In Israel, all of the newspapers were filled with stories about this day on which the paratroopers broke through the ancient gates, and joined together East and West Jerusalem. It was the day on which the breach had existed in this city since 1948 could be healed.  For the first time since the inception of the State, Jews could do more than stare at the Kotel from a distance; they could finally walk through the Mandelbaum Gate and go directly to the Kotel.   In Israel, now 40 years later, Yom Yerushalayim was a day of great celebration, while here in the Diaspora this historic day was commemorated with barely a whisper.  The fact is that the 40th anniversary of an event that our people have been awaiting for thousands of years was largely forgotten in the Diaspora.

With so much else going on in our lives, who could be bothered to remember Yom Yerushalayim?!

The words of the Psalmist come to mind:

If I forget you O’ Jerusalem,
Let my Right hand forget its cunning
Let my tongue stick to my palate if I do not remember you

If I don’t keep Jerusalem in memory
Even at my happiest hour.

It seems that we are not the first generation to have memory problems when it comes to Jerusalem.

Though written well over 2500 years ago, the Psalm has much to teach us regarding our own situation.

What is it that we must not forget?

Simply this, the song of our people can not only be fully sung when our people have come home to Jerusalem.

Listen to how the Psalm begins:

By the Rivers of Babylon
there we sat down
And we cried when we remembered Zion
There on the Poplars
We hung our lyres

Why, we might ask did this generation of exile decide to put their musical instruments aside?

The psalmist answers:

For our captors asked us there for songs
Our tormentors for amusement

Sing us one of those songs from Zion

It is in response to the taunting of their captors that these oft repeated words are first spoken.

If I forget you O Jerusalem,

Let my right hand whither

Let my tongue cleave to my palate

Why, you might ask, does the does the Psalmist focus on the right hand and the tongue?

Because without a right hand one can not play the lyre

Because without a tongue, one can not sing.

The message of Psalm 137 is that a Jew must never forget the importance of coming home to Jerusalem. We must never become so comfortable in the exile that Jerusalem become a distant memory, a bit of nostalgia with which to entertain our host society.  Jerusalem must always be a living reality Jews: the place that we are always in the process of coming home to.  More, the Psalm is an historic reminder that the true song of Israel can only be sung when our people actually returns to Zion.  Until that day we, our song will remain remembered but unsung. 

Since the time of the Babylonian Exile we have found ways to remind ourselves that we have been separated from Jerusalem.  For thousands of years Jews have broken a glass at a wedding, left a portion of our homes unfinished, taken a pinch of the dough of our Shabbat challah and thrown it back into the fire, we have finished our Passover Seder with the words: L’shanah Hab’ah B’Yerushalayim: Next year in Jerusalem.  All these are ritual mnemonics, ways of reminding ourselves that we can never be fully home while our people are separated from Jerusalem.

Friends, I ask you: now that we have experienced precisely what Jews have longed for over the ages, a Jerusalem rebuilt, what we cried for, what we prayed for, by the rivers of Babylon, and every other city imaginable, will we forget to take the lyre’s down from the poplar trees and sing?

If you need inspiration, all you need to do is go there.

To walk through the streets of Jerusalem is to see the Jewish people revitalized and reborn.

Here, more than any other place can you see the Jewish people in all of its verities.  Jews of every color, of every stripe of belief, walking the streets.  In Jerusalem, more than any other place on earth, do Jews somehow mysteriously feel that they have come home.  One can see that in the faces of the young adults who travel with birthright groups from all over the world. From Budapest, New York, and Buenos Aires, they come to Jerusalem for the first time and they are transformed.  Watch them dance and sing on a Friday night and you will hear the song of the vitality of the Jewish people rediscovered and sung in full voice. Jerusalem is the only place on earth where a Jew can come home to a place that he has never visited before. 

In Jerusalem, the Jewish soul soars like no other place.  There is a synagogue around every corner, and the pulsating heart of the Jewish people is beating in a palpable way.  I learned this as a rabbinical student thirty years ago. It was Shavuot, and I had been studying with a group the entire night.  As dawn approached I decided to make my way to the Kotel.  In the dark I walked alone.  But soon I was joined by people coming in every direction.  By the time, I entered the old city; I was part of a stream of people moving as one toward the Kotel.  From the alley ways of Jerusalem, we burst into the plaza of the Kotel, the suns first rays upon our faces, and the voices of thousands of Jews worshipping in a spectrum of differently accented Hebrew, in the very place that had been called God’s holy house, the Bait Hamikdash.  In Jerusalem, the song of the Jewish spirit can be heard more clearly than anywhere else.

Finally, Jerusalem is the place from which Jewish destiny will flow.  Kee Mitzion Tezee Torah, u’Dvar Adonai m’Yerushalayim are the words that we sang in our service this morning as the Torah was taken from the Ark.  The Torah will go forth from Zion and the word of God from Jerusalem.  This is the place where message of the Torah is to be actualized by our people.  It is this place that kindles the light to the nations.  With the corruption in the government, the world’s hostility to the Jewish return to Jerusalem and the Ketusha rockets reigning down on our brothers and sisters in places like S’derot it seems like this last song is a long way from being sung.  But a story that I heard recently made me think that the realization of the words from our Siddur may not be all that far off.

Before going to the army a tradition has developed for parents and their children to go to synagogue on Friday night and participate together in a ceremony.  The parents stand with their child on the Bimah as they prepare for military service and are asked to offer words of blessing.  Here are the words spoken recently by a Father over his daughter.

“When we came on Aliyah from Argentina ten years ago, we did it without asking your permission. Yet, because of our decision, you, our daughter, are now being called upon to shoulder ultimate responsibility for our decision.  You will now be a soldier in defense of the Jewish state. I ask only that you let the same Jewish values that prompted our aliyah to guide you as you fulfill your duties as a soldier. And we ask that you remember that no unethical act can ever, ever, justify even the most moral of ends.”

After all the parents had finished speaking, the entire congregation joined them in a prayer for their children. They called upon God, and they prayer, “May the God who blessed our ancestors, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, bless these young men and women. Protect them, our Rock, from all injury and from all evil, and cause peace and harmony to dwell soon in our land

Despite Israel’s many challenges, the Torah is going forth from Zion

So friends, I ask you:

Now that our people have returned home from all the places that we cried throughout our history,

Now that Jerusalem has become once again a gathering point for all Jews, a spiritual center, and a place from which the word of God will emanate,

Now that Jerusalem has been reunited for an entire generation, for forty years,

Will we forget to sing?

No it is our duty as Jews living in this miraculous time to take the lyre down from the tree and to sing again with our children and grandchildren the song that has been dormant too long, the song of a Jerusalem united, a Jerusalem reborn.

Let us conclude with the music of Naomi Shemer who was inspired in 1967 when she witnessed the unification of Jerusalem, the heart of the Jewish people made whole: 

Yerushalayim Shel Zahav