Machshavot HaRav
Reflections from Rabbi Waxman
O Jerusalem
In 1867, Mark Twain toured the Mid East, including the Holy Land. 14 years later, he published his impressions in Innocents Abroad. His observations upon the land of Israel are stark:
“...[a] desolate country whose soil is rich enough, but is given over wholly to weeds-a silent mournful expanse....A desolation is here that not even imagination can grace with the pomp of life and action....We never saw a human being on the whole route....There was hardly a tree or a shrub anywhere. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of the worthless soil, had almost deserted the country.”
He then spoke of approaching Jerusalem: “No landscape exists that is more tiresome to the eye than that which bounds the approaches to Jerusalem. The only difference between the roads and the surrounding country, perhaps, is that there are rather more rocks in the roads than in the surrounding country…
“At last, away in the middle of the day, ancient bits of wall and crumbling arches began to line the way—we toiled up one more hill, and every pilgrim and every sinner swung his hat on high. Jerusalem!
“Perched on its eternal hills, white and domed and solid, massed together and hopped with high gray walls the venerable city gleamed in the sun. So small! Why it was no larger than an American village of four thousand inhabitants, and no larger than ordinary Syrian city of thirty thousand. Jerusalem numbers only fourteen thousand people.
“We dismounted and looked, with very few words of conversation, across the wide intervening valley for an hour or more; and noted those prominent features of the city that pictures make familiar to all men from their school days till their death…
The Jerusalem that Mark Twain encountered 145 years ago is quite different from the one we encounter today, with one notable exception. The city still gleams as we approach it. The city has expanded far beyond the Old City, which is what the American author saw back in the 19th century. The population exceeds three quarters of a million inhabitants! The landmarks he admired were centered on the Old City. With the exception of the Western Wall plaza and the adjacent Temple Mount with the Dome of the Rock, we would look elsewhere for symbols of Jerusalem: the Knesset, the Shrine of the Book, the light rail bridge as we enter the city; perhaps even the King David Hotel and its neighbor the YMCA. But the Jerusalem stone which encases most buildings in the city still gleams for us as we approach the city.
Twain and his fellow travelers were awed as they approached the ancient city, filled with memories. Today, the road up is far less rocky and far less treacherous and yet the same degree of awe overtakes one as one rounds a curve on the hills surrounding the city and begins to see the center of Jewish hopes and aspirations. Especially towards sunset there is a beautiful glow to the city, reflecting off the special stone.
I share these reflections as we mark this coming Sunday, Yom Yeruhalayim, Jerusalem Day. (It is the 28th day of Iyar.) A century after Mark Twain visited Jerusalem, Israeli forces reunified the city after a lapse of 19 years. Ethnic divisions clearly remain, and yet the old armistice lines have faded. The high concrete barriers and rolls and rolls of barbed wire and warnings that the border was nearby have vanished. Neighborhoods have emerged where once there were mines. The Museum on the Seam is but a quiet reminder of the years in which Jerusalem was divided and the only access to the other side was through the Mandelbaum Gate, which was adjacent to the building in which the museum is now located. Instead the light rail system rolls pass the Old City, past both Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, further obliterating the divisions that once marked the city.
Tradition speaks of two Jerusalems: Yerushalayim shel Malah, and Yerushalayim shel Matah; the celestial Jerusalem; and the Jerusalem of the here and now. The former is yet to be and the latter, is far from identical with the heavenly model. But for now, as we look on an unified Jerusalem, let us sit back and rejoice in Yerushalayim shel Zahav, in the city of gold.
Shabbat shalom.
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Chadashot MeYisrael: News from Israel
Life-Giving Drones and Other Technological and Biological Marvels
Water out of air! That is the vision of AQUA Israel, which envisions equipping unmanned aerials drones with systems that can harvest water from air and allow the vehicle to remain aloft for half a year.
This past week at AgriTech Israel 2012, AQUA Israel was one of many companies unveiling their latest developments. The CEO of the corporation, Mayer Fitoussi, waxed expansive on the water-harvesting technology that the company had developed. The hydrogen fuel-cell engine and the solar panels that would power the drone, however, are still under development. He estimates it will be another 3 years before it comes to market.
In the meantime it is marketing its “Green Ball”, a green plastic ball filled with natural minerals that replaces laundry detergent. The company claims that it will do 1,500 loads of laundry!
Other companies were exhibiting various insects as biological solutions for pests. And yet others were promoting new water filtration systems.
A few more examples of Israeli innovation that will have wide-spread impact.
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Payrush LaParshahah:
A Comment on the Weekly Torah Portion
The portions of Behar & Bechukotai (Leviticus 25: 39-26:46) are read this Saturday, May 19th.
26:4 I will grant your rains in their season, so that the earth shall yield its produce and the trees of the field their fruit.
Our Sages taught: “I will give you your rains in their due season”; neither drunken nor thirsty; but intermediate. For every time that the rains are too great they flood the land and it is unable to produce fruit. Another matter: “in their season” on the eve of Wednesday and Shabbat eve, as we find in the time of Simeon ben Shetach—and the days of Salome the Queen [1st century BCE]—that rains fell on the eve of Wednesday and the Eve of Shabbat, until the wheat was as big as kidneys and the barley was as large as olive pits, and the lentils were as big as golden dinars. And the Sages fashioned/bundled up from this an example for future generations—as a way of indicating the consequence of sin. As it is said, “your sins prevented them good from you.” (Jeremiah 5:25). And similarly, we find in the age of Herod, that at the time that they were engaged in the building of the Temple, rains fell at night. In the morning a wind came and dispersed the clouds; the sun shone and all of the people went out to their work, for they knew that the work of heaven was in their hands. (Babylonian Talmud Ta’anit 22a, brought in Joseph Weinstein, editor, Sefer Da’ath Chochmah: Vayikrah-B’midbar-D’varim)
