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Over
the last two millennia, Jews have
visited Jerusalem in honor of the
festivals, in lieu of the Biblically
ordained pilgrimages. On the holiday of
Shavuot, there was also the
custom to visit the grave of King David
on Mount Zion, since, according to
Jewish tradition, the day of his birth
and passing was the holiday of
Shavuot.
When
Shavuot arrived in 1948, it
was a month after the establishment of
the State of Israel, and Jews could no
longer continue to make the pilgrimage
to the Western Wall. The Jordanians, who
occupied the eastern half of the city
since the War of Independence, blocked
all rights of passage to Jews. However,
the pilgrimage to King David’s tomb on
nearby Mount Zion, located on the
Israeli side of divided Jerusalem,
continued. Over the next nineteen years,
crowds made their way to Mount Zion,
where they could view the ‘Old City’ and
the Temple Mount.
On the
morning of Shavuot, June 15,
1967, just six days after the liberation
of the old city of Jerusalem following
the Six-Day War, the Old City was
officially opened to the Israeli public.
For the first time in almost two
thousand years, masses of Jews could
visit the Western Wall and walk through
the cherished streets of Judaism’s
capital city as members of the sovereign
Jewish nation. Each Jew who ventured to
the Western Wall on that unforgettable
day represented the living realization
of their ancestor’s dreams over the
millennia. It was one of those rare,
euphoric moments in history.
From the late hours of the night,
thousands of Jerusalem residents
streamed towards the Zion Gate, eagerly
awaiting entry into the Old City. At 4
a.m., the accumulating crowds assembled
at Mount Zion were finally allowed to
enter the area of the Western Wall. The
first minyan (traditional quorum
of ten men) soon began. Fifteen hundred
people shared that historic moment. As
the sun rose, there was a steady flow of
thousands who had made their way towards
the Old City. In total, two hundred
thousand Jews visited the Western Wall
that day. It was the first pilgrimage,
en masse, of Jews to
Jewish-controlled Jerusalem on a Jewish
festival, in two thousand years, since
the pilgrimages for the festivals in
Temple times.
The Jerusalem Post described the
epic scene:
“Every section of the population was
represented. Kibbutz members and
soldiers rubbing shoulders with the
Neturei Karta. Mothers came with
children in prams, and old men trudged
steeply up Mount Zion supported by
youngsters on either side, to see the
wall of the Temple before the end of
their days.
“Some wept, but most faces were wreathed
in smiles. For thirteen continuous hours
a colorful variety of all peoples
trudged along in perfect order, stepping
patiently when told to do so at each of
six successive barriers set up by the
police to regulate the flow.”
An eyewitness described the moment as
follows:
“I’ve never known so electric an
atmosphere before or since. Wherever we
were stopped, we began to dance. Holding
aloft Torah scrolls we swayed and danced
and sang at the tops of our voices. So
many of the Psalms and songs are about
Jerusalem and Zion and the words reached
into us a new life. As the sky
lightened, we reached the Zion gate.
Still singing and dancing, we poured
into the narrow alleyways beyond.”
On Shavuot three thousand two
hundred and seventy nine years earlier,
the Israelites stood at Mount Sinai and
felt the gravity of the moment as a
unique relationship was formed between
themselves and their Creator. On the day
of Shavuot following Israel’s
amazing victory of the Six-Day War,
multitudes ascended to the Western Wall,
as their ancestors had done in the past,
and they celebrated the holiday just a
short distance from the Temple Mount.
They, too, felt the magic of the moment.
Larry Domnitch is an author and high
school teacher
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