Devarim: We Are All from Yerushalayim

When beloved Israeli author Shmuel Yosef “Shai” Agnon was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1966, his acceptance speech revolved around his Jewish identity, relationship to Torah, love for Yiddishkeit, and kesher to Yerushalayim.

When asked by King Gustav VI of Sweden where he had been born, Agnon replied, “Your Majesty, like all Jews, I come from Jerusalem.”

In his legendary acceptance speech, Agnon addressed the honored assembly, and again spoke of his connection to our eternal capital: “As a result of the great catastrophe in which Titus of Rome destroyed the Holy City and Israel was exiled from its land, I was born in one of the cities of the Exile, Buczacz. But always I regarded myself as one who was born in Jerusalem. In a dream, in a vision of the night, I saw myself standing with my brother Levites in the Holy Temple, singing the songs of David, King of Israel…”

In the Torah’s account of Yaakov Avinu fleeing his brother Eisav’s wrath, Yaakov is alone, surrounded by darkness, sleeping on the cold ground. Suddenly, he experiences a “vision of the night”: he sees a ladder to Heaven with angels ascending and descending, and realizes he is in the future Makom HaMikdash, the place of the Holy Temple.

Yaakov Avinu represents and expresses the middah of tiferet, “splendor,” which is the quality of harmonious uniting of opposites. In his night vision, he sees a place and a time in which he and his brother will be in harmony and peace, in which the Jewish family will be reunited. When he awakens, he is inspired to pray “Veshavti b’Shalom el Beis Avi—And I shall return to my father’s house in peace (28:21).”

We too, through shalom and brotherhood, are charged to restore the splendor and beauty of Am Yisrael; then Yaakov will rise up from the ground, the dawn will break, and we will return to Beis Avi. 

Hishlich miShamayim Eretz Tiferes Yisrael; “He has cast down from heaven to earth the glory of Israel (Eichah 2:1).” Reb Shlomo Halberstam, The Bobover Rebbe, zt’l, explains this pasuk in connection to Yaakov Avinu: the glory (tiferes) of Israel (Yaakov) is our achdus, our togetherness, the oneness of our greater family. This is what was cast to the ground. Indeed, as is well known and oft-quoted but tragically not yet internalized, the Temple was destroyed due to sinas chinam, baseless hatred (Gemara Yoma 9b). The Bobover Rebbe concludes that the rebuilding of the Temple will come through reclaiming our people’s tiferes, our achdus: our efforts toward shalom.

The halachos of Tishah B’Av restrict us from she’eilas shalom, greeting one another. How, really, can we wish each other shalom aleichem on a day when we deeply feel the lack of shalom and shleimus in the world?

Consider: Is there someone we are estranged from, a former business associate, an old classmate, friend, or family member from whom we have grown distant? Perhaps now is the right and opportune time to extend a she’eilas shalom.

It has been two thousand years since our brother Levites have sung those songs in the Beis HaMikdash. May we extend shalom and achdus to our neighbors, sisters, and brothers, and make efforts toward repairing relationships, and may this bring us closer to our birthplace, our father’s home. n

Excerpted from Baderech: Along the Path of the Torah, forthcoming (Mosaica Press, Elul 5786).

Rabbi Judah Mischel is Executive Director of Camp HASC, and Mashpiah of OU-NCSY.