The Essence of Jerusalem

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THE ESSENCE OF JERUSALEM
(Jerusalem Day - Continued)

By 1899, there were 45,600 inhabitants in Jerusalem. Only 8,760 were Christians and 8,600 were Moslems. All the rest (the majority), were Jews. Clearly, only the Jews considered Jerusalem to be of sufficient importance to live their lives there and to die there. By 1912, the number of inhabitants reached 75,000. These included 45,000 Jews, but only 10,000 Moslems and 20,000 Christians.

In 1918 the British under General Allenby entered Jerusalem and accepted the surrender of the Turks. A British architect was brought in to report on the condition of the buildings in the Temple Mount area. The resulting report concluded that the Turks and the Moslem authorities had allowed the buildings to fall into serious neglect.

To sum up 1,300 years of Moslem rule of Jerusalem: There is no excuse that can adequately explain the utter neglect of the city down through the centuries by the various Moslems rulers. Surely, the only conclusion that we can reach is that the city held little significance for them.

Contrast these 1,300 years of Moslem behavior with the demands of Yaser Arafat that he will accept nothing less than Jerusalem as the capital of an independent Palestinian state. Now, Arafat is a non-religious Moslem. When he signed the Oslo Accords in 1994, he knew that there was not so much as a word mentioning Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. The only importance Jerusalem has for Arafat is as a tool and as a rallying point for anti-Semites to use against the Jews' most sensitive subject. For without Jerusalem there can be no Israel.

This, then, is exactly the point! It has nothing at all to do with religion. In order to destroy Israel, the Jews must not be allowed to control Jerusalem. This strategy is really quite simple and even brilliant once you stop to think about it.

And this is the very essence behind Jerusalem Day. For 3,000 years the Jews have cherished Jerusalem as their only true holy city, with the Temple Mount symbolizing the very heart of the Jewish religion. For the first 1,600 of these 3,000 years, the Moslem religion did not exist at all. A thousand years from now, history will have forgotten a minor terrorist and anti-Semite like Yasser Arafat -- but the Jews will still be in Jerusalem, celebrating at that time 4,000 years of Jewish presence in Jerusalem.

THE PURITY OF JERUSALEM
Everyone has heard the saying that "Cleanliness is next to Godliness." Nowhere else was this more accurate than in Jerusalem. From Biblical times, great efforts were made by the city's Jews to avoid both physical and ritual impurity. No trash heaps were allowed which could produce insects. It was not permitted to raise chickens which were perceived as pecking away at trash. Places of burial were allowed only OUTSIDE the walls of Jerusalem.

Only the grave of King David and the grave of Huldah the prophetess were located within the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem. No one else was allowed to be buried there -- absolutely NO ONE. In deference to the large Jewish population. this rule was strictly adhered to even in Roman times ...

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