Trutharchivist

Holiday SUs Supplementals: Pesach 1.2

The Shabbat during the Holiday and the seventh day

So, trying to make a pattern for future usage here, but don't expect it to last. It won't. Anyway, here I am to talk about a couple of other stuff I missed in the original Pesach SU!

Firstly, during the formation of the holiday SUs I've started talking about the portions of the Torah, Prophets and Writings (the three parts of the Hebrew Bible: the Torah is the Pentateuch, the Prophets include Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve Prophets, and the Writings include the rest of what you'd call the Old Testament, as long as you don't add any LDS or apocryphal books. And yes, Daniel, Ruth, Psalms and Chronicles aren't part of the Prophets). So, in Pesach, this includes... Umm... From the Torah, most anything that includes a commandment about Pesach. Sukkot is way easier in that regard - it only goes through the sacrifices of each day. Those are completely identical in Pesach, though, so they aren't enough to fill the quota.

From the Prophets - we read of Joshua's Pesach in the first day, during the Shabbat - the Dry Bones Vision of Ezekiel, and during the seventh day... You know what? I'll get to that later.

From the Writings, we read the first of the books called Scrolls in the Hebrew Bible: the Song of Songs. (By now I think I went over all others of the scrolls, which are this, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther. The sharp eyed of you might notice I already said when each of the others was read.)

Why the Song of Songs? Well, as per usual when the actual reason is unclear, I can give two answers off the top of my hat. One is that the Song of Songs is a parable for the love between G-d and the people of Israel, and this story started with the Exodus - which we celebrate in this holiday. The other is that this is the one book in the Bible with descriptions of spring - the season during which the holiday is required to be in. The book itself is an interesting case, because it's easy to claim its contents aren't exactly fitting to be put in the Bible. It was canonized, though, and I'm really not qualified to explain why.

Right. The seventh day, then. What's the deal with it?

Like the first day of the holiday, it has more strict prohibitions on work - weaker than those of a Shabbat, but stronger than those of the mundane days of the holiday, in which we are now. During this day, we read the Song of the Sea (Exodus 14-15) and from the Prophets we read David's Song from Samuel. Why is that, you ask?

In theory, I could go over it the long way, but I'm not exactly in the right state of mind for that currently so I'll just say that according to Jewish tradition that's the day when the Red Sea got torn. It basically goes like this: the Israelites get out of Egypt - supposedly for three days - accompanied by spies for Pharaoh; three days pass and when the Israelites show no sign of returning the spies go back to report; they arrive after three additional days, during which the Israelites change course and end up somewhat closer to Egypt, on what is now known as the Gulf of Suez (probably); Pharaoh doesn't take too long to reach them, and the fun begins.

By which, of course, I mean the Israelite panic and ask Moshe (Moses) if he found Egypt lacking in graves and that's why he took them to doe in the desert. A nation of former slaves, you see, doesn't deal well with their former masters chasing them on chariots. So G-d tells Moshe to tell the Israelites to go forward - yes, into the sea, can you see any other direction? - and meanwhile to hold his staff over the sea, and it will be torn. For an entire night, the Egyptians chased the Israelites with the Pillar of Cloud protecting the latter from the former and a great wind blew to tear the sea open. The Israelites walked through it, the Egyptians followed, G-d told Moshe to hold his staff over the sea again and it will go back to how it was, and when morning broke - so it did.

I'm sure you've heard the story once, so you knew what was coming. And in case you were wondering - yes, the verses do specifically say it all happened during the night. Just saying, people seem to forget that.

Anyway, that's basically it. The seventh day of Pesach is this Monday. For our brethren outside of Israel it lasts another day, during which they read other stuff which I don't think I'll go over. We're still living on unleavened bread here, thank you for asking. And reading. Oh, and have a good day!

So, I'm slightly depressed lately (only slightly), and I wanted to share two stories I thought of. Not stories I wrote, but stories I've gathered or read. 

I'm not going to give context, because there isn't much to it. If you somehow succeed in finding a logical context know that you're likely wrong, but I would love to hear what you thought of. Anyway, here they are (trigger warning - book burning, some references to suicide and general injustice):

The first is from around the first century to the Christian accounting. During the Roman rule over Judea, there were times they forbade on Jews to study the Torah. Rabbi Haninah ben Teradion (Haninah the son of Teradion) didn't care much for that and taught the Torah in public. The Romans decided to execute him in a somewhat creative way: they wrapped him with vines with a scroll of the Torah in his arms and set him on fire. To prolong his suffering, though, they took water-soaked wool and put it on his heart so that he won't die quickly. They say his students told him to open his mouth so that the flames would enter and kill him quickly; he replied that he who gave him his soul will take it. (Yeah, you have to open your mouth to talk, I know. Please activate your suspension of disbelief.) His students then asked him what he sees, and he replied: "scrolls burning, and letters floating in the air."

At some point later, his executioner asked him if he will get to heaven if he'll make him die quicker. Rabbi Haninah said it will, and swore on it, so the executioner took of the water-soaked wool and when Rabbi Haninah died he also jumped to the fire. A voice from the heaven then welcomed both Rabbi Haninah and his executioner.

Take what you will of this story. It comes from the Talmud, and I've actually read it all in one place - though it wasn't the Talmud, there are books that collect stories from the Talmud.

The second story is quite a bit later - at the middle of the 13th century, in Paris. I didn't read it from one source, I mostly heard of it from here and there.

Once upon a time there was a Jew who converted to Christianity called Nicolas Donin. He had a mission: to convince all Christians everywhere of the inherent wickedness of the Talmud and that it should be forbidden to study. It led, eventually, to a public trial and debate - between Jewish rabbis like Rabbi Yehiel of Paris and Rabbi Moshe of Coucy and Christian judges. In a Christian country in the middle ages.

Can you guess who won?

Anyway, after the debate has ended, there were brought twenty four wagons filled with copies of the Talmud - all hand copied, because the printing press didn't reach Europe yet - and all were burned in the middle of Paris, in Place de Grève (now known as Place de l'Hôtel de Ville). This marked the end of an era to Jews in France - if I ever get around to write about eras other than the Ahe of Enlightenment I might tell you about the Tosafot at some point. Rabbi Yehiel is said to have fled France to the holly land following this debate.

At the time, there lived a Jew in Germany, in the city of Rothenburg, called Rabenu Me'ir - often referred to as Maharam of Rothenburg. He was apparently a student of Rabbi Yehiel. When he learned of the event, he wrote a piyut - a religious poem, in this case a lamantation - over the burning of the Talmud. We say it every year at the ninth of Av to this day - it's called "Ask, o Burned One". 

Maharam of Rothenburg was later imprisoned by local authorities for unrelated reason and forbade the local Jews to pay too much ransom over him. He ended up dying in jail and a rich Jew had to ransom his body to get to bury him.

That would be it for today, thank you for reading and have a good day.

So, remember that series of essays on the History of Judaism I wrote? Well, guess what? I just recalled it too! not only that, I actually wrote the next installment and published it! Here it is, it's about Modern Orthodox Judaism - the group I'd consider myself to be a part of.

For the previous parts about Haskalah, Reform and Ultra Orthodox, just click on the links!

Hopefully you'll enjoy it.

Hello there!

No, I'm not General Kenobi. You, on the other hand, aren't Grievous; I think you're just a spambot.

Hello! It's been a while, hasn't it. So, short reminder of what I do here: I write pieces about Jewish holidays, explaining their origins and traditions as much as I can remember at the moment, more or less. And now, we're getting close to exactly 12 Hebrew months since we started - which would be next Sunday! Yet, I still have one more holiday to talk about. It's special in various ways, but every holiday is so I guess there's no need to make a big deal out of it. So, anyway, the holiday of Purim!

Firstly, I'd like to answer the (unasked) question regarding how twelve months have pased and yet it wasn't a year. Lucky you, I talked about it a bit in the past here. But it appears I didn't elaborate on this specific point, so let's do that a bit: the Hebrew year is a lunar one, but there's a commandment on Pesach (Passover) that says it has to occur during the spring. So, for this reason, every two-to-three years there's an extra month in the Hebrew calendar. Incidentally, it's a double of the month we're currently at, called Adar. This year is a leap year, so we have this extra month - but the month's holidays are kept for the second of the two, which is why we're in this situation now. There's a reason for that, but this isn't our topic and frankly, has taken too much space as it is.

So, Purim! The last holiday in the Hebrew Bible, nicknamed the Last of Miracles (not commonly so, but still). The only holiday which story both starts and ends while the Jews are in exile. Technically the first of the Sages' holidays (its story predates Hannukah), but in the yearly cycle it comes after. Being a Sageic (is that a word?) holiday, you can bet it has a story - one we actually read during it, because the book documenting it did get canonized in the Hebrew Bible. So, say hello to the Book of Esther!

Our story begins with the Persian king Ahasuerus, commonly assumed to be Xerxes I. You see, he held a feast for over half a year-

groans

Oh, come on, it's not that's bad. That's how it's told in the Bible!

You can shorten it, though.

And I'm going to! I was about to do that when you interrupted. Rude.

Anyway, Ahasuerus had his feast for all his ministers and governmental workers for about half a year. Then he held a week long feast for all of the citizens in his capital. He became drunk, asked his wife to come so he can show her off, and when she refused he opted to get rid of her.

That's not shortened! And besides, what does all that have to do with Jews?

Fiiiine, I'll try actually making it short. You see, the Book of Esther is unique in multiple ways. Two defining features are: a. It's one of the only two books in the Hebrew Bible to not mention any of G-d's names. Literally, G-d is completely absent for the entirety of this book. b. It starts and ends with the deeds of a foreign king - Ahasuerus. And one of the most compelling explanations for that is that it wasn't written solely boy Jews for Jews; it was also written to sit in the bookcase of Persian history.

It's still mostly about the story of the Jews there - how incidentally a Jewish girl was picked to become queen; how Mordechai the Jew saved the king from an assassination attempt; how Haman the Agagite rose to power and decided to plan the first recorded genocide on the Jews (unless you count Pharaoh's, I guess) as a petty revenge over Mordechai not bowing to him; and finally, how Haman - and later his attempted genocide and ten children - were rid of by a collaboration of Mordechai and Esther. That would be the short summary, the longer variation includes death sentences over various crimes, rules that can't be changed, regal horses and clothing, and one can't forget the feasts! And fasts, too. If you want the entire story, go read the Book of Esther. It's not that long and can easily be found for free on the Internet, here and here, for example (former is a Jewish resource, latter is Christian).

So woohoo, the Jews were saved from genocide! (And killed 75800 people who were supposedly attempting said genocide. All across the Persian empire.) That's... a pretty good cause for celebration. No questions asked, right?

Well, there are a couple before we get to the holiday practices and traditions. Those are: is this the only time Jews were saved from genocide? If not, why then don't we have other holidays celebrating similar things? What does "Purim" mean, and why is this holiday called that?

The answer to the first and second questions is basically that there were other averted genocides - and that they were celebrated. Honest! There was a time were every other Jewish community has its own Purim. Literally so, because it was often called this community's Purim. But in modern times, with so many Jews emigrating to specific centres, this practice all but disappeared. That is likely because most weren't as wide as the attempt at Purim to wipe the Jewish people off the Persian map. But what of the Holocaust? I hear you ask? Well, we... umm... weren't exactly saved from it. Also, it ostly hit Ashkenazi Jews - which isn't all that relevant, but still.

The third question is tricky, and not just because it's a double question. The first half is easy enough: Purim is the plural form of Pur, which the Book of Esther itself explains to be lot. So Purim means, essentially, lots. Now, I once read a book that asked this question and took a few chapters to answer it; I can't really do that here, so I'll give a short answer that is also related to G-d's absence: the story is full of coincidences. There is a huge miracle here - but it's hidden with the natural works of the Persian Empire. Purim, then, is the holiday when seemingly random chance - a lot - saved us. So it's called appropriately, while somewhat hiding that G-d's hand was in it.

So, it's time for practices and tradtions! First, there are two days during which Purim might be celebrated - the 14th of Adar for most places, every city that isn't walled since the time of Joshua/Shushan (in which the miracle occured, since it was the capital of the Persian Empire at the time), while the walled cities celebrate at the 15th. The original reason for that was... Well, remember the genocide I've mentioned? It had a date attached. It was supposed to occur (or at least start) during the 13th of Adar. Mordechai and Esther saved the Jews by sending a second decree that called the Jews to fight against the genocide-committers at this same day. When this day came around and the Jews killed 500 people in Shushan, Esther and the king talked for a bit, and Esther convinced him to give the Shushanki Jews an extra day for vengence. Or something like that. So, the Jews around the Persian empire rested at the 14th of Adar and made it a celebration, while in Shushan the Jews didn't get to rest until the 15th of Adar. The reason for the "walled cities" rule is slightly more vague and has a couple of explanations I don't want to elaborate on right now. This year, the days of the holiday are next Sunday and Monday. I live in Jerusalem, so I usually practic the later of the two, but since my Yeshivah isn't in a walled city, I'm celebrating both.

During whichever day you celebrate, there are four major practices: reading the Scroll (=the Book of Esther), handing money to the poor, giving each other food (kind of a reverse trick-or-treat) and last but not least: feasting!

To try not to derail much, I'd say that according to the Talmud tractate for the holiday (it has one, unlike Hannukah) - those practices are paired with each other. The food sent should be served as part of the feast, and the poor wair for the Reading of the Scroll to receive their money. The reading occurs twice - once in the night before (since Hebrew calendar days begin with sunset) and once in the morning. The feast has to be during the day - not that it stops people from feasting during the night as well. There are certain definition for how much food/money to give your friends/the poor, but I don't have the willpower to elaborate on that.

The holiday has a couple of traditions, and honestly - I'm bound to forget something. For example, I didn't find a place yet to talk about the fast the day before Purim - at the 13th - which is practiced early this year since it occured during Saturday and we don't fast during Shabbat. And by "early" I mean "right now" for me, so excuse me if my hunger gets the better of me. This day is called "the Fast of Esther" - likely after the time Esther fasted three days before coming to see Ahasuerus. The reason for the fast might be to commemorate that - but this fast actually occured during Nissan (the next month), so this connection is a bit dubious. Some claim that during the fighting the Jews fasted - presumably the ones who didn't fight, becuase it's not a great idea otherwise. It has all the regular fast practices like the 17th of Tamuz, the Gedaliah Fast and the 10th of Tevet, though it's the least important of the six yearly fasts - supposedly you're allowed to eat if your eyes hurt. It's in some ways the flimsiest of the fasts - outside of the Fast of Firstborns, which I only mention here as a random tease and will likely never bring up again.

Also, going with the traditions that are more well based, we read from the Torah at Purim from Exodus 16 (I think) - the War with Amalek, due to the tradition that Haman was an Amalekite - a descendant of Agag, the king of Amalek at the time of King Shaul (Saul). We don't say Tachanun during Purim, but we don't read the Hallel either - the reading of the scroll sort of replaces that. There are also some other traditions going with the Shabbats around Purim, but I don't think I can push it here.

But now, let's get to the meat of it. Because if you ask the average Jew, when they hear Purim they don't think of reading the Scroll. Most of them will think of two things: getting drunk and wearing costumes. The getting drunk part derives from the feast, but it's kind of an expansion on that. The Talmud is what actually brought it up - one Amora (a sage of the Talmud) said that every Jew has to get so drunk in Purim that he couldn't tell the difference between cursing the villain and blessing the hero of the Book of Esther. This is paraphrasing, but this is the gist of it - or, well, being unable to tell the difference between the hero and villain themselves is more the gist of it. So... yeah, people get very drunk. Some people (such as myself) lean more on softer interpretations, like drinking until you sleep (maybe drinking and then sleeping is enough?) or drinking just a little more than you're used to (which isn't much, in my case).

The costume tradition has much, much less basis. I honestly don't know of evidence it even existed over 500 years ago. It's still surprisingly old, though - it's mentioned in a halachic book from 500 years ago. You could say it's copying Hallowe'en, but it's not very close to it in the yearly cycle. There are a couple of explanations for that - including the idea it's part of the flipping theme of the holiday. Which exist, because "on the day during which the enemies of the Jews hoped to rule over them it was reversed." (Esther 9, 1). So everything is flipped. Kind of. An additional point I forgot to mention that is tangentially related is the fact the Talmud stated: "once the month of Adar [during which Purim occurs] starts - happiness shall be added" (rough translation, it's kind of hard to translate). In modern day, it means that the somewhat topsy-turvey atmosphere of Purim is expanded to the two weeks before it - though TBH, I think it's most apparent in schools, where a Purim Rabbi is appointed to say a humurous sermon (so to speak, I honestly am having a hard time finding good terms). Or, well, sort of - I'm not sure I've ever seen a prooper Purim Rabbi, but I've heard quite a few Purim Torahs, which is the term for such a humurous sermon. There's also the "turning the entire school into something else" day, having special rules temporarily added to the school charter, having an equivalent of Secret Santa only with mostly food, parodying teachers, and the obligatory "come to school in a costume" day. And we've circled right back!

In addition to wine and other alcoholic drinks, Purim has its own trademark food. The Hamantash(TM) is a triangular pastry, usually filled with poppy seeds or - if you're slightly saner - chocolate. It's known as 'Ozen Haman (lit. Haman's ear) in Hebrew, since there's a rumor that the holiday's villain had triangular ears. Maybe they were even full of poppy seeds! Anyway, some claim that Hamantash(TM) are actually named that because they're poppyseed pouches, and the Yiddish word for such a thing would be montash - with the Ha- added as the Hebrew equivalent of the defining article (the o and a sounds tend to be swapped for each other among Ashkenazi Jews sometimes. Long story, this isn't precise but I don't have the willpower to elaborate right now). This is, obviously, heresy, and we will bear no such thing said regarding the Hamatashen(TM). There is also an annual debate in the Univesity of Chicago whether the Hamantash(TM) or the latke is the superior food. The actual answer is obvious (it's the Hamantash(TM), as long as it's filled with chocolate), and yet they keep debating. At least they enjoy it.

There's also a tradition to make noise every time Haman's name is read in the Scroll, which led to the marvelous line of toys that have no purpose other than making noise appropriately called noisemakers. I may have forgotten some other things that are still relevant - if you note such things, feel free to inform me. 

Sadly, this year I didn't find the time to make myself the costume I wanted, so I'm going to wear an old Johnnie Walker costume of my father's - ironic, since I myself don't drink Whisky. 

Short version of all of the above: during the time of the Persians they tried to kill us. They didn't succeed due to some political maneuvers and heavenly help (which isn't really mentioned). It was, in fact, reversed back on them. Let's celebrate!

Anyway, have a happy Purim! I may or may not continue this series in order to round off all the bits I skipped. I also may or may not try to record those things and upload them to YouTube - it's something I've considered, but I know nothing about video editing. So I'll guess we'll have to see if and where you're going to see me next!

So, hello and welcome (again) to my irregular status updates! If you've been expecting an update on my personal state regarding the war after it lasted for two months - ha ha, you've been had, it's actually just me trying to return to the regular Jewish holidays SUs! Hope you enjoy that. (A summary is at the end.)

Anyway, the next holiday starts tomorrow evening and is one you all know and love (maybe) - Hannukah. Or, Chanukah, or one of the other ways to spell it in English. Did I ever tell you that I hate transliteration? Anyway, I say "you all know" due to an interesting cultural fenomenon where, due to it coinciding at around the time of Christmas (this time actually two and a half weeks earlier, but who's counting?), it became the Jewish equivalent of Christmas in the eyes of the average American. At least it looks like it, what with all the inclusive Hannukah specials in TV shows or random slight showcases of Jews lighting menoras in Christmas specials. And while some claim that the time coinciding is no coincidence, and there are a couple of things I can cite on that topic relating to the winter solstice, I'm going to refrain from that and talk about Hannukah from an average Jewish perspective - meaning, not much scholarly stuff.

So, Hannukah is the last holiday added to the Jewish calendar that was accepted by the majority. That would be the majority of Pharisee Jews, probably, possibly, 2nd Temple sects are a thing I don't really want to get into. Basically, all Rabbinic Judaism accepts it as a holiday - unlike, say, Israel's Independence Day. It's the only holiday not mentioned in the Tanakh - because the book of Maccabees isn't part of the Jewish Biblical canon, though this isn't saying much on whether it might be historically true. (Umm, did I say no scholarly stuff? Well, umm, sorry, that probably doesn't count.) This makes it kind of unique - and it's considered alike to Purim, a holiday I'll get to in three and a half months, in that both aren't from the Pentateuch. Those are the d'rabanan holidays, the holidays from the Sages, and they're considered as somewhat lesser holidays. But that's the technical part, what's the story of the holiday? Historical event?

What is Hannukah? Well, the Sages inculcated [surprisingly good translation, though outside of daily use]: in the 25th of Kislev those are the days of Hannukah. Those are eight, during which one is not allowed to eulogize or fast. Because when the Greeks [actually Seleucids and Hellenists, but let's run with that] entered the Sanctuary, they made all the oil there ritually unclean. And when the Hasmoneans overcame them and emerged victorious, they looked all over and found just one little cruse of oil with the seal of the High Priest on it. There was only enough oil to light the Temple's Menorah for one day in there, but there was a miracle and it sufficed for eight days, and in the next year they made those holidays of praise and thanks to G-d.

This, more or less, is what the Talmud has to say on Hanukkah. Something is kind of missing from this Talmudic paragraph. I mean, "when the Hasmoneans overcame and emerged victorious" - what happened? Are we going to just... Gloss over how a couple of peasants overthrew one of the greatest empires of their time off their backs?

The clear answer is yes. Yes we are. Kind of. You see, basically all the other sources for the holiday actually talk more about the miraculous victory and the tactical genius of Judah Maccabee and his brothers. What everyone seems to agree on is that the holiday was made for the rededication of the Temple after the Seleucids destroyed it - but let's draw back for a second. What was the Seleucids' story? And why did the Hasmoneans feel the need to rebel against them?

So, we are taken back a couple of decades, to the time of Alexander the Great. I hope you know enough about history to remember his conquests - basically, this area was Yahud Medinta as a part of the Persian Empire, and was conquered when he defeated the Persians. I could make another SU about Alexander in Jewish literature, but that's not very relevant. In short, he didn't destroy the Temple - which should be enough for you to understand the state of affairs. I assume you all know the story of his inheritance, so I'll just say that two of his inheritors are of some interest to us: Seleucus and Ptolemy, who got the area of Persia and Egypt, respectively - both were great empires in their time.

So, the area that was Yahud Medinata until recently was now right between those two, and both wanted it, since it's basically the bridge between Africa and Asia and a commercial crossroad. What follows is, of course, war. It was long lasting, and the area was transferred a couple of times. In the meantime, there was some cultural effect on the area - some Jews really liked the modern Hellenistic culture. Oh, and the High Priests could buy their position from the current ruler, for one reason or another. Anyway, it came to be that Antiochus the 3rd conquered the area once more for the Seleucids, died and left the land to his son, Antiochus 4th Epiphanes. And Antiochus 4th thought that, well, this Jewish culture isn't really fun. They should all be a part of the great Hellenistic culture! So, he started giving decrees against barbaric things Jews did, like circumcision, keeping the Shabbat, keeping their calender etc. Not getting into every detail right now, but at some point, after too many uprisings from the more religiously-inclined Jews, Antiochus more or less destroyed the Temple. I mean, he left most of the building standing (I think) but it was definitely not whole anymore. Surprisingly enough, that's not the event that supposedly started the rebellion. You see, Antiochus now came to the conclusion he should force the Jews to be polytheists, like every civilised person of the time. So he tried forcing them to stop worshipping their one G-d and start worshipping others.

In a village somewhere in Judea, there lived a family of priests, known as the Hasmoneans - Matityahu son of Yohanan and his five sons. Matityahu was apparently the village elder, and was told to sacrifice a pig to some idol. He refused to commit such an act against his faith, so another Jewish villager, who probably liked Hellenism and didn't understand what the fuss was all about, decided to go sacrifice the pig in Matityahu's place. It... Did not end well for him.

Matityahu is said to have taken a sword and kill the guy trying to make the sacrifice, then turning on the soldiers and calling to all the pious people, those who still follow G-d's commandments, to his aid. And they came, and started a guerilla war against the Seleucids.

I won't get into detail here. Suffice to say Matityahu died of old age and left Judah in charge. And Judah was a great tactician... Or strategist? Maybe both? Not sure about the difference. Anyway, he led the war effort pretty well. And eventually, he made it to Jerusalem and freed it, and went to the Temple mount to find the Temple in shambles. So he and his followers worked, and eventually got the Temple into shape again, celebrating its rededication in the 25th of Kislev for eight days - as many as the days of Sukkot.

But Arch, I hear you asking, didn't you say that the eight days thing was because of the oil lasting for longer than expected? Well, yes I did. I also said that this miracle was oddly absent from other sources. Not the point, though - this miracle is very important. I'll leave it at "the Book of Maccabees says it was because of Sukkot" and move on.

So, the Menorah at the Temple. Why did they start with it? And why is the oil so important? What is the Menorah, anyway?

Well, I can't really answer all these questions, because it's not completely clear. But I'll try, starting with what the Menorah is.

The Menorah is a candelabra, more or less, only with all its seven candle holders in line, at the same height, with the same curve, made of gold. Just look it up, it's not very hard to find. Just make sure you're looking at the Temple's Menorah and not a Hanukkah one - the difference would be the number of candle holders. The original one was made by Moshe in the desert, but the one the Hasmoneans lit wasn't it. Without getting into whether it was ever returned from Babylon, the Seleucids definitely took the Menorah that was in the 2nd Temple - because it was a shiny golden thing. So, the Hasmoneans had to make one from iron rods.

Now, the oil for the Menorah has to be specifically olive oil of the best quality, of which there isn't much. Plus being ritually pure is kind of a requirement. There are still plenty of questions over there, like why the Menorah was so important zince it wasn't the only thing in the Temple that was tended to daily. But I'm not going to get into all those right now, because this SU is getting long and I really should get to the end of it.

What more is left to say? This victory wasn't the last of the Hasmoneans' effort. You better believe founding an independent kingdom between two quasi-empires isn't easy, and they probably had Roman support at some point. None of the sons of Matityahu lived to die of old age as he did - at least two of them died in battle, and one was assassinated. They continued ruling the area for a time, until infighting turned them into a Roman province. But that's far later.

One may wonder at the meaning behind the holiday. It can be success against all odds and independence, or it can be all about stocking to faith even in times of darkness. Or, well, it's probably actually both. Secular Jews tend to glorify the military side more, though, and religious Jews tend to go the other way - which may be seen in the difference between the Talmud and the Book of Maccabees. So there's that.

How is this holiday celebrated? What are its practices? Well, the central commandment of the holiday - the (so to speak) equivalent to unleavened bread in Pesach and leaf huts in Sukkot, so to speak - is lighting candles each evening. It's not from the Torah (since, you know, nothing in this holiday is), but from the Sages - making it one of the seven commandments they added. Technically, one candle each evening for a house is enough, but as an addition to the regular terms one can have a candle for each person in the house, and as a further addition (with a disagreement of whether it's instead of the first addition or in addition to it) one can add a candle for each evening - lighting two candles on the second day, three on the third and so on. The candles should be lit at night (or, well, you can light them earlier as long as they have enough fuel to stay lit for half an hour after dark), on the outside of the door so people can see them - windows are also fine, though it shouldn't be too high for passersby to see. Most people light in menorahs of nine candles - with the ninth being there for light, as it is forbidden to use or enjoy the light of the Hannukah candles. There are blessings for lighting the candles, but that's a regular thing for many commandments so I won't elaborate. There are two traditional sings basically everyone sings after lighting the candles - one from an ancient rabbinic source (probably from after the time of the Talmud) called Ha'Nerot Halalu (lit. These Candles) talking about why we light the candles and mentioning it's forbidden to use them, and the other is an actual song called Ma'oz Tzur Yeshu'ati (lit. O Mighty Stronghold of My Salvation. It works way better in Hebrew) basically laying out a list of historical trouble the Jewish people had and how G-d saved us, and asking for him to save us from our current trouble and bring the Messiah. In the morning we say the Hallel (Psalms 113-118) and read from the Torah about the dedication of the Tabernacle (the stuff in Numbers, not Exodus or Leviticus) - the predecessor of the Temple. At the Shabbat that occurs in the holiday (since it's eight days, there's always at least one), we light the candles before Shabbat enters, read the regular portion of the Torah (something I didn't elaborate on yet due to the war) but change the portion from the Prophets - reading a part from Zechariah talking about a golden Menorah. If there is another Shabbat we read at it the dedication of King Solomon's Temple from Kings 1. In addition, there's a paragraph added to daily prayers and blessings on food, about thanking G-d for the miracle of tge Hasmonean victory. And those are the more religious practices.

as for the other practices - it's traditional to eat deep fried food, because the miracle was with oil. There's also playing with spinning tops - and I'm not getting into the explanation to that, thank you. There's also the Hannukah gelt - real money or money made of chocolate given to the children. Heaven knows why, but it's fun.

I hope that by now you see that outside of occuring during a similar time period and the length there is little relation between Hannukah and Christmas. I mean, sure, both are light festivals, but that's just because of the season (winter, not "the holiday season"). It's not as important to Judaism as Christmas is for Christianity, and is celebrated in a completely different manner (I think). I must say, I get irritated when people compare these two - though there are things that remain to be seen on the topic, I honestly don't think there are many likenesses. The least said about Hannukah bushes the best - suffice to say they are a clear sign of assimilation under pretence, which is rather ironic considering the holiday's entire point is standing against cultural assimilation. 

So, this is Hannukah: the holiday of lighting candles in the middle of the winter, celebrating the Hasmonean victory on the Seleucids and the rededication of the Temple. Further questions about it, my current state (it's fine, thank you), or my Ookla name are welcome - I may not be Ookla the Questioning this year, but it's not due to changing my stance on questions. Thank you for reading, and have a bright day!

So, hello and welcome (again) to my irregular status updates! If you've been expecting an update on my personal state regarding the war after it lasted for two months - ha ha, you've been had, it's actually just me trying to return to the regular Jewish holidays SUs! Hope you enjoy that. (A summary is at the end.)

Anyway, the next holiday starts tomorrow evening and is one you all know and love (maybe) - Hannukah. Or, Chanukah, or one of the other ways to spell it in English. Did I ever tell you that I hate transliteration? Anyway, I say "you all know" due to an interesting cultural fenomenon where, due to it coinciding at around the time of Christmas (this time actually two and a half weeks earlier, but who's counting?), it became the Jewish equivalent of Christmas in the eyes of the average American. At least it looks like it, what with all the inclusive Hannukah specials in TV shows or random slight showcases of Jews lighting menoras in Christmas specials. And while some claim that the time coinciding is no coincidence, and there are a couple of things I can cite on that topic relating to the winter solstice, I'm going to refrain from that and talk about Hannukah from an average Jewish perspective - meaning, not much scholarly stuff.

So, Hannukah is the last holiday added to the Jewish calendar that was accepted by the majority. That would be the majority of Pharisee Jews, probably, possibly, 2nd Temple sects are a thing I don't really want to get into. Basically, all Rabbinic Judaism accepts it as a holiday - unlike, say, Israel's Independence Day. It's the only holiday not mentioned in the Tanakh - because the book of Maccabees isn't part of the Jewish Biblical canon, though this isn't saying much on whether it might be historically true. (Umm, did I say no scholarly stuff? Well, umm, sorry, that probably doesn't count.) This makes it kind of unique - and it's considered alike to Purim, a holiday I'll get to in three and a half months, in that both aren't from the Pentateuch. Those are the d'rabanan holidays, the holidays from the Sages, and they're considered as somewhat lesser holidays. But that's the technical part, what's the story of the holiday? Historical event?

What is Hannukah? Well, the Sages inculcated [surprisingly good translation, though outside of daily use]: in the 25th of Kislev those are the days of Hannukah. Those are eight, during which one is not allowed to eulogize or fast. Because when the Greeks [actually Seleucids and Hellenists, but let's run with that] entered the Sanctuary, they made all the oil there ritually unclean. And when the Hasmoneans overcame them and emerged victorious, they looked all over and found just one little cruse of oil with the seal of the High Priest on it. There was only enough oil to light the Temple's Menorah for one day in there, but there was a miracle and it sufficed for eight days, and in the next year they made those holidays of praise and thanks to G-d.

This, more or less, is what the Talmud has to say on Hanukkah. Something is kind of missing from this Talmudic paragraph. I mean, "when the Hasmoneans overcame and emerged victorious" - what happened? Are we going to just... Gloss over how a couple of peasants overthrew one of the greatest empires of their time off their backs?

The clear answer is yes. Yes we are. Kind of. You see, basically all the other sources for the holiday actually talk more about the miraculous victory and the tactical genius of Judah Maccabee and his brothers. What everyone seems to agree on is that the holiday was made for the rededication of the Temple after the Seleucids destroyed it - but let's draw back for a second. What was the Seleucids' story? And why did the Hasmoneans feel the need to rebel against them?

So, we are taken back a couple of decades, to the time of Alexander the Great. I hope you know enough about history to remember his conquests - basically, this area was Yahud Medinta as a part of the Persian Empire, and was conquered when he defeated the Persians. I could make another SU about Alexander in Jewish literature, but that's not very relevant. In short, he didn't destroy the Temple - which should be enough for you to understand the state of affairs. I assume you all know the story of his inheritance, so I'll just say that two of his inheritors are of some interest to us: Seleucus and Ptolemy, who got the area of Persia and Egypt, respectively - both were great empires in their time.

So, the area that was Yahud Medinata until recently was now right between those two, and both wanted it, since it's basically the bridge between Africa and Asia and a commercial crossroad. What follows is, of course, war. It was long lasting, and the area was transferred a couple of times. In the meantime, there was some cultural effect on the area - some Jews really liked the modern Hellenistic culture. Oh, and the High Priests could buy their position from the current ruler, for one reason or another. Anyway, it came to be that Antiochus the 3rd conquered the area once more for the Seleucids, died and left the land to his son, Antiochus 4th Epiphanes. And Antiochus 4th thought that, well, this Jewish culture isn't really fun. They should all be a part of the great Hellenistic culture! So, he started giving decrees against barbaric things Jews did, like circumcision, keeping the Shabbat, keeping their calender etc. Not getting into every detail right now, but at some point, after too many uprisings from the more religiously-inclined Jews, Antiochus more or less destroyed the Temple. I mean, he left most of the building standing (I think) but it was definitely not whole anymore. Surprisingly enough, that's not the event that supposedly started the rebellion. You see, Antiochus now came to the conclusion he should force the Jews to be polytheists, like every civilised person of the time. So he tried forcing them to stop worshipping their one G-d and start worshipping others.

In a village somewhere in Judea, there lived a family of priests, known as the Hasmoneans - Matityahu son of Yohanan and his five sons. Matityahu was apparently the village elder, and was told to sacrifice a pig to some idol. He refused to commit such an act against his faith, so another Jewish villager, who probably liked Hellenism and didn't understand what the fuss was all about, decided to go sacrifice the pig in Matityahu's place. It... Did not end well for him.

Matityahu is said to have taken a sword and kill the guy trying to make the sacrifice, then turning on the soldiers and calling to all the pious people, those who still follow G-d's commandments, to his aid. And they came, and started a guerilla war against the Seleucids.

I won't get into detail here. Suffice to say Matityahu died of old age and left Judah in charge. And Judah was a great tactician... Or strategist? Maybe both? Not sure about the difference. Anyway, he led the war effort pretty well. And eventually, he made it to Jerusalem and freed it, and went to the Temple mount to find the Temple in shambles. So he and his followers worked, and eventually got the Temple into shape again, celebrating its rededication in the 25th of Kislev for eight days - as many as the days of Sukkot.

But Arch, I hear you asking, didn't you say that the eight days thing was because of the oil lasting for longer than expected? Well, yes I did. I also said that this miracle was oddly absent from other sources. Not the point, though - this miracle is very important. I'll leave it at "the Book of Maccabees says it was because of Sukkot" and move on.

So, the Menorah at the Temple. Why did they start with it? And why is the oil so important? What is the Menorah, anyway?

Well, I can't really answer all these questions, because it's not completely clear. But I'll try, starting with what the Menorah is.

The Menorah is a candelabra, more or less, only with all its seven candle holders in line, at the same height, with the same curve, made of gold. Just look it up, it's not very hard to find. Just make sure you're looking at the Temple's Menorah and not a Hanukkah one - the difference would be the number of candle holders. The original one was made by Moshe in the desert, but the one the Hasmoneans lit wasn't it. Without getting into whether it was ever returned from Babylon, the Seleucids definitely took the Menorah that was in the 2nd Temple - because it was a shiny golden thing. So, the Hasmoneans had to make one from iron rods.

Now, the oil for the Menorah has to be specifically olive oil of the best quality, of which there isn't much. Plus being ritually pure is kind of a requirement. There are still plenty of questions over there, like why the Menorah was so important zince it wasn't the only thing in the Temple that was tended to daily. But I'm not going to get into all those right now, because this SU is getting long and I really should get to the end of it.

What more is left to say? This victory wasn't the last of the Hasmoneans' effort. You better believe founding an independent kingdom between two quasi-empires isn't easy, and they probably had Roman support at some point. None of the sons of Matityahu lived to die of old age as he did - at least two of them died in battle, and one was assassinated. They continued ruling the area for a time, until infighting turned them into a Roman province. But that's far later.

One may wonder at the meaning behind the holiday. It can be success against all odds and independence, or it can be all about stocking to faith even in times of darkness. Or, well, it's probably actually both. Secular Jews tend to glorify the military side more, though, and religious Jews tend to go the other way - which may be seen in the difference between the Talmud and the Book of Maccabees. So there's that.

How is this holiday celebrated? What are its practices? Well, the central commandment of the holiday - the (so to speak) equivalent to unleavened bread in Pesach and leaf huts in Sukkot, so to speak - is lighting candles each evening. It's not from the Torah (since, you know, nothing in this holiday is), but from the Sages - making it one of the seven commandments they added. Technically, one candle each evening for a house is enough, but as an addition to the regular terms one can have a candle for each person in the house, and as a further addition (with a disagreement of whether it's instead of the first addition or in addition to it) one can add a candle for each evening - lighting two candles on the second day, three on the third and so on. The candles should be lit at night (or, well, you can light them earlier as long as they have enough fuel to stay lit for half an hour after dark), on the outside of the door so people can see them - windows are also fine, though it shouldn't be too high for passersby to see. Most people light in menorahs of nine candles - with the ninth being there for light, as it is forbidden to use or enjoy the light of the Hannukah candles. There are blessings for lighting the candles, but that's a regular thing for many commandments so I won't elaborate. There are two traditional sings basically everyone sings after lighting the candles - one from an ancient rabbinic source (probably from after the time of the Talmud) called Ha'Nerot Halalu (lit. These Candles) talking about why we light the candles and mentioning it's forbidden to use them, and the other is an actual song called Ma'oz Tzur Yeshu'ati (lit. O Mighty Stronghold of My Salvation. It works way better in Hebrew) basically laying out a list of historical trouble the Jewish people had and how G-d saved us, and asking for him to save us from our current trouble and bring the Messiah. In the morning we say the Hallel (Psalms 113-118) and read from the Torah about the dedication of the Tabernacle (the stuff in Numbers, not Exodus or Leviticus) - the predecessor of the Temple. At the Shabbat that occurs in the holiday (since it's eight days, there's always at least one), we light the candles before Shabbat enters, read the regular portion of the Torah (something I didn't elaborate on yet due to the war) but change the portion from the Prophets - reading a part from Zechariah talking about a golden Menorah. If there is another Shabbat we read at it the dedication of King Solomon's Temple from Kings 1. In addition, there's a paragraph added to daily prayers and blessings on food, about thanking G-d for the miracle of tge Hasmonean victory. And those are the more religious practices.

as for the other practices - it's traditional to eat deep fried food, because the miracle was with oil. There's also playing with spinning tops - and I'm not getting into the explanation to that, thank you. There's also the Hannukah gelt - real money or money made of chocolate given to the children. Heaven knows why, but it's fun.

I hope that by now you see that outside of occuring during a similar time period and the length there is little relation between Hannukah and Christmas. I mean, sure, both are light festivals, but that's just because of the season (winter, not "the holiday season"). It's not as important to Judaism as Christmas is for Christianity, and is celebrated in a completely different manner (I think). I must say, I get irritated when people compare these two - though there are things that remain to be seen on the topic, I honestly don't think there are many likenesses. The least said about Hannukah bushes the best - suffice to say they are a clear sign of assimilation under pretence, which is rather ironic considering the holiday's entire point is standing against cultural assimilation. 

So, this is Hannukah: the holiday of lighting candles in the middle of the winter, celebrating the Hasmonean victory on the Seleucids and the rededication of the Temple. Further questions about it, my current state (it's fine, thank you), or my Ookla name are welcome - I may not be Ookla the Questioning this year, but it's not due to changing my stance on questions. Thank you for reading, and have a bright day!

Happy birthday! Have a great day!

Today is my (Hebrew calendar) birthday. Well, for many of you it's still tomorrow, but still. 

It seems silly to mention it at a time like this. I'd guess most all of you know by now what's going on in Israel, and now I've been taken to the IDF again, after having two weeks free since being released from the... Previous job I've had, at the beginning of all this.

So, my birthday, which is something I anticipate every year, has become pretty much tasteless. Not just because "how can I celebrate when people are dying?", but because I literally can't celebrate where I currently am. I don't have the peace of mind nor the ability.

In two weeks there's going to be a small wave of all those people who go over the birthday list and will wish me a happy birthday. I have no idea where I'll be, there's a good chance I won't even reply with my regular "I've already celebrated it, but thank you anyway".

This is just a depressed update from an idiot who wasn't planning on a war to ruin his birthday. Oh well.

Thank you for reading (whatever reason you have for deciding to read it is beyond me, I'm afraid), and have a better day than I'm having. Furthermore, have an actually good day, and not one just slightly less bad than I'm having.

So.

As you may have guessed, more status updates about Jewish holidays are... unlikely to come, in the near future.

I was called to the IDF reserves for some (non-fighting) stuff, and my time and state of mind aren't really accomodating of writing about those things.

Now, I wrote those pieces mostly for my own sake and it seems like I didn't have that big a following, so I guess I'm not disappointing this many people! Still, though, to those who may have waited for it - I'm sorry.

I think I'll leave it at that - I don't really know all the details of what's going on in Israel right now besides that we're at war. If you'd like to know more - I'm kind of the wrong source, since I don't watch news.

I wish you all well, thank you for reading and have a good day.

 I started writing an SU about the holiday of Shemini Atzeret - which in Israel is also Simchat Torah, outside of Israel the first day is the former and the second is the latter. I didn't find the time for that on the holiday's eve, though, and due to current events I didn't have the peace of mind to write it now either. So, I'm sorry to all three of my loyal followers (and the people who don't always upvote, you deserve an apology too), but this is going to be delayed. Hopefully not too much.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day! Also, no, I'm not a robot. I just like to end most of my messages this way.

At this (Hebrew calendar) date, three years ago, Rav Adin Even-Yisrael (better known as Rav Steinsaltz, ז"ל) died.

Why am I mentioning this here? That's a good question. It has two parts: why I mention it, and why I do it here. The answer to the first one is somewhat easier than the second: I mention it because I find that in some ways, though I hardly ever talked to him, though I don't read his books all that often, I'm still connected to him in some way. I didn't study under him; rather, I've learned from people who did, or sometimes people who learned from people who learned from him, at least a little. My high school was founded (supposedly) in his vision.

So, let's assume for a moment that this is a sufficient answer. Why am I writing this here? After all, most of my audience are non-Jews, with about two to three exceptions. Rav Adin didn't write much for gentiles - unlike Rav Sacks (ז"ל), for example, who was the chief rabbi of Great Britain. So, how does any of this relate to any of you?

Honestly, I have no idea. Maybe it will end up being irrelevant for you. But I feel like sharing ideas I believe in, and many things from my faith, so I might as well try to talk about this, too. Maybe this is a mistake; maybe after just a few seconds I will erase this whole thing. I don't know.

In no way can I actually do justice to Rav Adin. I hardly knew him, and what I heard of him can be - and was - summarized better by others. Most Jews know him from writing commentary on the Talmud. But while those commentaries were indeed a lifetime achievement, it hardly gets even close to summing up who he was.

He was a teacher; he founded an institute with the motto "let my people know". I think I've heard in his name (though I'm not sure of it) that if you get to choose between ignorants or heretics - the latter might be preferable, since they at least know what they disagree with. In a way, sometimes, when I write my esssays on Judaism here, this goes through my mind - that people need to know. 

Something I've heard many of his students say is that he wanted to leave everyone with a constant drive to do more, to move onward. 

There probably are many other things I can say about him. But as I said, I would do a bad job of it. I really don't know how to better focus this. In any case, Shabbat is coming, so I kind of have to stop here.

Thank you for reading, and have a good day

Tomorrow evening is Tish'ah b'Av, the Ninth of Av. The day of the Temple's destruction, said to be the saddest day of the Jewish calendar. (Is that enough of a summary?)

This is a (if not the) central day of mourning for Jews, for multiple resons - including, for example, how central the Temple was to Judaism before it was butrned to the ground. This is also the point in time that is considered the beginning of exile - even though there were still many Jews living in Israel in the time after the destruction, it was the beginning of the sign that... we can just as well ive abroad. Our holy place lay in ruins, and there's not much point in coming to it again.

According to tradition, both the First and Second Temples were burned during this day - the First 2445 years ago, the Second about 1954 years ago (give or take). During the time of the First Temple it was literally the beginning of the exile - the Babillonians took most of the Jews around and carried them to their land, leaving only a few - we'll talk about them at the next fast day, the Fast of Gedaliah. In the Second Temple's time, though, carrying the Jews to exile wasn't the Romans' top priority, and so it came to be that the biggest Jewish communities remained for centuries in Israel and Babillon. 

But, since with the 17th of Tamuz we went over a story from the Torah (the Pentateuch) which is said to be the spiritual origin of the fast, we'll do the same here - because the same is true. It was not long after the Isrelites left Mt. Sinai, after staying there for nearly a year. The people of Israel are getting close to the promised land, and at this point they believe they're going to enter it very soon. Just then, the Israelites come to Moshe asking him to send people to look around the land and tell them how it is, and in which ways they should go. This story - the story of the biblical Spies - and the Golden Calf are both well-known stories, but I honestly have no idea what can be assumed of people's biblical knowledge here, so I'll tell it anyway.

Those twelve people Moshe picked - one from each tribe, including his star pupil (so to speak) Hoshea bin-Nun - go to the land of Canaan to look at it. Before they go, though, Moshe slightly changes Hoshea's name to Yehoshua - better known as Joshua. Yeah, that's Moshe's successor. Anyway, they go around it for fourty days and bring back some fruits, then tell Moshe and the Israelites that the land is indeed very good - but the people around there are too strong for them to conquer. Caleb son of Yefune (of the tribe of Yehuda, which gives Jews their name) then speaks up to contradict his fellow spies, as does Yehoshua, but the people don't seem to believe them and they all start crying that evening, saying they're all going to die. For that, G-d punishes them with fourty years in the desert (including the years they already went through), and says that none of this generation outside of Yehoshua and Caleb will enter the Promised Land. 

The sages add to that that the night when all the Israelites cried? That was the 9th of Av. When G-d heard them cried, he said: "you cried tonight for nothing, I'll give you something to cry about for generations to come."

That is the first event that happened at this day. The next events are the two destructions of the Temple. Honestly, there are quite a few things I can tell about both times: the First is well-documented in the Tanakh itself, and the Second is documented in the Talmud (which, granted, was written a while later but they had traditions on what happened). But, I think I should be considerate and focus on the Second.

So, there was the revolt. Then the Romans sent their legions to stomp it. There was much fighting in all of the land, but especially in Jerusalem, which was put under siege. There are a couple of stories I can tell - like how Jerusalem is said to have been destroyed due to Kamtza and Bar Kamtza (the names of two people, the latter might've been the former's son) - but I think I will keep two important points and not try to tell it all.

The first point is the food storage. It is said that when Jerusalem felt under siege there were three rich philantropists (you could say) in Jerusalem, each promising to provide to the people in their own way, from their storages of food, drink and wood. With those storages the city could stand for a while - perhaps a year or two. The issue was... there was a group of especially violent rebels, who didn't like the abundance of food. Maybe too much of it was going to more reach people; maybe they just wanted to make the people of Jerusalem more desparate. Either way, they've burned the food storage.

the second is the religious Jewish leadership. One of the elder rabbis of the time was Raban Yohannan Ben Zacai. He saw the state of hunger in Jerusalem and knew it was only a matter of time before the city got destroyed - and with it, the religious centerand all the wise men there. His nephew was one of the leaders of those rebels I've mentioned earlier - the terrorists, I guess you could call them - who at this point also kept the city's gates from the inside, so that no one will betray them for the Romans. So Raban Yohannan went to talk to his nephew (whose name was Ben Batikh), and asked him to allow him to get out of the city. Ben Batikh, knowing that his people will never allow it, advice Raban Yohannan to pretend to die - because Jewish tradition does not allow leaving a dead body inside the city, so the terrorists will let Raban Yohannan's students to get his body outside. So Raban Yohannan did so, went to meet the Roman general, and persuaded him to leave alone the city of Yavne with it's wise men. Some of the sages criticized Raban Yohannan for his actions; they said that since he succeeded persuading the Roman general to leave one city, he might've been able to save Jerusalem and the Temple. But in the end, it's not really likely he'd have succeeded had he went fo such a lofty request.

If you want to learn of the story more fully, there's an Israeli sem-animated movie made two years ago which was also apparently dubbed to English named Legend of Destruction that tells those stories and a few more. I couldn't find a free online way to watch the English version, sadly, but the Hebrew version can be found on YouTube (under the name אגדת חורבן).

Anyway, both Temples were destroyed that day. The next event occured barely seventy years later - at the Bar Kokhva revolt, the last time Jews had independance in Israel until the founding of the State. Bar Kokhva ruled the area for two years, but the romans crushed him too - and the city of Beitar, whiich was Bar Kokhva's capital (probably because he failed to take back Jerusalem), was destroyed. After that, the city of Jerusalem and the Temple mount were plowed by the Romans, a sign of utter ownership (I think).

And... We're done now, right? Those are all the things listed in the Mishna, after all. Five things, if you count them (each Temple counts separately). Nothing else of interest happened since, right?

Wrong. I mean, yeah, not every pogrom since occured on that exact day (actually, there was for a time an additional fast for Ashkenazi Jews over pogroms during another day - I debated whether or not to talk about it when the day came around, but decided against it). Still, there's at least one more painful event for Jews that is said to have occured at this day.

You remember when Colombus accidentally reached America looking for India? Well, a few more interesting things happened at the time. For one, the Spanish Reconquista was finally over, and a Christian Catholic king, Ferdinand the 1st, finally reigned over all of Spain. And one of his first decrees after settling on his throne? Banishing all the Jews from his kingdom.

Now, it shouldn't have been viewed as this bad an event, really. After all, Jews were previously banished from England, France, and every single princedom in Italy (and probably Germany, too). It wasn't anything new, per se. Well, maybe the forced conversion and the Inquisition were a tad new. Plus, the Spanish Jews lived mostly under Muslim role up until that, which was much more tolerant toward them. True, the Reconquista was advancing for a while now, but they may not have expected such a change. Maybe this banishment was more thorough than the others - though I doubt you could get much more thorough than the banishment from England. No Jew lived there for four centuries, until the days of Cromwell. Anyway, to go back to the topic, this banishment was devastating on the Spanish Jews. Many of them converted but secretly kept the commandments of Judaism - those are called the Anusim, which means "those who were forced against their will [to convert]". Many others fled to Portugal - until they were banished from there, too. Others fled to the Ottoman Empire, which accepted them with open arms, because Jews were known to help greatly with the finances of every place they lived in. Others went to various places in North Africa or to the Netherlands, or to Italy. Those are the Spaniard Jews, and they are the reason that to this day, Jews from Muslim countries are often called Sepharadim in Hebrew. Many of them probably truly are descendants of the exiled - telltale names include Toledano and Abarbanel. Why do I say all that, though? Because the day the decree was enforced, according to tradition, was the 9th of Av.

As I said, this is a day of mourning. It's a fast day, but due to the mourning part it has additional prohibitions. Plus, it's one of the two hardest fast days - some of the prohibitions during it exist only in it and Yom Kippur. Those prohibitions include, in addition to not eating or drinking, not wearing shoes made of leather, not washing oneself, not lubricating and not commiting sexual acts. All those prohibitions are set from sunset to sunset - for about 25 hours.

The mourning additions include a prohibition on sitting on a chair higher than about one foot, studying the Torah except for things related to the Temple's destruction (or doing most any action that isn't related), plus not putting on Tephillin - black leather boxes that every Jewish man puts on every day on his forehead and arm. All those hold only until midday - except maybe the Torah study, I'm not 100% sure.

During this day we read the book of Lamantations, which was written about the Firt Temple's destruction, according to tradition by Jeremiah. There are also additions to the evening and morning prayers - themselves lamantations on the events that happened to our ancestors that are related to what happened that day, and on many other things that happened during our years of exile. There are also readings from the Torah, and from the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah.

This day is considered the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. But I've talked quite enough about it (though I didn't even get to mourning traditions for the week/nine days before it, or to the fact that the last meal before the fast has to include only two dishes and can't include meat or wine - though at least the first part of this prohibition doesn't hold on the meal before it), so I'd rather finish with something happier, as is traditional among Jews: when you end a book with something sad and depressing, you add afterwards something happier. This does not apply to the books of the Tanakh, though - only to reading them. In any case, the happier part:

There is a tradition among Jews, that the Messiah - the one destined to deliver us from exile and lead us again, the descendant of king David's line - was born (or would be born, depending on many things) at Tish'ah b'Av. The idea behind it is that "from the ashes a fire shall be woken". G-d never leaves His chosen people in destruction without creating a remedy first. We always hope for the Messiah's coming, as it could be every day - and when he comes, all of those fasts made for rememberance of the Destraction won't be necessary anymore, and furthermore - are prophesized to become holydays, days of celebration.

בבניין ירושלים תנוחמו, with the reconstruction of Jerusalem may you be comforted.

Thank you for reading, and... Well, I'm not sure I can just say "have a good day". Unless the Messiah will come, tomorrow (well, the day after, but you get it) won't be a good day for me, or for any Jew (at least practicing religious ones). Still, I guess, one must hope, so have a good day!

(Hope I didn't come of as preaching, I'm obviously talking about my faith here. The Christians among you believe Jesus Christ is the Messiah, that he already came once and you are waiting for his Second Coming, but I don't, so...)

Tomorrow evening is Tish'ah b'Av, the Ninth of Av. The day of the Temple's destruction, said to be the saddest day of the Jewish calendar. (Is that enough of a summary?)

This is a (if not the) central day of mourning for Jews, for multiple resons - including, for example, how central the Temple was to Judaism before it was butrned to the ground. This is also the point in time that is considered the beginning of exile - even though there were still many Jews living in Israel in the time after the destruction, it was the beginning of the sign that... we can just as well ive abroad. Our holy place lay in ruins, and there's not much point in coming to it again.

According to tradition, both the First and Second Temples were burned during this day - the First 2445 years ago, the Second about 1954 years ago (give or take). During the time of the First Temple it was literally the beginning of the exile - the Babillonians took most of the Jews around and carried them to their land, leaving only a few - we'll talk about them at the next fast day, the Fast of Gedaliah. In the Second Temple's time, though, carrying the Jews to exile wasn't the Romans' top priority, and so it came to be that the biggest Jewish communities remained for centuries in Israel and Babillon. 

But, since with the 17th of Tamuz we went over a story from the Torah (the Pentateuch) which is said to be the spiritual origin of the fast, we'll do the same here - because the same is true. It was not long after the Isrelites left Mt. Sinai, after staying there for nearly a year. The people of Israel are getting close to the promised land, and at this point they believe they're going to enter it very soon. Just then, the Israelites come to Moshe asking him to send people to look around the land and tell them how it is, and in which ways they should go. This story - the story of the biblical Spies - and the Golden Calf are both well-known stories, but I honestly have no idea what can be assumed of people's biblical knowledge here, so I'll tell it anyway.

Those twelve people Moshe picked - one from each tribe, including his star pupil (so to speak) Hoshea bin-Nun - go to the land of Canaan to look at it. Before they go, though, Moshe slightly changes Hoshea's name to Yehoshua - better known as Joshua. Yeah, that's Moshe's successor. Anyway, they go around it for fourty days and bring back some fruits, then tell Moshe and the Israelites that the land is indeed very good - but the people around there are too strong for them to conquer. Caleb son of Yefune (of the tribe of Yehuda, which gives Jews their name) then speaks up to contradict his fellow spies, as does Yehoshua, but the people don't seem to believe them and they all start crying that evening, saying they're all going to die. For that, G-d punishes them with fourty years in the desert (including the years they already went through), and says that none of this generation outside of Yehoshua and Caleb will enter the Promised Land. 

The sages add to that that the night when all the Israelites cried? That was the 9th of Av. When G-d heard them cried, he said: "you cried tonight for nothing, I'll give you something to cry about for generations to come."

That is the first event that happened at this day. The next events are the two destructions of the Temple. Honestly, there are quite a few things I can tell about both times: the First is well-documented in the Tanakh itself, and the Second is documented in the Talmud (which, granted, was written a while later but they had traditions on what happened). But, I think I should be considerate and focus on the Second.

So, there was the revolt. Then the Romans sent their legions to stomp it. There was much fighting in all of the land, but especially in Jerusalem, which was put under siege. There are a couple of stories I can tell - like how Jerusalem is said to have been destroyed due to Kamtza and Bar Kamtza (the names of two people, the latter might've been the former's son) - but I think I will keep two important points and not try to tell it all.

The first point is the food storage. It is said that when Jerusalem felt under siege there were three rich philantropists (you could say) in Jerusalem, each promising to provide to the people in their own way, from their storages of food, drink and wood. With those storages the city could stand for a while - perhaps a year or two. The issue was... there was a group of especially violent rebels, who didn't like the abundance of food. Maybe too much of it was going to more reach people; maybe they just wanted to make the people of Jerusalem more desparate. Either way, they've burned the food storage.

the second is the religious Jewish leadership. One of the elder rabbis of the time was Raban Yohannan Ben Zacai. He saw the state of hunger in Jerusalem and knew it was only a matter of time before the city got destroyed - and with it, the religious centerand all the wise men there. His nephew was one of the leaders of those rebels I've mentioned earlier - the terrorists, I guess you could call them - who at this point also kept the city's gates from the inside, so that no one will betray them for the Romans. So Raban Yohannan went to talk to his nephew (whose name was Ben Batikh), and asked him to allow him to get out of the city. Ben Batikh, knowing that his people will never allow it, advice Raban Yohannan to pretend to die - because Jewish tradition does not allow leaving a dead body inside the city, so the terrorists will let Raban Yohannan's students to get his body outside. So Raban Yohannan did so, went to meet the Roman general, and persuaded him to leave alone the city of Yavne with it's wise men. Some of the sages criticized Raban Yohannan for his actions; they said that since he succeeded persuading the Roman general to leave one city, he might've been able to save Jerusalem and the Temple. But in the end, it's not really likely he'd have succeeded had he went fo such a lofty request.

If you want to learn of the story more fully, there's an Israeli sem-animated movie made two years ago which was also apparently dubbed to English named Legend of Destruction that tells those stories and a few more. I couldn't find a free online way to watch the English version, sadly, but the Hebrew version can be found on YouTube (under the name אגדת חורבן).

Anyway, both Temples were destroyed that day. The next event occured barely seventy years later - at the Bar Kokhva revolt, the last time Jews had independance in Israel until the founding of the State. Bar Kokhva ruled the area for two years, but the romans crushed him too - and the city of Beitar, whiich was Bar Kokhva's capital (probably because he failed to take back Jerusalem), was destroyed. After that, the city of Jerusalem and the Temple mount were plowed by the Romans, a sign of utter ownership (I think).

And... We're done now, right? Those are all the things listed in the Mishna, after all. Five things, if you count them (each Temple counts separately). Nothing else of interest happened since, right?

Wrong. I mean, yeah, not every pogrom since occured on that exact day (actually, there was for a time an additional fast for Ashkenazi Jews over pogroms during another day - I debated whether or not to talk about it when the day came around, but decided against it). Still, there's at least one more painful event for Jews that is said to have occured at this day.

You remember when Colombus accidentally reached America looking for India? Well, a few more interesting things happened at the time. For one, the Spanish Reconquista was finally over, and a Christian Catholic king, Ferdinand the 1st, finally reigned over all of Spain. And one of his first decrees after settling on his throne? Banishing all the Jews from his kingdom.

Now, it shouldn't have been viewed as this bad an event, really. After all, Jews were previously banished from England, France, and every single princedom in Italy (and probably Germany, too). It wasn't anything new, per se. Well, maybe the forced conversion and the Inquisition were a tad new. Plus, the Spanish Jews lived mostly under Muslim role up until that, which was much more tolerant toward them. True, the Reconquista was advancing for a while now, but they may not have expected such a change. Maybe this banishment was more thorough than the others - though I doubt you could get much more thorough than the banishment from England. No Jew lived there for four centuries, until the days of Cromwell. Anyway, to go back to the topic, this banishment was devastating on the Spanish Jews. Many of them converted but secretly kept the commandments of Judaism - those are called the Anusim, which means "those who were forced against their will [to convert]". Many others fled to Portugal - until they were banished from there, too. Others fled to the Ottoman Empire, which accepted them with open arms, because Jews were known to help greatly with the finances of every place they lived in. Others went to various places in North Africa or to the Netherlands, or to Italy. Those are the Spaniard Jews, and they are the reason that to this day, Jews from Muslim countries are often called Sepharadim in Hebrew. Many of them probably truly are descendants of the exiled - telltale names include Toledano and Abarbanel. Why do I say all that, though? Because the day the decree was enforced, according to tradition, was the 9th of Av.

As I said, this is a day of mourning. It's a fast day, but due to the mourning part it has additional prohibitions. Plus, it's one of the two hardest fast days - some of the prohibitions during it exist only in it and Yom Kippur. Those prohibitions include, in addition to not eating or drinking, not wearing shoes made of leather, not washing oneself, not lubricating and not commiting sexual acts. All those prohibitions are set from sunset to sunset - for about 25 hours.

The mourning additions include a prohibition on sitting on a chair higher than about one foot, studying the Torah except for things related to the Temple's destruction (or doing most any action that isn't related), plus not putting on Tephillin - black leather boxes that every Jewish man puts on every day on his forehead and arm. All those hold only until midday - except maybe the Torah study, I'm not 100% sure.

During this day we read the book of Lamantations, which was written about the Firt Temple's destruction, according to tradition by Jeremiah. There are also additions to the evening and morning prayers - themselves lamantations on the events that happened to our ancestors that are related to what happened that day, and on many other things that happened during our years of exile. There are also readings from the Torah, and from the books of Isaiah and Jeremiah.

This day is considered the saddest day in the Jewish calendar. But I've talked quite enough about it (though I didn't even get to mourning traditions for the week/nine days before it, or to the fact that the last meal before the fast has to include only two dishes and can't include meat or wine - though at least the first part of this prohibition doesn't hold on the meal before it), so I'd rather finish with something happier, as is traditional among Jews: when you end a book with something sad and depressing, you add afterwards something happier. This does not apply to the books of the Tanakh, though - only to reading them. In any case, the happier part:

There is a tradition among Jews, that the Messiah - the one destined to deliver us from exile and lead us again, the descendant of king David's line - was born (or would be born, depending on many things) at Tish'ah b'Av. The idea behind it is that "from the ashes a fire shall be woken". G-d never leaves His chosen people in destruction without creating a remedy first. We always hope for the Messiah's coming, as it could be every day - and when he comes, all of those fasts made for rememberance of the Destraction won't be necessary anymore, and furthermore - are prophesized to become holydays, days of celebration.

בבניין ירושלים תנוחמו, with the reconstruction of Jerusalem may you be comforted.

Thank you for reading, and... Well, I'm not sure I can just say "have a good day". Unless the Messiah will come, tomorrow (well, the day after, but you get it) won't be a good day for me, or for any Jew (at least practicing religious ones). Still, I guess, one must hope, so have a good day!

(Hope I didn't come of as preaching, I'm obviously talking about my faith here. The Christians among you believe Jesus Christ is the Messiah, that he already came once and you are waiting for his Second Coming, but I don't, so...)

So, I have updated my essay about Reform Judaism! It should be in a somewhat better shape now, I think it'll be its final form. here's a link to it.

Please read and comment your thoughts about it, I would greatly appreciate feedback. My next essay is going to either be about Ultra-Orthodox or Conservative Judaism - I'm debating whether to go on the tradition-change scale (on which Conservative Judaism is next) or on the historical chronology - for which Ultra-Orthodox and Modern Orthodox Judaism come first.

In the case you've missed my first essay on this series of the history of Judaism during the Age of Enlightenment, here it is - I talk there about the Haskalah movement, which is more or less the Jewish equivalent of Enlightenment.

So, I have updated my essay about Reform Judaism! It should be in a somewhat better shape now, I think it'll be its final form. here's a link to it.

Please read and comment your thoughts about it, I would greatly appreciate feedback. My next essay is going to either be about Ultra-Orthodox or Conservative Judaism - I'm debating whether to go on the tradition-change scale (on which Conservative Judaism is next) or on the historical chronology - for which Ultra-Orthodox and Modern Orthodox Judaism come first.

In the case you've missed my first essay on this series of the history of Judaism during the Age of Enlightenment, here it is - I talk there about the Haskalah movement, which is more or less the Jewish equivalent of Enlightenment.

Well, today is my Shardiversary. It's hard to believe that it's been a year, but at the same time it's hard to believe it's only been a year. It's been an adventure, for sure!

Recently, I've found myself increasingly reflective as I prepare to graduate high school and depart from my home. It's a melancholy time, but it's also filled with hope. And the memories I've made on the Shard, and the friends, connections, stories, jokes, adventures...they've changed me. I'm a different person than I was before. This year has been really tough for me, but having people here to give me advice and guide me through it, and honestly just having an outlet for the pain has really made a difference in my life. This is a special community, one that I'll always remember.

I think the people here are what makes this place so unique.

@The Wandering Wizard, the wonderful Wiz! You were one of the first people to help me feel like I belonged, and you've been a true friend to me, an amazing source of laughter and fun. Thank you for everything. @Robin Sedai, your sharing of Calvin and Hobbes and other comics when I first joined is one of my favorite memories on the Shard. I admire your voice of reason whenever things get a little unhinged.

@CalanoCorvus, you always bring optimism to conversations and give great advice. You and @DoomslugLuna are adorable. @SymphonianBookworm our conversations here will always make me smile. I know you haven't been as active recently (I miss you!), but I know you're going to do great things! #Phantom #Jasnahoid 

@Telrao, come backkkkkkkk soon! I miss having someone to nerd out about jazz with. Your muffins and cats are iconic here on the shard. And your playlists are fantastic. Thank you for the wonderful art. @The Bookwyrm, your passion for space and astronomy really shines through. You're thoughtful and insightful, and our conversations keep me thinking for a long time after we're done. I'm looking forward to seeing where you'll end up!@Kajsa :), thank you for being a wonderful human being. You care about us, and you're just amazing. Your art is also out of this world! @That1Cellist, you are worth more than you could ever comprehend. You deserve the world. Thank you for sharing your love of cello with the world. @The Halcyon Girl, you are an amazing person. We miss you on the Shard. I'm so glad you commissioned that throne from me.

@InfiniteInsanity, you are kind and you have wonderful ideas to cheer people up. Your mission was such a sweet idea. When you're on sugar, now I know to runnnnn @The Aspiring Archivist, I'm glad I know you. Thank you for putting up with me and for being there for anyone who needs it. You have a nice voice, too. @Ranryu, your energy, and sense of humor make the world a better place. Best of luck to you with your piano and compositional career! @TheGreatSnail, aren't filters funny?? In all seriousness, those SU replys were fun. That was where it was at! @Wittles of Shinovar, WITTLESS Skittles, I admire the way you bring a positive attitude towards problems. It's not easy the way that life works out, but you're an amazing helping hand. @The Last Fæ, you often have something very interesting to share. I like the way that you think. @Potato's Wit, you're really funny. The things you share make me laugh a lot 

@Morningtide, you're always so nice. I still can't believe there's an Idaho Potato Museum! @S. Stormy, diggin' the new branding. I love how you're always up for shenanigans and helping everyone here have a good time. @Cinnamon, you're down-to-earth and friendly, EVEN THOUGH you live life upside-down. That makes it even more special. @Thaidakar the Ghostblood, you're funny! And you always have quality things to share. @Sequence, you're always full of good vibes. It's always so interesting when you share the coolest info on planes and the like.

@Cruciatus_heart, Elfffffff! Your interest in a certain type of brooding slightly insane sociopath is very funny to me. You have excellent taste in media. Congrats on everything you've accomplished this year! @TheAlpha929, you're very chill, and just fun to be around. @Eluvianii, you have chill pfps and you have cool answers on the forum games.

@Matrim's Dice, thank you for all your help in SE and for putting up with me that one conversion game. No thank you for betraying me, but I know that's how it goes.  and :P. for life. @The Known Novel, Thank you for the chaos. It is the way. *fist bump*. Kasimir, Archer, Aman, Stick, Illwei-- you guys are all really cool. I'm happy to have gotten to play with all of you this year.

@Channelknight Fadran, you've always been the cool, experienced, cultured guy here. Ever since I joined, I've looked up to you and your RPing and worldbuilding prowess. @dannnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnex, I never know what to expect from your SUs! I always know it'll be a fun time when I open that notif up. Man, those nnnnnns really keep growing. @DramaQueen, you really are a queen of drama. I know we haven't talked much but can't we just agree that theatre kids are the coolest! @Trutharchivist, thank you for sharing your culture with the shard. It's been very eye-opening. @Nathrangking, you write beautiful poems, and you have a wonderful perspective on the world.

@Cash67 I never can remember if you're young but really wise for your age, or older but still really wise for your age. You are Perry the Platypus incarnate in the best way possible. SPEAKING OF PLATYPI, @Being of Cacophony, you are ALSO a pretty cool platypus. I like checking out TLT and seeing your chaos there. Cacophony is also a really fun word. @Edema Ruh, you'll remain an Aes Sedai in my mind for a very long time. Also, spontaneity is the best! And you're great at that. @Lotus Blossom, I'm so happy Symph got you to join the shard! You're a cool person

@The Storming Stormfather, your messages on peoples' profiles are really funny. Thanks for being the storming The Storming Stormfather. @Justice_Magician, your art is incredible! Thank you for sharing it with the shard! @HOID WANTS INSTANT NOODLES, bro we gotta make that board game happen. You had so many great ideas. @Lord Gregorio, you have cool pfps. Also, interesting thoughts to share!

@Nameless*, it's truly a shame that Nameless stole your name. Your contributions to TLT are immense, and not to be questioned. @Szeth's Facepalm, your cute froggie dudes make my day. Where they at??? @Shadowed you're always great fun and it's always so cool to find fellow musicians here. Flute rules! @solarcat can we just take a minute to appreciate how awesome your username is??

@2EmLee2, @Enter a username, @PyroPhile, you guys are all super cool. Thanks for being iconic.

It's been an amazing year. Here's to many more

Thank you everyone <3

So. Three replies and four upvotes! Indicating at least one person upvoted without replying. Ah well. Due to my skewed judgement (and the fact I kind of want to write it), I deem that enough to try and write a ramble about the holy city of Abrahamic religions - which also happens to be my home for all 22 years of my life.

First, I'd like to add a tidbit on why I'm writing it today - this is the anniversary of the day in the Six Day War during which the Western Wall was taken by Israeli forces, commemorated to this day as Jerusalem Day. Now, Jerusalem has a long and complicated history on which I plan to elaborate a little here, so we'll get to it.

Jerusalem, then. As previously mentioned, it's considered holy for Christianity, Islam and Judaism - but no matter your stance, Judaism is obviously the oldest of the three. And since I'm a Jew, I'm probably going to tend to talk about that angle more - but I'll start with the Bible anyway, so there shouldn't be many discrepancies.

The city of Jerusalem is first mentioned by this full name in the book of Joshua - where its king is stated to create a local coalition to fight the Gibeonites, since the latters allied with the Israelites. This will probably not be considered very important to the history of the city, though - so let's go back a bit to an older mention of a similarly named city: after Abraham defeated the four northern kings who came to establish dominance over Canaan, he met someone named Malchizedek, who was king of Shalem (often transliterated as "Salem". Go figure) and a priest to "the most high G-d" - supposedly, a monotheistic priest in a world full of polytheism. According to tradition, Shalem is actually an old name for Jerusalem - it's more apparent in this transliteration, because in Hebrew there's actually another syllable in place of the latter E - the city is called Yerushalayim (the last part is pronounced like "lime"). The first part of the name is said to come from the Binding of Isaac, which is claimed to have occured on the Temple Mount - Abraham calls the place "Hashem (used here in place of G-d's name) Yir'eh", lit. "the LORD shall be seen", or something similar. Jerusalem, then, is said to be a blend of the words "Yir'eh" and "Shalem" - thus, Jerusalem. Either way, the city didn't fully get it's modern importance until the days of Kind David.

Now, some background: the city at the time was ruled by the Jebusites, gentiles of the original population of Israel. It's briefly mentioned in the story of the Levite's Concubine (the least said about it, the better), when the titular Levite refuses to stay there for the night because it's a non-Israelite city. He goes on to the Benjamite city of Gibe'ah and the rest is history. Later, the first Israelite king - Shaul (often transliterated as Saul) - will make Gibe'ah his capital - possibly due to it being a central city of his tribe, Benjamin. After King Shaul died, the tribe of Yehudah (=Judah), after which Jews are called, crowned David as king in Hebron - another important city that was in their estate, you might be already familiar with it. At first, he wasn't king over all Israel - the rest of the tribes accepted Shaul's son, Ish Boshet, as their king. To make a long story short, some people assassinated Ish Boshet, brought his head to king David and were immediately executed for treason against their king (meaning Ish Boshet. David was like that), which led to David being accepted as king over all of Israel. Up until then, Hebron served as his capital. But it was really far south from the rest of Israel, and was probably a tad over-representative of David's own tribe above all others. So, king David went to instate a new capital - Jebus, AKA Jerusalem.

Why there? Well, maybe there were historical records of the Patriarchs being there - which would be odd, because Hebron was definitely home to all the patriarchs, in addition to containing their tomb. Maybe bacause it was closer to the middle of the land. It was also right on the border between the tribes of Yehudah and Binyamin (=Benjamin), the tribes of the ruling monarch and his predecessor, respectfully. In this way (and by his marriage to Michal, Shaul's daughter), King David based a connection to the previous king. It was also not far south from the previous capital, so there's that. So King David went to Jebus, conquered it, renamed a part of it "Ir David" (lit. "David's City") and made it his capital. Later he brought the Ark of Covenant there (save me Raiders of the Lost Ark references, please), and planned on building a Temple - only to be told this would be his son's job. Which it was - King Shlomoh (Solomon) built the First Temple in Jerusalem, which stood there for 410 year, according to tradition.

A lot of things happened there, for better or worse, and this is already a bit too long, so I'll do it with long time skips: the kingdom of Israel was separated into two - most of the Jews you'll meet nowas=days come from the southern kingdom of Judea, which contained both Judah and Benjamin and had Jerusalem as a capital. The city was sieged by Assiryan armies and miraculously saved, only to fall to the Babilonians a couple of decades later. It served under them until the kingdom of Judea rebelled once too much and it was destroyed, along with the Temple in it. Fast forward 70 years - the Persian kings allow Jews to rebuild the Temple, and in the process Nechemiah also rebuilds the city walls. The Persians are conquered by Alexander the Great, who dies and the area is left between the Seleucids and Ptolemys. Not a pleasant situation, really. None of those rulers tries to destroy the Second Temple - the closest anyone came was Antiochus the 4th of the Seleucids, who tried to turn it to a Hellinistic temple (I think). Then the Hasmonean dynasty rebelled and reinstated the Temple, using Jerusalem as the Jewish capital once again. Inner fights led to the Roman Empire taking over business, and the central city of Provincia Judea was (I think) Jerusalem. That would be about the time Yeshua of Nazareth, better known as Jesus Christ, was active. I don't really know the full extent of his activities, but he acted against certain things with the Temple (which, I forgot to mention, was rebuilt completely by Herod), and for some reason some things he did aggravated the Romans, who chose to hang him on a cross, as was the traditional execution at the time. Little did they know what their empire would look like in a couple of centuries.

Yeshua was said to be active in Jerusalem and executed there, which is why the Christians consider this a holy city. They mostly don't care about the Temple (though there may be Christian sects that do care), or myriad of mentions made by the Prophets (unsurprising, considering that most of the prophets we have the books of nowadays lived around Jerusalem). Anyway, not long after Yeshua's execution (a couple of decades), the Jews in Jerusalem rebelled again... with disastrous results. The Romans laid waste to Jerusalem, and the religious Jewish center there was transferred to Yavneh.

The following years weren't kind to Jerusalem: the final Jewish independance in Israel before the modern state, founded by Shimon Bar Kokhva, couldn't liberate Jerusalem and fell two years later anyhow. The Romans renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, a temple to Jupiter was built in place of the old Temple, and Provincia Judea was renamed Provincia Syria Palaestina. It was a while before Jews returned to it. 

In a few centuries, the Roman Empire changed its official religion to Christianity. Emperor Constantine I allowed Christians to enter the city (they were previously forbidden, as were Jews), and instituted Christian holy sites in the city. During the following centuries the Jewish center in Israel was at the north, in Tiberias and Zippory - though the Talmud written in Israel was still known as the Jerusalem Talmud. It was finished way earlier than the Babilonian one - not due to the superior wisdom of the Israeli Jews, but because the Romans and Byzntians made sure to make trouble to the Jews under their role - the Babilonian Jews had the pleasure to be ruled by the Parthians, who were more sympathetic.

Fast forward, Jewish population in Israel still exists (though I'm not sure about Jerusalem) and shows some resistance to the previously accepted Jewish center in Babilon (the Romans are gone by now - though Byzantion still exists). Not long after, come Muhammed, prophet of Allah. I've never read the Quran, so I'm not sure about the details, but to my knowledge Muhammed was said to ascend to heaven via the Temple Mount, tying his donkey to the Western Wall - a supporting wall of the mount built by Herod to support his expansion of the mount, considered somewhat holy for it's closeness to the Holy of Holies - the part of the Temple where the Ark of Covenant was being held. Anyway, Muhammed founded Islam, and his people - the Arab tribes of the Arab Peninsula, said to descend from Ishmael son of Abraham - went out to conquer the land. I don't know if they targeted Israel and Jerusalem for their holiness or for being the passage to Africa - probably both.

Those events weren't to the liking of the Byzantian Empire, which was Orthodox Christian. So it called out to it's western Christian (=Catholic) allies, for a holy crusade to retake the holy sites from the heretics and heathens. Retrospectively I find it funny - Islam is partially based on Christian teachings, so they did to the Christians what the Christians did to Judaism, and the Christians reacted poorly to that. In any case, it took some time fo the Christians to actually organize such things - I believe Jerusalem was under Muslim role for a couple of centuries, though the specific Muslim sect that ruled there changed a few times. During the Muslim role Jews were allowed into Jerusalem - though honestly, a few centuries in (after a few crusades already conquered and lost the city), a Jewish rabbi named Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman (AKA Nachmanides) reported only two Jewish painters, brothers, who lived in Jerusalem. It may have been a result of the crusades - Jews tended to fare better in Muslim countries. 

Speaking of the crusades, let's go back to them. The first one, I believe, was led by Godefroy de Bouillon. There is an old Jewish legend that ties him to Rashi, a well-renown Jewish interpretor and rabbi of the time who lived in France. The legend is probably wrong, so I'm going to ignore it for now - with just a side mention that Rashi also wrote a lament on Jewish congregations that were destroyed by the Crusaders. Godeefroy was just the first of many (IIRC; I might be mistaken on him being the first) to try and take Jerusalem from the Muslims. He succeeded, temporarilly, and founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem - which lost Jerusalem pretty quickly.

Following is a series of wars between Christians and Muslims over Jerusalem. This ramble is long enough as it is, and in my opinion it's pretty boring, so I'll get back to Jews in the city. I mentioned the Western Wall already; since the loss of ritual purity (not elaborating, it's a thing that exists) Jews had Halachik issues with climbing the Temple Mount, the most holy site to Judaism - the place G-d chose, as mentioned many times in Deutronomy. Thus, they holiest available Jewish site was the Western Wall - the pretty much only remaining wall from something related to the Temple (at least, remaining relatively whole. The Southern, Eastern and Northern supporting walls still exist to some extent), and the closest to its original location. So it was considered a place Jews went to for prayers. But it's not really all.

Among the well-renown Jews that went to Jerusalem are Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveller who reported an existing Jewish community in the city; legends say Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (actually prior to Benjamin of Tudela) reached the city and was killed there by a Muslim horseman (dubious due to a few reasons, including the city being under Crusader role at the time); Maimonides said that he "entered the Great and Holy House and prayed there" while he was in Israel, this being assumed to be the Temple Mount; after the burning of the Talmud in Paris, Rabbi Yechiel of Paris was said to come to Israel and plan to reinstate the practice of sacrifices on the Temple mount as a first step toward the temple (some historians doubt he ever came to Israel, much less succeeded in any such endeavour); Nachmanides got there, as mentioned above, and to this day there is a synagogue named after him in the old city - supposedly built there at around the time he lived in the area. Nachmanides himself, BTW, is known to have fled Spain due to prosecutions after he won a debate against the ruling Christians. That was long before Jews were completely banished from Spain. Which just reminds me, forgive me for the lack of dates. Everything mentioned in this paragraph was during the 12th-13th century, give or take.

At this point in history, Jews were divided to Spaniards, Ashkenazi, Mizrachi etc. This is important due to another story - that of Hurvat Rabbi Yehuda He-Hasid (lit. Ruins of Rabbi Judah the Pious). It's a synagogue that was founded in Jerusalem at around the 15th century, named after a Jewish Rabbi from three ceturies before. It was an Ashkenazi synagogue, and due to various reasons and unfortunate events relating to this synagogue, during some time in the 18th century Ashkenazi Jews were forbidden from entering Jerusalem. At the time, the city was controlled by the Othoman Empire - which also built the walls currently surrounding the Old City. The Othoman Empire, BTW, accepted with open arms the Jews banished from Spain at the same time. Those of you who have sharp eyes might notice an indication here: while life in exile were bad all around, Jews were better accepted under Muslim role. It might be interesting to wonder why that is, and how is it that it turned around during the previous few centuries, but I'm digressing. From the time of the banishment of Jews from Spain in 1492 onward, there were a couple of occasions Jews went to Israel (and sometimes Jerusalem). Though for a time Safed and Tiberias contained many of the Jews in Israel, Jerusalem was still known to be the holy city (though somtimes considered one of four such cities).

During the 18th-19th centuries, the students of the BEShT (known as Chassidim; I'll get to them in my essays about Judaism at some point) and of the Gra (oh, gosh, it'll take me a while to explaain that, too. I'll get to it, really!) came to Israel, starting settlements mostly at the north - but a few of them, including one named Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref, came to Jerusalem and entered it - under the guise of Spanish Jews, because it was during the time Ashkenazi Jews were forbidden from entering the city. I peobably only mention him because his grandson founded a major settlement in Israel, and was involved in the expanding of Jerusalem outside the walls.

I also forgot to mention a Kaballic yeshivah named Bet E-l that also was in Jerusalem during the time. Honestly, I'm probably missing a lot of people. We're also getting close to the time of Zionism, so I'll just briefly mention people I know of: Moshe Montefiore was an rich Jew from England that gave financial support to Jews in Jerusalem and supported the expansion of Jerusalem: he built the first Jewish neighborhood outside the walls and added a few lines to the Western Wall (the smaller rocks on the top). Many, many important Jewsih rabbis lived in Jerusalem at this time, like Rav Kook, Reb Arye Levin, Rav Zevi Pesach Frank, Rav Zolty, Rav Meshash, Rav Sonnenfeld, Rav Elyashiv, and if I'll try to go over them all I'll never stop. So let's go back to the founding of Israel.

You see, the Zionists were mostly secular, but even they understood the historical importance of Jerusalem. As did the UN - because in their plan of dividing Israel between the Jews and the local Arabs (oh, yeah, I skipped the Brithish conquest of the area from the Othoman empire. That happened), they claimed Jerusalem as an international city. But the founders of Israel wanted it to be the capital, and Ben Gurion, who ended up being Israel's first prime minister, saw it as a high priority to have Jerusalem. Plus, at the time, it had a sizable Jewish population - for centuries, one of the city's four quarters was Jewish. But many arabs lived here too, which made the city a battlefield. To make a long story short (again), the city ended up being split into two, with the Old City being in Jordan, while the western part was mostly in Israel. The part where I currently live - coincidentally, not far from the ancient city Gibeah - was at the time mostly barren, with maybe a house here or there, and was under Jordan role. As a matter of fact, on the hill theorized to be Gibeah where the palace of Shaul was, King Hussain started building a palace for himself.

The cituation of Jewish Jerusalem wasn't very good (and probably the same in the Jordan side), considering the fact it was close to a border with enemy country. And that is how things stayed, until nineteen years later.

At 1967, the surrounding arab countries prepared to war against Israel, those being Egypt, Syria, Lebannon and later - Jordan. Those countries didn't like the existence of a Jewish country in the middle of their Muslim area. So they decided to go over it. From what I hear of the time, people in Israel were in distress: the country was young, it was attacked from all directions and didn't receive much help from other countries. The situation seemed practically hopeless, to the point of people telling dark jokes about the last person to leave the airport needing to remmeber to turn off the lights. To be gathered from that is that many people considered leaving Israel.

And then, the state of Israel struck first. They eliminated most of the air forces of the surrounding countries in one day; during the skirmishes at the north and south they not only kept their ground, but went into enemy territory - conquering the Golan Heights in the north and the Sinai Penninsula in the south. And since Jordan joined the war... well...

There were fights over Jerusalem. They were bloody, that I can tell. I've heard parts of this story quite a few times, but can't say I remember much of the details. What I can say is that a unit of paratroopers went (by foot) into the Old City via a gate named "the Lions' gate" (mistakenly, it's not really lions etched above the gate) and successfully took it back. at the 28th of Iyar, the 5727th year in the Hebrew calendar, they reached the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, proclaiming "Har HaBayit Beyadenu!" (=we have the Temple Mount).

That was the day of reunification of Jerusalem under Israel's role. Well, basically. The Temple mount was later returned to the Waqf of Al-Aqsa (a mosque at the edge of the mount, often confused with the Dome of the Rock - which is a building over a holy site, but not a mosque, that is situated where the Temple originally was), and he has some jurisdiction there ever since - Jewish pilgrimage there is limited in certain ways, but it's still technically under Jewish role. Many Jews immediately went to the Western Wall, and during the upcoming holiday of Shavuot the place was flooded. There were houses built in the area that were destroyed to create what is known today as the Western Wall Plaza.

And that has just been my latest ramble, this time about Jerusalem. Please note that farther histroical essays will be cut to parts and uploaded to my Blog (if the feature still exists when I get to it). For some reason, I did not realize how much material I planned on covering and how it'll cause me to skip a lot of points. I'll consider making essays about Jewish life during exile, the land of Israel and other random notes. Trust me when I say, unless you're a Jew who knows some history you don't really know half the meaning of some things I've mentioned. I didn't even get to the many names of Jerusalem, Prophecies about it... It's a city rich with history - like all of the Four holy cities, but actually the most of the four. Just a tidbit - the whole "four holy cities" thing isn't supposed to say there are three more cities just like Jerusalem; those are just the four biggest Jewish population centers in Israel during a certain period of history. Anyways, I should really finish now.

So, um, thank you for reading! Have an absolutely wonderful and spectacular day! Hope you're not regreting accepting this ramble...

So. Three replies and four upvotes! Indicating at least one person upvoted without replying. Ah well. Due to my skewed judgement (and the fact I kind of want to write it), I deem that enough to try and write a ramble about the holy city of Abrahamic religions - which also happens to be my home for all 22 years of my life.

First, I'd like to add a tidbit on why I'm writing it today - this is the anniversary of the day in the Six Day War during which the Western Wall was taken by Israeli forces, commemorated to this day as Jerusalem Day. Now, Jerusalem has a long and complicated history on which I plan to elaborate a little here, so we'll get to it.

Jerusalem, then. As previously mentioned, it's considered holy for Christianity, Islam and Judaism - but no matter your stance, Judaism is obviously the oldest of the three. And since I'm a Jew, I'm probably going to tend to talk about that angle more - but I'll start with the Bible anyway, so there shouldn't be many discrepancies.

The city of Jerusalem is first mentioned by this full name in the book of Joshua - where its king is stated to create a local coalition to fight the Gibeonites, since the latters allied with the Israelites. This will probably not be considered very important to the history of the city, though - so let's go back a bit to an older mention of a similarly named city: after Abraham defeated the four northern kings who came to establish dominance over Canaan, he met someone named Malchizedek, who was king of Shalem (often transliterated as "Salem". Go figure) and a priest to "the most high G-d" - supposedly, a monotheistic priest in a world full of polytheism. According to tradition, Shalem is actually an old name for Jerusalem - it's more apparent in this transliteration, because in Hebrew there's actually another syllable in place of the latter E - the city is called Yerushalayim (the last part is pronounced like "lime"). The first part of the name is said to come from the Binding of Isaac, which is claimed to have occured on the Temple Mount - Abraham calls the place "Hashem (used here in place of G-d's name) Yir'eh", lit. "the LORD shall be seen", or something similar. Jerusalem, then, is said to be a blend of the words "Yir'eh" and "Shalem" - thus, Jerusalem. Either way, the city didn't fully get it's modern importance until the days of Kind David.

Now, some background: the city at the time was ruled by the Jebusites, gentiles of the original population of Israel. It's briefly mentioned in the story of the Levite's Concubine (the least said about it, the better), when the titular Levite refuses to stay there for the night because it's a non-Israelite city. He goes on to the Benjamite city of Gibe'ah and the rest is history. Later, the first Israelite king - Shaul (often transliterated as Saul) - will make Gibe'ah his capital - possibly due to it being a central city of his tribe, Benjamin. After King Shaul died, the tribe of Yehudah (=Judah), after which Jews are called, crowned David as king in Hebron - another important city that was in their estate, you might be already familiar with it. At first, he wasn't king over all Israel - the rest of the tribes accepted Shaul's son, Ish Boshet, as their king. To make a long story short, some people assassinated Ish Boshet, brought his head to king David and were immediately executed for treason against their king (meaning Ish Boshet. David was like that), which led to David being accepted as king over all of Israel. Up until then, Hebron served as his capital. But it was really far south from the rest of Israel, and was probably a tad over-representative of David's own tribe above all others. So, king David went to instate a new capital - Jebus, AKA Jerusalem.

Why there? Well, maybe there were historical records of the Patriarchs being there - which would be odd, because Hebron was definitely home to all the patriarchs, in addition to containing their tomb. Maybe bacause it was closer to the middle of the land. It was also right on the border between the tribes of Yehudah and Binyamin (=Benjamin), the tribes of the ruling monarch and his predecessor, respectfully. In this way (and by his marriage to Michal, Shaul's daughter), King David based a connection to the previous king. It was also not far south from the previous capital, so there's that. So King David went to Jebus, conquered it, renamed a part of it "Ir David" (lit. "David's City") and made it his capital. Later he brought the Ark of Covenant there (save me Raiders of the Lost Ark references, please), and planned on building a Temple - only to be told this would be his son's job. Which it was - King Shlomoh (Solomon) built the First Temple in Jerusalem, which stood there for 410 year, according to tradition.

A lot of things happened there, for better or worse, and this is already a bit too long, so I'll do it with long time skips: the kingdom of Israel was separated into two - most of the Jews you'll meet nowas=days come from the southern kingdom of Judea, which contained both Judah and Benjamin and had Jerusalem as a capital. The city was sieged by Assiryan armies and miraculously saved, only to fall to the Babilonians a couple of decades later. It served under them until the kingdom of Judea rebelled once too much and it was destroyed, along with the Temple in it. Fast forward 70 years - the Persian kings allow Jews to rebuild the Temple, and in the process Nechemiah also rebuilds the city walls. The Persians are conquered by Alexander the Great, who dies and the area is left between the Seleucids and Ptolemys. Not a pleasant situation, really. None of those rulers tries to destroy the Second Temple - the closest anyone came was Antiochus the 4th of the Seleucids, who tried to turn it to a Hellinistic temple (I think). Then the Hasmonean dynasty rebelled and reinstated the Temple, using Jerusalem as the Jewish capital once again. Inner fights led to the Roman Empire taking over business, and the central city of Provincia Judea was (I think) Jerusalem. That would be about the time Yeshua of Nazareth, better known as Jesus Christ, was active. I don't really know the full extent of his activities, but he acted against certain things with the Temple (which, I forgot to mention, was rebuilt completely by Herod), and for some reason some things he did aggravated the Romans, who chose to hang him on a cross, as was the traditional execution at the time. Little did they know what their empire would look like in a couple of centuries.

Yeshua was said to be active in Jerusalem and executed there, which is why the Christians consider this a holy city. They mostly don't care about the Temple (though there may be Christian sects that do care), or myriad of mentions made by the Prophets (unsurprising, considering that most of the prophets we have the books of nowadays lived around Jerusalem). Anyway, not long after Yeshua's execution (a couple of decades), the Jews in Jerusalem rebelled again... with disastrous results. The Romans laid waste to Jerusalem, and the religious Jewish center there was transferred to Yavneh.

The following years weren't kind to Jerusalem: the final Jewish independance in Israel before the modern state, founded by Shimon Bar Kokhva, couldn't liberate Jerusalem and fell two years later anyhow. The Romans renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, a temple to Jupiter was built in place of the old Temple, and Provincia Judea was renamed Provincia Syria Palaestina. It was a while before Jews returned to it. 

In a few centuries, the Roman Empire changed its official religion to Christianity. Emperor Constantine I allowed Christians to enter the city (they were previously forbidden, as were Jews), and instituted Christian holy sites in the city. During the following centuries the Jewish center in Israel was at the north, in Tiberias and Zippory - though the Talmud written in Israel was still known as the Jerusalem Talmud. It was finished way earlier than the Babilonian one - not due to the superior wisdom of the Israeli Jews, but because the Romans and Byzntians made sure to make trouble to the Jews under their role - the Babilonian Jews had the pleasure to be ruled by the Parthians, who were more sympathetic.

Fast forward, Jewish population in Israel still exists (though I'm not sure about Jerusalem) and shows some resistance to the previously accepted Jewish center in Babilon (the Romans are gone by now - though Byzantion still exists). Not long after, come Muhammed, prophet of Allah. I've never read the Quran, so I'm not sure about the details, but to my knowledge Muhammed was said to ascend to heaven via the Temple Mount, tying his donkey to the Western Wall - a supporting wall of the mount built by Herod to support his expansion of the mount, considered somewhat holy for it's closeness to the Holy of Holies - the part of the Temple where the Ark of Covenant was being held. Anyway, Muhammed founded Islam, and his people - the Arab tribes of the Arab Peninsula, said to descend from Ishmael son of Abraham - went out to conquer the land. I don't know if they targeted Israel and Jerusalem for their holiness or for being the passage to Africa - probably both.

Those events weren't to the liking of the Byzantian Empire, which was Orthodox Christian. So it called out to it's western Christian (=Catholic) allies, for a holy crusade to retake the holy sites from the heretics and heathens. Retrospectively I find it funny - Islam is partially based on Christian teachings, so they did to the Christians what the Christians did to Judaism, and the Christians reacted poorly to that. In any case, it took some time fo the Christians to actually organize such things - I believe Jerusalem was under Muslim role for a couple of centuries, though the specific Muslim sect that ruled there changed a few times. During the Muslim role Jews were allowed into Jerusalem - though honestly, a few centuries in (after a few crusades already conquered and lost the city), a Jewish rabbi named Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman (AKA Nachmanides) reported only two Jewish painters, brothers, who lived in Jerusalem. It may have been a result of the crusades - Jews tended to fare better in Muslim countries. 

Speaking of the crusades, let's go back to them. The first one, I believe, was led by Godefroy de Bouillon. There is an old Jewish legend that ties him to Rashi, a well-renown Jewish interpretor and rabbi of the time who lived in France. The legend is probably wrong, so I'm going to ignore it for now - with just a side mention that Rashi also wrote a lament on Jewish congregations that were destroyed by the Crusaders. Godeefroy was just the first of many (IIRC; I might be mistaken on him being the first) to try and take Jerusalem from the Muslims. He succeeded, temporarilly, and founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem - which lost Jerusalem pretty quickly.

Following is a series of wars between Christians and Muslims over Jerusalem. This ramble is long enough as it is, and in my opinion it's pretty boring, so I'll get back to Jews in the city. I mentioned the Western Wall already; since the loss of ritual purity (not elaborating, it's a thing that exists) Jews had Halachik issues with climbing the Temple Mount, the most holy site to Judaism - the place G-d chose, as mentioned many times in Deutronomy. Thus, they holiest available Jewish site was the Western Wall - the pretty much only remaining wall from something related to the Temple (at least, remaining relatively whole. The Southern, Eastern and Northern supporting walls still exist to some extent), and the closest to its original location. So it was considered a place Jews went to for prayers. But it's not really all.

Among the well-renown Jews that went to Jerusalem are Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveller who reported an existing Jewish community in the city; legends say Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (actually prior to Benjamin of Tudela) reached the city and was killed there by a Muslim horseman (dubious due to a few reasons, including the city being under Crusader role at the time); Maimonides said that he "entered the Great and Holy House and prayed there" while he was in Israel, this being assumed to be the Temple Mount; after the burning of the Talmud in Paris, Rabbi Yechiel of Paris was said to come to Israel and plan to reinstate the practice of sacrifices on the Temple mount as a first step toward the temple (some historians doubt he ever came to Israel, much less succeeded in any such endeavour); Nachmanides got there, as mentioned above, and to this day there is a synagogue named after him in the old city - supposedly built there at around the time he lived in the area. Nachmanides himself, BTW, is known to have fled Spain due to prosecutions after he won a debate against the ruling Christians. That was long before Jews were completely banished from Spain. Which just reminds me, forgive me for the lack of dates. Everything mentioned in this paragraph was during the 12th-13th century, give or take.

At this point in history, Jews were divided to Spaniards, Ashkenazi, Mizrachi etc. This is important due to another story - that of Hurvat Rabbi Yehuda He-Hasid (lit. Ruins of Rabbi Judah the Pious). It's a synagogue that was founded in Jerusalem at around the 15th century, named after a Jewish Rabbi from three ceturies before. It was an Ashkenazi synagogue, and due to various reasons and unfortunate events relating to this synagogue, during some time in the 18th century Ashkenazi Jews were forbidden from entering Jerusalem. At the time, the city was controlled by the Othoman Empire - which also built the walls currently surrounding the Old City. The Othoman Empire, BTW, accepted with open arms the Jews banished from Spain at the same time. Those of you who have sharp eyes might notice an indication here: while life in exile were bad all around, Jews were better accepted under Muslim role. It might be interesting to wonder why that is, and how is it that it turned around during the previous few centuries, but I'm digressing. From the time of the banishment of Jews from Spain in 1492 onward, there were a couple of occasions Jews went to Israel (and sometimes Jerusalem). Though for a time Safed and Tiberias contained many of the Jews in Israel, Jerusalem was still known to be the holy city (though somtimes considered one of four such cities).

During the 18th-19th centuries, the students of the BEShT (known as Chassidim; I'll get to them in my essays about Judaism at some point) and of the Gra (oh, gosh, it'll take me a while to explaain that, too. I'll get to it, really!) came to Israel, starting settlements mostly at the north - but a few of them, including one named Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref, came to Jerusalem and entered it - under the guise of Spanish Jews, because it was during the time Ashkenazi Jews were forbidden from entering the city. I peobably only mention him because his grandson founded a major settlement in Israel, and was involved in the expanding of Jerusalem outside the walls.

I also forgot to mention a Kaballic yeshivah named Bet E-l that also was in Jerusalem during the time. Honestly, I'm probably missing a lot of people. We're also getting close to the time of Zionism, so I'll just briefly mention people I know of: Moshe Montefiore was an rich Jew from England that gave financial support to Jews in Jerusalem and supported the expansion of Jerusalem: he built the first Jewish neighborhood outside the walls and added a few lines to the Western Wall (the smaller rocks on the top). Many, many important Jewsih rabbis lived in Jerusalem at this time, like Rav Kook, Reb Arye Levin, Rav Zevi Pesach Frank, Rav Zolty, Rav Meshash, Rav Sonnenfeld, Rav Elyashiv, and if I'll try to go over them all I'll never stop. So let's go back to the founding of Israel.

You see, the Zionists were mostly secular, but even they understood the historical importance of Jerusalem. As did the UN - because in their plan of dividing Israel between the Jews and the local Arabs (oh, yeah, I skipped the Brithish conquest of the area from the Othoman empire. That happened), they claimed Jerusalem as an international city. But the founders of Israel wanted it to be the capital, and Ben Gurion, who ended up being Israel's first prime minister, saw it as a high priority to have Jerusalem. Plus, at the time, it had a sizable Jewish population - for centuries, one of the city's four quarters was Jewish. But many arabs lived here too, which made the city a battlefield. To make a long story short (again), the city ended up being split into two, with the Old City being in Jordan, while the western part was mostly in Israel. The part where I currently live - coincidentally, not far from the ancient city Gibeah - was at the time mostly barren, with maybe a house here or there, and was under Jordan role. As a matter of fact, on the hill theorized to be Gibeah where the palace of Shaul was, King Hussain started building a palace for himself.

The cituation of Jewish Jerusalem wasn't very good (and probably the same in the Jordan side), considering the fact it was close to a border with enemy country. And that is how things stayed, until nineteen years later.

At 1967, the surrounding arab countries prepared to war against Israel, those being Egypt, Syria, Lebannon and later - Jordan. Those countries didn't like the existence of a Jewish country in the middle of their Muslim area. So they decided to go over it. From what I hear of the time, people in Israel were in distress: the country was young, it was attacked from all directions and didn't receive much help from other countries. The situation seemed practically hopeless, to the point of people telling dark jokes about the last person to leave the airport needing to remmeber to turn off the lights. To be gathered from that is that many people considered leaving Israel.

And then, the state of Israel struck first. They eliminated most of the air forces of the surrounding countries in one day; during the skirmishes at the north and south they not only kept their ground, but went into enemy territory - conquering the Golan Heights in the north and the Sinai Penninsula in the south. And since Jordan joined the war... well...

There were fights over Jerusalem. They were bloody, that I can tell. I've heard parts of this story quite a few times, but can't say I remember much of the details. What I can say is that a unit of paratroopers went (by foot) into the Old City via a gate named "the Lions' gate" (mistakenly, it's not really lions etched above the gate) and successfully took it back. at the 28th of Iyar, the 5727th year in the Hebrew calendar, they reached the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, proclaiming "Har HaBayit Beyadenu!" (=we have the Temple Mount).

That was the day of reunification of Jerusalem under Israel's role. Well, basically. The Temple mount was later returned to the Waqf of Al-Aqsa (a mosque at the edge of the mount, often confused with the Dome of the Rock - which is a building over a holy site, but not a mosque, that is situated where the Temple originally was), and he has some jurisdiction there ever since - Jewish pilgrimage there is limited in certain ways, but it's still technically under Jewish role. Many Jews immediately went to the Western Wall, and during the upcoming holiday of Shavuot the place was flooded. There were houses built in the area that were destroyed to create what is known today as the Western Wall Plaza.

And that has just been my latest ramble, this time about Jerusalem. Please note that farther histroical essays will be cut to parts and uploaded to my Blog (if the feature still exists when I get to it). For some reason, I did not realize how much material I planned on covering and how it'll cause me to skip a lot of points. I'll consider making essays about Jewish life during exile, the land of Israel and other random notes. Trust me when I say, unless you're a Jew who knows some history you don't really know half the meaning of some things I've mentioned. I didn't even get to the many names of Jerusalem, Prophecies about it... It's a city rich with history - like all of the Four holy cities, but actually the most of the four. Just a tidbit - the whole "four holy cities" thing isn't supposed to say there are three more cities just like Jerusalem; those are just the four biggest Jewish population centers in Israel during a certain period of history. Anyways, I should really finish now.

So, um, thank you for reading! Have an absolutely wonderful and spectacular day! Hope you're not regreting accepting this ramble...

So. Three replies and four upvotes! Indicating at least one person upvoted without replying. Ah well. Due to my skewed judgement (and the fact I kind of want to write it), I deem that enough to try and write a ramble about the holy city of Abrahamic religions - which also happens to be my home for all 22 years of my life.

First, I'd like to add a tidbit on why I'm writing it today - this is the anniversary of the day in the Six Day War during which the Western Wall was taken by Israeli forces, commemorated to this day as Jerusalem Day. Now, Jerusalem has a long and complicated history on which I plan to elaborate a little here, so we'll get to it.

Jerusalem, then. As previously mentioned, it's considered holy for Christianity, Islam and Judaism - but no matter your stance, Judaism is obviously the oldest of the three. And since I'm a Jew, I'm probably going to tend to talk about that angle more - but I'll start with the Bible anyway, so there shouldn't be many discrepancies.

The city of Jerusalem is first mentioned by this full name in the book of Joshua - where its king is stated to create a local coalition to fight the Gibeonites, since the latters allied with the Israelites. This will probably not be considered very important to the history of the city, though - so let's go back a bit to an older mention of a similarly named city: after Abraham defeated the four northern kings who came to establish dominance over Canaan, he met someone named Malchizedek, who was king of Shalem (often transliterated as "Salem". Go figure) and a priest to "the most high G-d" - supposedly, a monotheistic priest in a world full of polytheism. According to tradition, Shalem is actually an old name for Jerusalem - it's more apparent in this transliteration, because in Hebrew there's actually another syllable in place of the latter E - the city is called Yerushalayim (the last part is pronounced like "lime"). The first part of the name is said to come from the Binding of Isaac, which is claimed to have occured on the Temple Mount - Abraham calls the place "Hashem (used here in place of G-d's name) Yir'eh", lit. "the LORD shall be seen", or something similar. Jerusalem, then, is said to be a blend of the words "Yir'eh" and "Shalem" - thus, Jerusalem. Either way, the city didn't fully get it's modern importance until the days of Kind David.

Now, some background: the city at the time was ruled by the Jebusites, gentiles of the original population of Israel. It's briefly mentioned in the story of the Levite's Concubine (the least said about it, the better), when the titular Levite refuses to stay there for the night because it's a non-Israelite city. He goes on to the Benjamite city of Gibe'ah and the rest is history. Later, the first Israelite king - Shaul (often transliterated as Saul) - will make Gibe'ah his capital - possibly due to it being a central city of his tribe, Benjamin. After King Shaul died, the tribe of Yehudah (=Judah), after which Jews are called, crowned David as king in Hebron - another important city that was in their estate, you might be already familiar with it. At first, he wasn't king over all Israel - the rest of the tribes accepted Shaul's son, Ish Boshet, as their king. To make a long story short, some people assassinated Ish Boshet, brought his head to king David and were immediately executed for treason against their king (meaning Ish Boshet. David was like that), which led to David being accepted as king over all of Israel. Up until then, Hebron served as his capital. But it was really far south from the rest of Israel, and was probably a tad over-representative of David's own tribe above all others. So, king David went to instate a new capital - Jebus, AKA Jerusalem.

Why there? Well, maybe there were historical records of the Patriarchs being there - which would be odd, because Hebron was definitely home to all the patriarchs, in addition to containing their tomb. Maybe bacause it was closer to the middle of the land. It was also right on the border between the tribes of Yehudah and Binyamin (=Benjamin), the tribes of the ruling monarch and his predecessor, respectfully. In this way (and by his marriage to Michal, Shaul's daughter), King David based a connection to the previous king. It was also not far south from the previous capital, so there's that. So King David went to Jebus, conquered it, renamed a part of it "Ir David" (lit. "David's City") and made it his capital. Later he brought the Ark of Covenant there (save me Raiders of the Lost Ark references, please), and planned on building a Temple - only to be told this would be his son's job. Which it was - King Shlomoh (Solomon) built the First Temple in Jerusalem, which stood there for 410 year, according to tradition.

A lot of things happened there, for better or worse, and this is already a bit too long, so I'll do it with long time skips: the kingdom of Israel was separated into two - most of the Jews you'll meet nowas=days come from the southern kingdom of Judea, which contained both Judah and Benjamin and had Jerusalem as a capital. The city was sieged by Assiryan armies and miraculously saved, only to fall to the Babilonians a couple of decades later. It served under them until the kingdom of Judea rebelled once too much and it was destroyed, along with the Temple in it. Fast forward 70 years - the Persian kings allow Jews to rebuild the Temple, and in the process Nechemiah also rebuilds the city walls. The Persians are conquered by Alexander the Great, who dies and the area is left between the Seleucids and Ptolemys. Not a pleasant situation, really. None of those rulers tries to destroy the Second Temple - the closest anyone came was Antiochus the 4th of the Seleucids, who tried to turn it to a Hellinistic temple (I think). Then the Hasmonean dynasty rebelled and reinstated the Temple, using Jerusalem as the Jewish capital once again. Inner fights led to the Roman Empire taking over business, and the central city of Provincia Judea was (I think) Jerusalem. That would be about the time Yeshua of Nazareth, better known as Jesus Christ, was active. I don't really know the full extent of his activities, but he acted against certain things with the Temple (which, I forgot to mention, was rebuilt completely by Herod), and for some reason some things he did aggravated the Romans, who chose to hang him on a cross, as was the traditional execution at the time. Little did they know what their empire would look like in a couple of centuries.

Yeshua was said to be active in Jerusalem and executed there, which is why the Christians consider this a holy city. They mostly don't care about the Temple (though there may be Christian sects that do care), or myriad of mentions made by the Prophets (unsurprising, considering that most of the prophets we have the books of nowadays lived around Jerusalem). Anyway, not long after Yeshua's execution (a couple of decades), the Jews in Jerusalem rebelled again... with disastrous results. The Romans laid waste to Jerusalem, and the religious Jewish center there was transferred to Yavneh.

The following years weren't kind to Jerusalem: the final Jewish independance in Israel before the modern state, founded by Shimon Bar Kokhva, couldn't liberate Jerusalem and fell two years later anyhow. The Romans renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, a temple to Jupiter was built in place of the old Temple, and Provincia Judea was renamed Provincia Syria Palaestina. It was a while before Jews returned to it. 

In a few centuries, the Roman Empire changed its official religion to Christianity. Emperor Constantine I allowed Christians to enter the city (they were previously forbidden, as were Jews), and instituted Christian holy sites in the city. During the following centuries the Jewish center in Israel was at the north, in Tiberias and Zippory - though the Talmud written in Israel was still known as the Jerusalem Talmud. It was finished way earlier than the Babilonian one - not due to the superior wisdom of the Israeli Jews, but because the Romans and Byzntians made sure to make trouble to the Jews under their role - the Babilonian Jews had the pleasure to be ruled by the Parthians, who were more sympathetic.

Fast forward, Jewish population in Israel still exists (though I'm not sure about Jerusalem) and shows some resistance to the previously accepted Jewish center in Babilon (the Romans are gone by now - though Byzantion still exists). Not long after, come Muhammed, prophet of Allah. I've never read the Quran, so I'm not sure about the details, but to my knowledge Muhammed was said to ascend to heaven via the Temple Mount, tying his donkey to the Western Wall - a supporting wall of the mount built by Herod to support his expansion of the mount, considered somewhat holy for it's closeness to the Holy of Holies - the part of the Temple where the Ark of Covenant was being held. Anyway, Muhammed founded Islam, and his people - the Arab tribes of the Arab Peninsula, said to descend from Ishmael son of Abraham - went out to conquer the land. I don't know if they targeted Israel and Jerusalem for their holiness or for being the passage to Africa - probably both.

Those events weren't to the liking of the Byzantian Empire, which was Orthodox Christian. So it called out to it's western Christian (=Catholic) allies, for a holy crusade to retake the holy sites from the heretics and heathens. Retrospectively I find it funny - Islam is partially based on Christian teachings, so they did to the Christians what the Christians did to Judaism, and the Christians reacted poorly to that. In any case, it took some time fo the Christians to actually organize such things - I believe Jerusalem was under Muslim role for a couple of centuries, though the specific Muslim sect that ruled there changed a few times. During the Muslim role Jews were allowed into Jerusalem - though honestly, a few centuries in (after a few crusades already conquered and lost the city), a Jewish rabbi named Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman (AKA Nachmanides) reported only two Jewish painters, brothers, who lived in Jerusalem. It may have been a result of the crusades - Jews tended to fare better in Muslim countries. 

Speaking of the crusades, let's go back to them. The first one, I believe, was led by Godefroy de Bouillon. There is an old Jewish legend that ties him to Rashi, a well-renown Jewish interpretor and rabbi of the time who lived in France. The legend is probably wrong, so I'm going to ignore it for now - with just a side mention that Rashi also wrote a lament on Jewish congregations that were destroyed by the Crusaders. Godeefroy was just the first of many (IIRC; I might be mistaken on him being the first) to try and take Jerusalem from the Muslims. He succeeded, temporarilly, and founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem - which lost Jerusalem pretty quickly.

Following is a series of wars between Christians and Muslims over Jerusalem. This ramble is long enough as it is, and in my opinion it's pretty boring, so I'll get back to Jews in the city. I mentioned the Western Wall already; since the loss of ritual purity (not elaborating, it's a thing that exists) Jews had Halachik issues with climbing the Temple Mount, the most holy site to Judaism - the place G-d chose, as mentioned many times in Deutronomy. Thus, they holiest available Jewish site was the Western Wall - the pretty much only remaining wall from something related to the Temple (at least, remaining relatively whole. The Southern, Eastern and Northern supporting walls still exist to some extent), and the closest to its original location. So it was considered a place Jews went to for prayers. But it's not really all.

Among the well-renown Jews that went to Jerusalem are Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveller who reported an existing Jewish community in the city; legends say Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (actually prior to Benjamin of Tudela) reached the city and was killed there by a Muslim horseman (dubious due to a few reasons, including the city being under Crusader role at the time); Maimonides said that he "entered the Great and Holy House and prayed there" while he was in Israel, this being assumed to be the Temple Mount; after the burning of the Talmud in Paris, Rabbi Yechiel of Paris was said to come to Israel and plan to reinstate the practice of sacrifices on the Temple mount as a first step toward the temple (some historians doubt he ever came to Israel, much less succeeded in any such endeavour); Nachmanides got there, as mentioned above, and to this day there is a synagogue named after him in the old city - supposedly built there at around the time he lived in the area. Nachmanides himself, BTW, is known to have fled Spain due to prosecutions after he won a debate against the ruling Christians. That was long before Jews were completely banished from Spain. Which just reminds me, forgive me for the lack of dates. Everything mentioned in this paragraph was during the 12th-13th century, give or take.

At this point in history, Jews were divided to Spaniards, Ashkenazi, Mizrachi etc. This is important due to another story - that of Hurvat Rabbi Yehuda He-Hasid (lit. Ruins of Rabbi Judah the Pious). It's a synagogue that was founded in Jerusalem at around the 15th century, named after a Jewish Rabbi from three ceturies before. It was an Ashkenazi synagogue, and due to various reasons and unfortunate events relating to this synagogue, during some time in the 18th century Ashkenazi Jews were forbidden from entering Jerusalem. At the time, the city was controlled by the Othoman Empire - which also built the walls currently surrounding the Old City. The Othoman Empire, BTW, accepted with open arms the Jews banished from Spain at the same time. Those of you who have sharp eyes might notice an indication here: while life in exile were bad all around, Jews were better accepted under Muslim role. It might be interesting to wonder why that is, and how is it that it turned around during the previous few centuries, but I'm digressing. From the time of the banishment of Jews from Spain in 1492 onward, there were a couple of occasions Jews went to Israel (and sometimes Jerusalem). Though for a time Safed and Tiberias contained many of the Jews in Israel, Jerusalem was still known to be the holy city (though somtimes considered one of four such cities).

During the 18th-19th centuries, the students of the BEShT (known as Chassidim; I'll get to them in my essays about Judaism at some point) and of the Gra (oh, gosh, it'll take me a while to explaain that, too. I'll get to it, really!) came to Israel, starting settlements mostly at the north - but a few of them, including one named Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref, came to Jerusalem and entered it - under the guise of Spanish Jews, because it was during the time Ashkenazi Jews were forbidden from entering the city. I peobably only mention him because his grandson founded a major settlement in Israel, and was involved in the expanding of Jerusalem outside the walls.

I also forgot to mention a Kaballic yeshivah named Bet E-l that also was in Jerusalem during the time. Honestly, I'm probably missing a lot of people. We're also getting close to the time of Zionism, so I'll just briefly mention people I know of: Moshe Montefiore was an rich Jew from England that gave financial support to Jews in Jerusalem and supported the expansion of Jerusalem: he built the first Jewish neighborhood outside the walls and added a few lines to the Western Wall (the smaller rocks on the top). Many, many important Jewsih rabbis lived in Jerusalem at this time, like Rav Kook, Reb Arye Levin, Rav Zevi Pesach Frank, Rav Zolty, Rav Meshash, Rav Sonnenfeld, Rav Elyashiv, and if I'll try to go over them all I'll never stop. So let's go back to the founding of Israel.

You see, the Zionists were mostly secular, but even they understood the historical importance of Jerusalem. As did the UN - because in their plan of dividing Israel between the Jews and the local Arabs (oh, yeah, I skipped the Brithish conquest of the area from the Othoman empire. That happened), they claimed Jerusalem as an international city. But the founders of Israel wanted it to be the capital, and Ben Gurion, who ended up being Israel's first prime minister, saw it as a high priority to have Jerusalem. Plus, at the time, it had a sizable Jewish population - for centuries, one of the city's four quarters was Jewish. But many arabs lived here too, which made the city a battlefield. To make a long story short (again), the city ended up being split into two, with the Old City being in Jordan, while the western part was mostly in Israel. The part where I currently live - coincidentally, not far from the ancient city Gibeah - was at the time mostly barren, with maybe a house here or there, and was under Jordan role. As a matter of fact, on the hill theorized to be Gibeah where the palace of Shaul was, King Hussain started building a palace for himself.

The cituation of Jewish Jerusalem wasn't very good (and probably the same in the Jordan side), considering the fact it was close to a border with enemy country. And that is how things stayed, until nineteen years later.

At 1967, the surrounding arab countries prepared to war against Israel, those being Egypt, Syria, Lebannon and later - Jordan. Those countries didn't like the existence of a Jewish country in the middle of their Muslim area. So they decided to go over it. From what I hear of the time, people in Israel were in distress: the country was young, it was attacked from all directions and didn't receive much help from other countries. The situation seemed practically hopeless, to the point of people telling dark jokes about the last person to leave the airport needing to remmeber to turn off the lights. To be gathered from that is that many people considered leaving Israel.

And then, the state of Israel struck first. They eliminated most of the air forces of the surrounding countries in one day; during the skirmishes at the north and south they not only kept their ground, but went into enemy territory - conquering the Golan Heights in the north and the Sinai Penninsula in the south. And since Jordan joined the war... well...

There were fights over Jerusalem. They were bloody, that I can tell. I've heard parts of this story quite a few times, but can't say I remember much of the details. What I can say is that a unit of paratroopers went (by foot) into the Old City via a gate named "the Lions' gate" (mistakenly, it's not really lions etched above the gate) and successfully took it back. at the 28th of Iyar, the 5727th year in the Hebrew calendar, they reached the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, proclaiming "Har HaBayit Beyadenu!" (=we have the Temple Mount).

That was the day of reunification of Jerusalem under Israel's role. Well, basically. The Temple mount was later returned to the Waqf of Al-Aqsa (a mosque at the edge of the mount, often confused with the Dome of the Rock - which is a building over a holy site, but not a mosque, that is situated where the Temple originally was), and he has some jurisdiction there ever since - Jewish pilgrimage there is limited in certain ways, but it's still technically under Jewish role. Many Jews immediately went to the Western Wall, and during the upcoming holiday of Shavuot the place was flooded. There were houses built in the area that were destroyed to create what is known today as the Western Wall Plaza.

And that has just been my latest ramble, this time about Jerusalem. Please note that farther histroical essays will be cut to parts and uploaded to my Blog (if the feature still exists when I get to it). For some reason, I did not realize how much material I planned on covering and how it'll cause me to skip a lot of points. I'll consider making essays about Jewish life during exile, the land of Israel and other random notes. Trust me when I say, unless you're a Jew who knows some history you don't really know half the meaning of some things I've mentioned. I didn't even get to the many names of Jerusalem, Prophecies about it... It's a city rich with history - like all of the Four holy cities, but actually the most of the four. Just a tidbit - the whole "four holy cities" thing isn't supposed to say there are three more cities just like Jerusalem; those are just the four biggest Jewish population centers in Israel during a certain period of history. Anyways, I should really finish now.

So, um, thank you for reading! Have an absolutely wonderful and spectacular day! Hope you're not regreting accepting this ramble...

So. Three replies and four upvotes! Indicating at least one person upvoted without replying. Ah well. Due to my skewed judgement (and the fact I kind of want to write it), I deem that enough to try and write a ramble about the holy city of Abrahamic religions - which also happens to be my home for all 22 years of my life.

First, I'd like to add a tidbit on why I'm writing it today - this is the anniversary of the day in the Six Day War during which the Western Wall was taken by Israeli forces, commemorated to this day as Jerusalem Day. Now, Jerusalem has a long and complicated history on which I plan to elaborate a little here, so we'll get to it.

Jerusalem, then. As previously mentioned, it's considered holy for Christianity, Islam and Judaism - but no matter your stance, Judaism is obviously the oldest of the three. And since I'm a Jew, I'm probably going to tend to talk about that angle more - but I'll start with the Bible anyway, so there shouldn't be many discrepancies.

The city of Jerusalem is first mentioned by this full name in the book of Joshua - where its king is stated to create a local coalition to fight the Gibeonites, since the latters allied with the Israelites. This will probably not be considered very important to the history of the city, though - so let's go back a bit to an older mention of a similarly named city: after Abraham defeated the four northern kings who came to establish dominance over Canaan, he met someone named Malchizedek, who was king of Shalem (often transliterated as "Salem". Go figure) and a priest to "the most high G-d" - supposedly, a monotheistic priest in a world full of polytheism. According to tradition, Shalem is actually an old name for Jerusalem - it's more apparent in this transliteration, because in Hebrew there's actually another syllable in place of the latter E - the city is called Yerushalayim (the last part is pronounced like "lime"). The first part of the name is said to come from the Binding of Isaac, which is claimed to have occured on the Temple Mount - Abraham calls the place "Hashem (used here in place of G-d's name) Yir'eh", lit. "the LORD shall be seen", or something similar. Jerusalem, then, is said to be a blend of the words "Yir'eh" and "Shalem" - thus, Jerusalem. Either way, the city didn't fully get it's modern importance until the days of Kind David.

Now, some background: the city at the time was ruled by the Jebusites, gentiles of the original population of Israel. It's briefly mentioned in the story of the Levite's Concubine (the least said about it, the better), when the titular Levite refuses to stay there for the night because it's a non-Israelite city. He goes on to the Benjamite city of Gibe'ah and the rest is history. Later, the first Israelite king - Shaul (often transliterated as Saul) - will make Gibe'ah his capital - possibly due to it being a central city of his tribe, Benjamin. After King Shaul died, the tribe of Yehudah (=Judah), after which Jews are called, crowned David as king in Hebron - another important city that was in their estate, you might be already familiar with it. At first, he wasn't king over all Israel - the rest of the tribes accepted Shaul's son, Ish Boshet, as their king. To make a long story short, some people assassinated Ish Boshet, brought his head to king David and were immediately executed for treason against their king (meaning Ish Boshet. David was like that), which led to David being accepted as king over all of Israel. Up until then, Hebron served as his capital. But it was really far south from the rest of Israel, and was probably a tad over-representative of David's own tribe above all others. So, king David went to instate a new capital - Jebus, AKA Jerusalem.

Why there? Well, maybe there were historical records of the Patriarchs being there - which would be odd, because Hebron was definitely home to all the patriarchs, in addition to containing their tomb. Maybe bacause it was closer to the middle of the land. It was also right on the border between the tribes of Yehudah and Binyamin (=Benjamin), the tribes of the ruling monarch and his predecessor, respectfully. In this way (and by his marriage to Michal, Shaul's daughter), King David based a connection to the previous king. It was also not far south from the previous capital, so there's that. So King David went to Jebus, conquered it, renamed a part of it "Ir David" (lit. "David's City") and made it his capital. Later he brought the Ark of Covenant there (save me Raiders of the Lost Ark references, please), and planned on building a Temple - only to be told this would be his son's job. Which it was - King Shlomoh (Solomon) built the First Temple in Jerusalem, which stood there for 410 year, according to tradition.

A lot of things happened there, for better or worse, and this is already a bit too long, so I'll do it with long time skips: the kingdom of Israel was separated into two - most of the Jews you'll meet nowas=days come from the southern kingdom of Judea, which contained both Judah and Benjamin and had Jerusalem as a capital. The city was sieged by Assiryan armies and miraculously saved, only to fall to the Babilonians a couple of decades later. It served under them until the kingdom of Judea rebelled once too much and it was destroyed, along with the Temple in it. Fast forward 70 years - the Persian kings allow Jews to rebuild the Temple, and in the process Nechemiah also rebuilds the city walls. The Persians are conquered by Alexander the Great, who dies and the area is left between the Seleucids and Ptolemys. Not a pleasant situation, really. None of those rulers tries to destroy the Second Temple - the closest anyone came was Antiochus the 4th of the Seleucids, who tried to turn it to a Hellinistic temple (I think). Then the Hasmonean dynasty rebelled and reinstated the Temple, using Jerusalem as the Jewish capital once again. Inner fights led to the Roman Empire taking over business, and the central city of Provincia Judea was (I think) Jerusalem. That would be about the time Yeshua of Nazareth, better known as Jesus Christ, was active. I don't really know the full extent of his activities, but he acted against certain things with the Temple (which, I forgot to mention, was rebuilt completely by Herod), and for some reason some things he did aggravated the Romans, who chose to hang him on a cross, as was the traditional execution at the time. Little did they know what their empire would look like in a couple of centuries.

Yeshua was said to be active in Jerusalem and executed there, which is why the Christians consider this a holy city. They mostly don't care about the Temple (though there may be Christian sects that do care), or myriad of mentions made by the Prophets (unsurprising, considering that most of the prophets we have the books of nowadays lived around Jerusalem). Anyway, not long after Yeshua's execution (a couple of decades), the Jews in Jerusalem rebelled again... with disastrous results. The Romans laid waste to Jerusalem, and the religious Jewish center there was transferred to Yavneh.

The following years weren't kind to Jerusalem: the final Jewish independance in Israel before the modern state, founded by Shimon Bar Kokhva, couldn't liberate Jerusalem and fell two years later anyhow. The Romans renamed Jerusalem Aelia Capitolina, a temple to Jupiter was built in place of the old Temple, and Provincia Judea was renamed Provincia Syria Palaestina. It was a while before Jews returned to it. 

In a few centuries, the Roman Empire changed its official religion to Christianity. Emperor Constantine I allowed Christians to enter the city (they were previously forbidden, as were Jews), and instituted Christian holy sites in the city. During the following centuries the Jewish center in Israel was at the north, in Tiberias and Zippory - though the Talmud written in Israel was still known as the Jerusalem Talmud. It was finished way earlier than the Babilonian one - not due to the superior wisdom of the Israeli Jews, but because the Romans and Byzntians made sure to make trouble to the Jews under their role - the Babilonian Jews had the pleasure to be ruled by the Parthians, who were more sympathetic.

Fast forward, Jewish population in Israel still exists (though I'm not sure about Jerusalem) and shows some resistance to the previously accepted Jewish center in Babilon (the Romans are gone by now - though Byzantion still exists). Not long after, come Muhammed, prophet of Allah. I've never read the Quran, so I'm not sure about the details, but to my knowledge Muhammed was said to ascend to heaven via the Temple Mount, tying his donkey to the Western Wall - a supporting wall of the mount built by Herod to support his expansion of the mount, considered somewhat holy for it's closeness to the Holy of Holies - the part of the Temple where the Ark of Covenant was being held. Anyway, Muhammed founded Islam, and his people - the Arab tribes of the Arab Peninsula, said to descend from Ishmael son of Abraham - went out to conquer the land. I don't know if they targeted Israel and Jerusalem for their holiness or for being the passage to Africa - probably both.

Those events weren't to the liking of the Byzantian Empire, which was Orthodox Christian. So it called out to it's western Christian (=Catholic) allies, for a holy crusade to retake the holy sites from the heretics and heathens. Retrospectively I find it funny - Islam is partially based on Christian teachings, so they did to the Christians what the Christians did to Judaism, and the Christians reacted poorly to that. In any case, it took some time fo the Christians to actually organize such things - I believe Jerusalem was under Muslim role for a couple of centuries, though the specific Muslim sect that ruled there changed a few times. During the Muslim role Jews were allowed into Jerusalem - though honestly, a few centuries in (after a few crusades already conquered and lost the city), a Jewish rabbi named Rabbi Moshe Ben Nachman (AKA Nachmanides) reported only two Jewish painters, brothers, who lived in Jerusalem. It may have been a result of the crusades - Jews tended to fare better in Muslim countries. 

Speaking of the crusades, let's go back to them. The first one, I believe, was led by Godefroy de Bouillon. There is an old Jewish legend that ties him to Rashi, a well-renown Jewish interpretor and rabbi of the time who lived in France. The legend is probably wrong, so I'm going to ignore it for now - with just a side mention that Rashi also wrote a lament on Jewish congregations that were destroyed by the Crusaders. Godeefroy was just the first of many (IIRC; I might be mistaken on him being the first) to try and take Jerusalem from the Muslims. He succeeded, temporarilly, and founded the Kingdom of Jerusalem - which lost Jerusalem pretty quickly.

Following is a series of wars between Christians and Muslims over Jerusalem. This ramble is long enough as it is, and in my opinion it's pretty boring, so I'll get back to Jews in the city. I mentioned the Western Wall already; since the loss of ritual purity (not elaborating, it's a thing that exists) Jews had Halachik issues with climbing the Temple Mount, the most holy site to Judaism - the place G-d chose, as mentioned many times in Deutronomy. Thus, they holiest available Jewish site was the Western Wall - the pretty much only remaining wall from something related to the Temple (at least, remaining relatively whole. The Southern, Eastern and Northern supporting walls still exist to some extent), and the closest to its original location. So it was considered a place Jews went to for prayers. But it's not really all.

Among the well-renown Jews that went to Jerusalem are Benjamin of Tudela, a Jewish traveller who reported an existing Jewish community in the city; legends say Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (actually prior to Benjamin of Tudela) reached the city and was killed there by a Muslim horseman (dubious due to a few reasons, including the city being under Crusader role at the time); Maimonides said that he "entered the Great and Holy House and prayed there" while he was in Israel, this being assumed to be the Temple Mount; after the burning of the Talmud in Paris, Rabbi Yechiel of Paris was said to come to Israel and plan to reinstate the practice of sacrifices on the Temple mount as a first step toward the temple (some historians doubt he ever came to Israel, much less succeeded in any such endeavour); Nachmanides got there, as mentioned above, and to this day there is a synagogue named after him in the old city - supposedly built there at around the time he lived in the area. Nachmanides himself, BTW, is known to have fled Spain due to prosecutions after he won a debate against the ruling Christians. That was long before Jews were completely banished from Spain. Which just reminds me, forgive me for the lack of dates. Everything mentioned in this paragraph was during the 12th-13th century, give or take.

At this point in history, Jews were divided to Spaniards, Ashkenazi, Mizrachi etc. This is important due to another story - that of Hurvat Rabbi Yehuda He-Hasid (lit. Ruins of Rabbi Judah the Pious). It's a synagogue that was founded in Jerusalem at around the 15th century, named after a Jewish Rabbi from three ceturies before. It was an Ashkenazi synagogue, and due to various reasons and unfortunate events relating to this synagogue, during some time in the 18th century Ashkenazi Jews were forbidden from entering Jerusalem. At the time, the city was controlled by the Othoman Empire - which also built the walls currently surrounding the Old City. The Othoman Empire, BTW, accepted with open arms the Jews banished from Spain at the same time. Those of you who have sharp eyes might notice an indication here: while life in exile were bad all around, Jews were better accepted under Muslim role. It might be interesting to wonder why that is, and how is it that it turned around during the previous few centuries, but I'm digressing. From the time of the banishment of Jews from Spain in 1492 onward, there were a couple of occasions Jews went to Israel (and sometimes Jerusalem). Though for a time Safed and Tiberias contained many of the Jews in Israel, Jerusalem was still known to be the holy city (though somtimes considered one of four such cities).

During the 18th-19th centuries, the students of the BEShT (known as Chassidim; I'll get to them in my essays about Judaism at some point) and of the Gra (oh, gosh, it'll take me a while to explaain that, too. I'll get to it, really!) came to Israel, starting settlements mostly at the north - but a few of them, including one named Avraham Shlomo Zalman Zoref, came to Jerusalem and entered it - under the guise of Spanish Jews, because it was during the time Ashkenazi Jews were forbidden from entering the city. I peobably only mention him because his grandson founded a major settlement in Israel, and was involved in the expanding of Jerusalem outside the walls.

I also forgot to mention a Kaballic yeshivah named Bet E-l that also was in Jerusalem during the time. Honestly, I'm probably missing a lot of people. We're also getting close to the time of Zionism, so I'll just briefly mention people I know of: Moshe Montefiore was an rich Jew from England that gave financial support to Jews in Jerusalem and supported the expansion of Jerusalem: he built the first Jewish neighborhood outside the walls and added a few lines to the Western Wall (the smaller rocks on the top). Many, many important Jewsih rabbis lived in Jerusalem at this time, like Rav Kook, Reb Arye Levin, Rav Zevi Pesach Frank, Rav Zolty, Rav Meshash, Rav Sonnenfeld, Rav Elyashiv, and if I'll try to go over them all I'll never stop. So let's go back to the founding of Israel.

You see, the Zionists were mostly secular, but even they understood the historical importance of Jerusalem. As did the UN - because in their plan of dividing Israel between the Jews and the local Arabs (oh, yeah, I skipped the Brithish conquest of the area from the Othoman empire. That happened), they claimed Jerusalem as an international city. But the founders of Israel wanted it to be the capital, and Ben Gurion, who ended up being Israel's first prime minister, saw it as a high priority to have Jerusalem. Plus, at the time, it had a sizable Jewish population - for centuries, one of the city's four quarters was Jewish. But many arabs lived here too, which made the city a battlefield. To make a long story short (again), the city ended up being split into two, with the Old City being in Jordan, while the western part was mostly in Israel. The part where I currently live - coincidentally, not far from the ancient city Gibeah - was at the time mostly barren, with maybe a house here or there, and was under Jordan role. As a matter of fact, on the hill theorized to be Gibeah where the palace of Shaul was, King Hussain started building a palace for himself.

The cituation of Jewish Jerusalem wasn't very good (and probably the same in the Jordan side), considering the fact it was close to a border with enemy country. And that is how things stayed, until nineteen years later.

At 1967, the surrounding arab countries prepared to war against Israel, those being Egypt, Syria, Lebannon and later - Jordan. Those countries didn't like the existence of a Jewish country in the middle of their Muslim area. So they decided to go over it. From what I hear of the time, people in Israel were in distress: the country was young, it was attacked from all directions and didn't receive much help from other countries. The situation seemed practically hopeless, to the point of people telling dark jokes about the last person to leave the airport needing to remmeber to turn off the lights. To be gathered from that is that many people considered leaving Israel.

And then, the state of Israel struck first. They eliminated most of the air forces of the surrounding countries in one day; during the skirmishes at the north and south they not only kept their ground, but went into enemy territory - conquering the Golan Heights in the north and the Sinai Penninsula in the south. And since Jordan joined the war... well...

There were fights over Jerusalem. They were bloody, that I can tell. I've heard parts of this story quite a few times, but can't say I remember much of the details. What I can say is that a unit of paratroopers went (by foot) into the Old City via a gate named "the Lions' gate" (mistakenly, it's not really lions etched above the gate) and successfully took it back. at the 28th of Iyar, the 5727th year in the Hebrew calendar, they reached the Temple Mount and the Western Wall, proclaiming "Har HaBayit Beyadenu!" (=we have the Temple Mount).

That was the day of reunification of Jerusalem under Israel's role. Well, basically. The Temple mount was later returned to the Waqf of Al-Aqsa (a mosque at the edge of the mount, often confused with the Dome of the Rock - which is a building over a holy site, but not a mosque, that is situated where the Temple originally was), and he has some jurisdiction there ever since - Jewish pilgrimage there is limited in certain ways, but it's still technically under Jewish role. Many Jews immediately went to the Western Wall, and during the upcoming holiday of Shavuot the place was flooded. There were houses built in the area that were destroyed to create what is known today as the Western Wall Plaza.

And that has just been my latest ramble, this time about Jerusalem. Please note that farther histroical essays will be cut to parts and uploaded to my Blog (if the feature still exists when I get to it). For some reason, I did not realize how much material I planned on covering and how it'll cause me to skip a lot of points. I'll consider making essays about Jewish life during exile, the land of Israel and other random notes. Trust me when I say, unless you're a Jew who knows some history you don't really know half the meaning of some things I've mentioned. I didn't even get to the many names of Jerusalem, Prophecies about it... It's a city rich with history - like all of the Four holy cities, but actually the most of the four. Just a tidbit - the whole "four holy cities" thing isn't supposed to say there are three more cities just like Jerusalem; those are just the four biggest Jewish population centers in Israel during a certain period of history. Anyways, I should really finish now.

So, um, thank you for reading! Have an absolutely wonderful and spectacular day! Hope you're not regreting accepting this ramble...

I MISSED MY SHARDIVERSARY!!!

I literally thought about it that morning and then forgot.

Anyways.

At least I remembered today.  

So... It's been six years now. 

That's crazy.

I was in sixth grade then (no one found out, it's fine) and now I'm about to graduate and go to college.

This community and these books have had such a huge impact on me. I talked quite a bit about that when I posted my Sanderversary so this time I'm going to mention some specific people.

@The Awakened Salad You are the best half of STAELSAHD, the best leader of The Awakened Salad Co, and the best friend I could ask for. I wish that our time zones and schedules didn't hate each other so much so that we could talk more, but... Despite that, you're amazing. Thank you for introducing me to The Owl House and many books. When I started talking to you it was like I had finally found out what it was like to have a true friend who I genuinely feel comfortable talking to. Befriending you was the first step for me to realize that it was possible for me to actually have real friends. Thank you, thank you, thank you. (And one day I will meet you and we can watch tOH together and it will be awesome.) [insert sanderavalanche gif here]

@AonEne ENE! The F of the FAB squad, the head of the Bene pantheon, an original member of The Knights of the Cosmere, an original member of TUBA, and now the best 17th Shard mod. (I'm not biased at all.) You're just... You're really cool? It's hard to convey how cool you are. Also you're kind of the mature one out of the three of us which is super weird but I'm also very grateful for that. You're incredibly wise, intelligent, thoughtful, nerdy, and just fun to talk to. I absolutely cannot wait to see more of you next year. Thank you for being my friend, and thank you for being awesome. 

@Knight of Iron K O I ! You are also super cool. I'm so grateful for your friendship. You're the only reason I ever beat Hollow Knight, you're so thoughtful in your friendships, and you're getting really storming good at thinking about things critically and challenging your assumptions, and it's so cool watching you learn and grow. Life has not been very kind to you, but you keep pushing through, and I'm so so so glad that you're in my life.

@DramaQueen You, my friend, are just as awesome as everyone else on this list. It's so fun to talk to you, and I'm so glad that we were able to connect and get to know each other better. Honestly, you're not really the kind of person I generally see myself being friends with, but... we are! And it works! And I'm so glad that we are. Hanging out with you has always been so fun, and thank you for introducing me to a bunch of super cool musicals. I can't wait to be roommates next year and to come up with some great cosplays and for you to meet Kaladin and everything else on our list.  

@Ed Venture Vennie, I love you to death. You're such a neat person, even though your sense of humor is mildly disturbing. Thank you for your help with all of my random questions about college, and for just always being there for me. It means so much. I can't wait to see you more next year. (I haven't forgotten about dress shopping.)

@Vapor You are such an incredible person. I'm amazed every time I talk to you by your resilience and bravery. You're so cool, you have awesome hair, and hanging out with you is always a joy. You're such a kind and delightful human being. 

@Condensation TELL SPOOK I SAY HI! You are also amazing. I know we don't talk very much, but I always feel comfortable around you and it's so easy to talk with you. You're awesome and you've got this. I really hope to see more of you and Vapor next year as well. 

@Doomstick I know we're kind of more casual friends, but when I do chat with you it's always great. Thanks for being my first friend on Duolingo, and I hope that we have the chance to ski together again a few more times in the future. (I'll read Bluebear at some point, I promise.)

Of course there are so many more people, but these eight have probably had the largest influence on who I currently am. To everyone else, you're also awesome and it's a joy and a blessing to know you and have you in my life. The community I've found through this site rivals no other, and I have genuinely made life long friends. And it's so nice knowing that it'll always be incredibly easy to find someone to discuss Sanderson books with.  

Until next year!

Okay so I missed my Sanderversary. 

On April 19, 2017, I bought my first Brandon Sanderson book. (I found the receipt a while back which is the only reason I know the date.) I started reading it that day.

And now I get to flex that my first Sanderson book was The Way of Kings and that I read it when I was twelve.  

So... Yeah, it's crazy. These books have been such a huge part of my life for the last six years. I've grown up so much since then. (And I still have a lot more growing up to do, trust me.) The Cosmere has completely reshaped my understanding of stories and of fantasy in particular, and Brandon honestly is just a great person. The books are no longer my entire personality as they were when I was in middle school, but they have made up a lot of who I am now. And even if at some point I move on from them (unlikely), that mark will always remain.

And honestly, I'm just so grateful for Brandon. I love how much he has grown as an author, especially when it comes to representation and diversity in his books, and how he's been handling that of late. As a queer, autistic, AFAB individual, it means the world to me that my favorite author is an open supporter of these comminities I'm a part of, and is not only standing up for us (specifically in relation to the LGBTQIA+ community), but also is seeking to accurately depict us and others in his works of fiction. 

Representation. Means. Everything. 

And the more I've come to understand bias and how representation can affect that, the more I've come to appreciate Brandon. Because no one really does it like he does, especially with how open he is with his fans about it. I especially appreciate how he's acknowledged his past shortcomings, such as his lack of female characters in Mistborn, and that he has been open about them, as well as the fact that his desire to improve in these regards is clear in his newer works.

He's not perfect. I disagree with the way he approaches a lot of things, especially his work with his charity and the way he handled the Kickstarter. But when it comes down to it, he's honestly just a good human being. And I'll never forget how kind he was when little seventh grade me came to a signing and asked "do you care how many books you sign?" and he said no and then proceeded to sign all fifteen books that I brought. I look up to him in a lot of ways. 

And... Honestly, most importantly, these books led me to finding a community when I had none. When I was in middle school, I wanted nothing more than to have friends that I could talk to about the Cosmere. But, understandably, most kids in that age range don't really want to be friends with the one weird kid who just wants to talk about the giant epic fantasy bricks and who constantly pesters everyone to read them. But I came here. (Yes, I was too young. But no one caught me so hah. /lh) I found a community. I started a role play that continued for I think three years, I was the second member of TUBA, and eventually I got on discord and through the community that came together through the Shard, I met a bunch of people who are now some of my closest friends in the world. (I'll give some of them a shoutout next month in my Shardiversary post.)

I seriously just can't express how large a role these books have played in my life. (Though my list of how many times I've read each book in my about me may provide an idea.) 

But.... Yeah. Just... I'll always be a Sanderfan, in one way or another.

 

 

Oh also I read over half of Elantris today. This was only my third time reading it and I enjoyed it so much more than I remembered. Raoden is such a good bean. Also now that I've started fencing, the fencing scenes were so fun. I think I currently like it more than I like Warbreaker, which is kind of unexpected. My second to last time reading Warbreaker I read it in under 24 hours, but last time it just kinda fell flat. But I loved Elantris so much this time. I think the difference between those two for me this time around was my perception of the characters. The characters in Warbreaker (sorry for reusing the same phrase) just fell flat for me. But Elantris felt far more driven by the individual characters. The characters felt less like plot devices, I guess.

Anyways.

Elantris was fun.

I have the tenth anniversary edition too so I got the fun little scene with Hoid doing Hoid things at the end.

...

It got far too late far too fast. Stupid sentimentality.  

Who decided I'm qualifed to go to college ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

If you are currently in a time zone where now is a good time to go to bed, please go to bed. Thank youuuuuuuu. 

Oh and also, y'all should watch The Owl House.  

So, tomorrow's Yom HaShoah, the Israeli Holocaust memorial day. I'm writing this as a continuation to my SU about Pesach, even though this is actually a national day, and not a religious one.

I shouldn't have to remind anyone what the Holocaust was. Just for the record I'll say it anyway: an organised genocide of the Jewish people by the Nazi regime during WW2, during which 6 million Jews - approximately a third of the entire Jewish population worldwide at the time. 

My family is relatively lucky. On my mother's side, most of my great-grandparents were already in Israel when the war started. My maternal grandfather's mother went out of Europe in the nick of time. My mother's maternal grandfather was the only one from that side to have been to the camps.

On my father's side we're French Jews; some ran away to Switzerland, some hid in the rural areas of France. My paternal grandfather's father served at the army at the time - he was at the Maginot line. Guess where he ended up? As a prisoner of war, though, he got better conditions than the Eastern Jews.

All of my great grandparents had relatives who died in the Holocaust, though. Siblings. Parents. I could even tell a story or two about how my great-great-greatuncles and aunts died, and maybe I'll do that later. Right now, though, I want to write about the general history of the day. Why is the Israeli Holocaust memorial day tomorrow, instead of closer to D-day, or the day the extermination camps were destroyed? What happened during this fateful day, the 27th of Nissan in the Hebrew calendar?

Well, nothing to do with the Holocaust. Apparently, it was used as a memorial day for casualties during the Arab revolt, two years before the World War even started.

Still, there is a reason for it to be at this time of year beyond an existing memorial day. The reason is the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

You see, at the time - the first few years of the state of Israel - the Israeli Jews had a perception that Jews should fight back when oppressed. They kind of looked down on those who survived because they didn't fight back - seeing them as "exilist Jews", so to speak. So the memorial day was dedicated to the brave heroes who fought back - and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the biggest Jewish revolt against the Nazis. Of course, the Nazis destroyed the Ghetto and killed most of its population afterwards, but it hit them hard.

I'm never going to be able to tell the actual full story, so short version: for a long time, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were sent away to Extermination camps. That was standard at that period - every now and then there would be a round of picking people to send. But the Jews at the Ghetto didn't know they were sent to die - which is why they didn't revolt at first. They thought it will heighten their probability of death.

But then, a woman who was rescued from an extermination camp came and told them the truth. That convinced them to get up and fight. There were a couple of underground organizations that had fighters and weaponry. And so, next time the Nazis came to pick who to send, they revolted. They successfully got the Nazis away from the Ghetto and secured its grounds. The Nazis came again the day before Pesach and failed to take the camp. But after that victory cost a bit to much to the Nazis... Well...

They sent a larger power and destroyed the revolt, killing all the Jews who stayed at the Ghetto. They burned the houses and destroyed the synagogue, and if some of the none warriors stayed alive after that, this was soon remedied. 

So, not so successful. But they went down fighting, and took many SS soldiers with them. And that was the important point in the eyes of Israel's leaders back then. There was only one problem, though: the day the uprising supposedly started, the 14th of Nissan, wasn't really fitting for a memorial day, being the day before Pesach. Even though the leadership of Israel was mostly secular, they didn't think it'll go well. So instead, they stuck to an existing memorial day at the same month. Apparently so, because I honestly never heard of that before. I just found it on Wikipedia. The reasoning I heard for it was far more contrived, though, so I'll leave you with that reasoning and move on to the next topic.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel didn't like the idea, though. You see, according to the Halakhah, one isn't supposed to mourn during Nissan. I mean, if a relative of his dies or something he can mourn, but public mourning is more problematic. And this is why next week you'll hear me talk about religious repercussions of the Israeli Independence Day, but this week I'm not talking about that. It's because it doesn't really have any and shouldn't have any. Instead, the CRI decided that the fast at the 10th of Tevet will be declared the "general Kaddish day". What it means is that: when a person dies, his relatives say the mourner Kaddish on his grave, every year, at his date of death. But what if you have no idea when your relative died, or where he's buried? Well, the latter isn't that much of a problem (you can say the Kaddish in every synagogue, as long as you have ten people with you), but the solution to the former is this: the general Kaddish day, when you say Kaddish on your loved ones if you don't know their death's date. It kind of works as a religious stand in to the Holocaust memorial day.

Hope that was informative and interesting! I'm going to keep this up with even relatively minor Jewish dates and holidays, as much as I can. If someone prefers otherwise - they may speak up. Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful day.

So, tomorrow's Yom HaShoah, the Israeli Holocaust memorial day. I'm writing this as a continuation to my SU about Pesach, even though this is actually a national day, and not a religious one.

I shouldn't have to remind anyone what the Holocaust was. Just for the record I'll say it anyway: an organised genocide of the Jewish people by the Nazi regime during WW2, during which 6 million Jews - approximately a third of the entire Jewish population worldwide at the time. 

My family is relatively lucky. On my mother's side, most of my great-grandparents were already in Israel when the war started. My maternal grandfather's mother went out of Europe in the nick of time. My mother's maternal grandfather was the only one from that side to have been to the camps.

On my father's side we're French Jews; some ran away to Switzerland, some hid in the rural areas of France. My paternal grandfather's father served at the army at the time - he was at the Maginot line. Guess where he ended up? As a prisoner of war, though, he got better conditions than the Eastern Jews.

All of my great grandparents had relatives who died in the Holocaust, though. Siblings. Parents. I could even tell a story or two about how my great-great-greatuncles and aunts died, and maybe I'll do that later. Right now, though, I want to write about the general history of the day. Why is the Israeli Holocaust memorial day tomorrow, instead of closer to D-day, or the day the extermination camps were destroyed? What happened during this fateful day, the 27th of Nissan in the Hebrew calendar?

Well, nothing to do with the Holocaust. Apparently, it was used as a memorial day for casualties during the Arab revolt, two years before the World War even started.

Still, there is a reason for it to be at this time of year beyond an existing memorial day. The reason is the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

You see, at the time - the first few years of the state of Israel - the Israeli Jews had a perception that Jews should fight back when oppressed. They kind of looked down on those who survived because they didn't fight back - seeing them as "exilist Jews", so to speak. So the memorial day was dedicated to the brave heroes who fought back - and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the biggest Jewish revolt against the Nazis. Of course, the Nazis destroyed the Ghetto and killed most of its population afterwards, but it hit them hard.

I'm never going to be able to tell the actual full story, so short version: for a long time, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto were sent away to Extermination camps. That was standard at that period - every now and then there would be a round of picking people to send. But the Jews at the Ghetto didn't know they were sent to die - which is why they didn't revolt at first. They thought it will heighten their probability of death.

But then, a woman who was rescued from an extermination camp came and told them the truth. That convinced them to get up and fight. There were a couple of underground organizations that had fighters and weaponry. And so, next time the Nazis came to pick who to send, they revolted. They successfully got the Nazis away from the Ghetto and secured its grounds. The Nazis came again the day before Pesach and failed to take the camp. But after that victory cost a bit to much to the Nazis... Well...

They sent a larger power and destroyed the revolt, killing all the Jews who stayed at the Ghetto. They burned the houses and destroyed the synagogue, and if some of the none warriors stayed alive after that, this was soon remedied. 

So, not so successful. But they went down fighting, and took many SS soldiers with them. And that was the important point in the eyes of Israel's leaders back then. There was only one problem, though: the day the uprising supposedly started, the 14th of Nissan, wasn't really fitting for a memorial day, being the day before Pesach. Even though the leadership of Israel was mostly secular, they didn't think it'll go well. So instead, they stuck to an existing memorial day at the same month. Apparently so, because I honestly never heard of that before. I just found it on Wikipedia. The reasoning I heard for it was far more contrived, though, so I'll leave you with that reasoning and move on to the next topic.

The Chief Rabbinate of Israel didn't like the idea, though. You see, according to the Halakhah, one isn't supposed to mourn during Nissan. I mean, if a relative of his dies or something he can mourn, but public mourning is more problematic. And this is why next week you'll hear me talk about religious repercussions of the Israeli Independence Day, but this week I'm not talking about that. It's because it doesn't really have any and shouldn't have any. Instead, the CRI decided that the fast at the 10th of Tevet will be declared the "general Kaddish day". What it means is that: when a person dies, his relatives say the mourner Kaddish on his grave, every year, at his date of death. But what if you have no idea when your relative died, or where he's buried? Well, the latter isn't that much of a problem (you can say the Kaddish in every synagogue, as long as you have ten people with you), but the solution to the former is this: the general Kaddish day, when you say Kaddish on your loved ones if you don't know their death's date. It kind of works as a religious stand in to the Holocaust memorial day.

Hope that was informative and interesting! I'm going to keep this up with even relatively minor Jewish dates and holidays, as much as I can. If someone prefers otherwise - they may speak up. Thank you for reading, and have a wonderful day.