Rabbi's Blog

FROM THE DESK OF RABBI ALLEN SCHWARTZ

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Dear OZ family,

When David was a step away from death at the hands of the jealous King Saul, he fled to Nayot to hide with the prophet, Samuel. Chazal say that at that time, the two prepared all the plans for the Temple that would be soon be built. Even at a time of an extreme threat to his life David had the faith to look for a better day.

Yerushalayim has always been our city of hope and aspiration. No other nation’s destiny has been so inextricably connected to a city as ours with Yerushalayim. It is amazing that the prophet who originally worked on the plans of the city, would have a yahrzeit on the 28 th of Iyar, the exact date close to 3,000 years later that the city would return to us after centuries of exile.

Malbim says that the reason King David moved his kingdom from Chevron in the heart of Yehuda, North to Yerushalayim, was to unite his tribe with that of Binyamin, the tribe of the 1st king. Thus Yerushalayim indeed became a city that unites our people (see Tehillim 122:3).

Chazal point to a closed Mem in the middle of a word where Yeshayahu begged for our redemption to be realized. This symbolizes Moshiach being trapped in the closed Mem, because the people did not adequately thank God for Yerushalayim’s salvation from an Assyrian onslaught. Radak points to the opposite phenomenon, in which an open Mem appears at the end of a verse where Nechemia was surveying the destroyed walls of Yerushalayim. Radak says that when we switch the Mem’s we’ll know that we are on the road to salvation. That means that when the gates of Yerushalayim are no longer breached, and we can come and go as we please, then the closed Mem will come to Necemia’s walls and the open Mem will allow Moshiach to emerge, B’meheira b’yameinu.

Chag sameach and may we seek the peace of Yerushalayim.

Stay well and healthy.

Rabbi Allen Schwartz