Day of Jerusalem

Daniel Greenfield
Sultan Knish
02 May '10

On May 12th of this calendar year, Jews will celebrate Yom Yerushalayim, the day of the liberation of all of Jerusalem from Arab Muslim rule. Yet today on May 2nd of this calendar year, millions of Jews also, many unaware, will celebrate a far older Yom Yerushalayim that took place when the Jewish revolt against Roman rule retook Jerusalem.

It is a day little remembered today for its actual origins, its celebration in Roman times cloaked in coded language about a plague that struck the students of Rabbi Akiva for their inability to get along (a reference to the civil strife that enabled Roman dominion over Israel) that ended only when Jerusalem fell and a seemingly new era in Jewish history had begun. The bonfires that had once been lit to celebrate the liberation of the city and the bows and arrows that had been fired into the air in celebration remain parts of the commemoration of Lag BaOmer.

But what Lag BaOmer really is, is a warning to us about the fragility of history, about how easily celebration can turn to mourning and national aspirations to ashes. The revolt against Roman rule was spectacular for what it achieved, the decimation of entire Roman legions and the temporary rebirth of Israel, as for what came after it, the destruction of Israel and its transformation into a larger region named Palestine.

10 days after it, we will celebrate the modern day Yom Yerushalayim, the climax to the victories of the Six Day War, which were even more incredible and miraculous than those of the Roman era. But today the fruits of those victories have been mostly abandoned, with Jerusalem itself now on the line. We do not know exactly where the failure in the Roman revolt lay, but now where it lies today. What Israel won on the battlefield, it lost at the bargaining table.

There is unfortunately a good deal of precedent for this even as far back as Roman times. The Macabees, that handful of brave brothers and those who joined them, drove out a Syrian-Greek tyrant and his armies, but though they won impossible battles, they allowed themselves to be manipulated and betrayed into signing phony alliances, into making diplomatic gestures that ultimately cost them their lives. Because for all that their bravery won for us on the field of battle, they allowed themselves to be betrayed and undone by trying to play fair with enemies who had no intention of playing fair with them.

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