The mounds of huge stones had stood like this for nearly 2000 years. Through the years, they were covered by dirt and rubble. The countless wars took their toll on the worn land and the ancient city, and little by little the mounds disappeared from sight. From sight—but not from memory.
When the Romans destroyed Jerusalem and the Temple in the year 70 C.E., they left few stones unturned. Remnants of the wall that surrounded the Temple were left intact as evidence of the utter ruin, the utter destruction the Romans thought they had inflicted upon our people. Jerusalem was no more—so they thought. The people were dispersed, their faith had been disproven, their God was dead. So they thought.

Not long after Israel the Six-Day War, the cleanup and restoration began. Israeli archeologists dug 20 feet and more into the ground until they finally reached the rock foundation that lay beneath. What they uncovered was the very street the ancient Judeans walked on as they approached the Temple with their sacrifices. It was on this street that the mounds of toppled stones from the wall now lay, just as they were left 2000 years ago.

The Romans failed in their purpose. Our people were far from destroyed. In fact, there we were, 34 of us from Congregation B’nai Torah, standing in front of a little table on which a tallit had been spread, and where a Torah had been placed. The voices of children and adults alike mingled in the songs and blessings and the ancient chant of the words of the Torah rang as clearly as a ray of sunshine. “When God takes note of you and delivers you from Egyptian bondage, to lead you into the Land of your Ancestors, take my bones with you,” were the words of the chanted portion. It was Joseph, making his brothers take a vow to remember, never forget or leave his embalmed remains behind. As the chant rose above the ruins, over the walls, into the sky stretching over Jerusalem and the Temple Mount, many of us were in tears. We had not forgotten.

But the lesson we understood was not merely to return to Jerusalem. The early rabbis of the first and second centuries explained that the whole point of the liberation from Egyptian bondage was so that the Israelites would go and free other slaves. We’ve always taken that lesson seriously. At first came the commandment to free Hebrew slaves at the end of six years of bondage; later came the prohibition on all slavery. In the turbulent 60’s in America, fully half of all the freedom workers who came down south to help bring basic civil rights to African Americans were Jewish. Most of them weren’t observant Jews, but in truth they were there because they were Jewish, because our religion teaches us to learn from our own past, and to apply the lessons of that past wherever we can.

“Let my people go” became our mantra in Egypt—so that we could use it in Mississippi, Arkansas and Alabama.

Much in the same way, the vast destruction, the huge piles of enormous stones, the tumbled walls that the Romans had left behind them in Jerusalem taught us, the remnant of the survivors of that destruction, to go out and build new temples. To build homes and schools, to build courts of justice and hospitals. The destruction of Jerusalem taught us to rebuild other cities that had been left in ruins—whether by humans or by nature.

I saw that lesson in evidence in the rescue teams that went to Haiti immediately following the terrible earthquake there last month. Less than 24 hours after the disaster struck, Israel had already dispatched two aircraft with over 220 Israel Defense Forces personnel, among them Home Front Command rescue teams and Medical Corps team. The equipment included an IDF field hospital able to serve 500 patients a day, 40 doctors, 25 nurses, paramedics, a pharmacy, a children's ward, a radiology department, an intensive care unit, an emergency room, two operating rooms, a surgical department, an internal department and a maternity ward.

I was not surprised to hear of the many Haiti Disaster Relief funds that were set up by Jewish organizations such as the Israel Red Star of David, by the URJ and the World Union of Progressive Judaism. Nor was I surprised to learn that ZAKA, the Orthodox organization set up in Israel during the Intifadah years to help in rescue missions, was sending its best-trained personnel to help in the sacred work of identifying the dead and bringing them to burial.

I was not surprised when, as a response to my own call for donations that I sent out to our congregants, many responded generously within the first couple of hours.
The Jewish people survived destruction over and over so that we could help other survivors wherever they might be.

The Romans failed. They destroyed our Temple and exiled us from our land, but we took a piece of it with us wherever we went. Jerusalem is in our hearts. In the last 40 years or so we have been building and rebuilding the ancient city. But in truth, we have been building a new Jerusalem wherever we saw ruins. 

That is what it means to be Jewish: To understand that all life is precious; that at any moment we might be left bereft of home or loved ones; that our time here on earth is not without an end; that we have a mission to fulfill during that longer or shorter time.

Standing near the ruins of the ancient Temple, lifting our voices in the ancient melodies, our Congregation B’nai Torah group knew we kept Joseph’s oath. We never forgot our mission, and we understood the privilege we were blessed with. To keep offering our prayers, to return to Jerusalem—the one in Israel and the one in our hearts; to see our land rebuilt, and to rebuild broken lands wherever we could.