Jerusalem Day – ¡Ay, caramba!

Happy Jerusalem Day! Today we celebrate the reunification of the city during the Six Day War in 1967. It’s a time to stand united with regard to the preposterous notion of once again turning Jerusalem into the Berlin of the Middle East (with barbed wire and mine fields) and declare: Never again! How ironic, that Spain has just announced that it will support the creation of a Palestinian State (its capital of course being East Jerusalem)! In fact it will recognize such a state even before the U.N. officially votes on the question in September. ¡Ay, caramba! 

But why are we surprised? After all, Spain is home to some of the most vehement anti-Semitism in history. Though Jews had lived there for centuries under Muslim rule (the Moors), experiencing a “Golden Age” of prominence, creativity and wealth, when the Christians reconquered the Iberian Peninsula, all that changed. The Jews of Spain were plunged from a pinnacle of success to the depths of deprivation and persecution. Long before Hitler’s systematic persecution, the Catholic Church launched the “Spanish Inquisition.” Oy! (Remember Monty Python?: “NOBODY expects the Spanish Inquisition!” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tym0MObFpTI) In the end, the entire Jewish community of Spain was expelled (lock, stock and barrel), in the worst catastrophe to befall world Jewry since the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in the year 70 of the Common Era. 

The exiles fanned out across the Arab/ Muslim world, many landing in – of all places – Palestine. Many settled in a little town nestled in the hills of northern Galilee called Tsfat, one of my favorite places in today’s Israel. It’s legacy includes generations of Jewish mystics – kabbalists – who made it their headquarters and birthed a whole world of visions, revelations, and metaphysical teaching. Ask Madonna; she’s probably been there as often as I have, just to feel the mystical presence that still resides in its quaint streets and art galleries 

 In any case, those refugees from hostile Spain helped create a Jewish presence in that backwater province of the Ottoman empire, that would one day (May 14, 1948 to be precise) morph into the modern state of Israel. And now, Spain, you want us to step aside while genocidal jihadist fanatics swarm over the ancient Jewish heartland and build a staging ground for our annihilation? Well, think again. Israel’s first female prime minister summed it up well: “We Jews have a secret weapon; we have nowhere else to go!”