The villains of Bereishit are rarely “Monsters of the Week”, appearing for a single episode, threatening the Jewish protagonist and being vanquished by G-d and our intrepid heroes. Many of the foes introduced in the Torah’s early chapters – Aram, Canaan, Amalek, Edom and Moav, for example – participate in centuries-long biblical arcs of antagonism, and along the way they teach us lessons about our identity and mission. One such foe is the nation of Midian.
At first, Midian seems like a footnote in our genealogy. After Yitzchak marries Rivkah, Avraham weds Keturah, and she births six sons. Midian, the fourth of these sons, does not stay in Canaan long; he is exiled to the east, along with his brothers and the anonymous children of unnamed concubines. As Bereishit 25:6 states, Avraham “gave them gifts, and he sent them away from his son, Yitzchak,” lest there be any confusion about who would be included in the Jewish national line.
When we examine these stories of Midian carefully, we recognize two consistent Midianite markers.
Yitro, a Midianite, welcomes Moshe to spend decades apart from the Jews enslaved in Egypt.
Kozbi separates Zimri from the Jewish people, drawing him to her before the entire nation.
When Yosef descends to Egypt via Midianite agency, the wife of Potifar attempts to lure him into a liaison – an act which Yosef labels “a sin against G-d.” (Bereishit 39:9) Neither immorality nor idolatry actually takes place, and that is a credit to Yosef’s righteousness.
Finally, in luring Zimri and other Jews, Midian succeeds in separating Jews from their family, leading them first into immorality, and then into the idolatry of Baal Peor. Midian has achieved her revenge.
Perhaps Midian’s cross-generational retribution carries a message for the descendants of Avraham. I have not seen any traditional commentator criticize Avraham’s treatment of Keturah’s children, and I would never suggest otherwise. The apparent motivation of averting challenges to Yitzchak’s inheritance is sensible. Nonetheless, the most benign separatism remains exclusive, and our human social drive naturally resents exclusion.
From my vantage point, it seems that Avshalom, King Yoshiyahu and the American Democratic Party all fell victim to a common leadership mistake.
Which brings us to Donald Trump's surprising victory in this week's American election. Analysts will debate this upset for a long time to come, but from my perspective there is at least one clear lesson in the rejection of President Obama's legacy by sixty million American voters: Never take for granted that the nation is behind you .
This president passed healthcare, trade deals, the Iran nuclear agreement, environmental legislation and more by aggressive lobbying or executive order. As the New York Times wrote, "Once skeptical of executive power, Obama has come to embrace it. Mr. Obama will leave the White House as one of the most prolific authors of major regulations in presidential history." Pollsters and Hillary Clinton's team thought that the president's supporters and beneficiaries outweighed those who had been legislatively overpowered over the past eight years ; it was only Tuesday night that we learned that given one vote per person, the balance of power would swing the other way. In politics as in physics, for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.
To my amateur eye, the shared experience of Avshalom, King Yoshiyahu and the Democrats teaches a critical lesson in leadership. As Mishlei 28:14 preaches, "Fortunate is the one who is always afraid." A little bit of insecurity in our leadership, a little less bullying and a little more bargaining, can go a long way.
A few people have tried to console me post-election by noting that Jewish tradition credits G-d as the coronator of kings, הממליך מלכים.
Understanding the Yom Tov connection of "Kah Keli"
Many Ashkenazi shuls say the piyut of "Kah Keli" (י-ה א-לי) after the haftorah and before Ashrei on Yom Tov mornings. The poem (text available here) consists of three verses, each of which starts with one unique sentence, and then continues with two sentences of refrain. The refrain lists various types of korbanot, and then asks Gd to bring us back to our land.
So what does this poem have to do with Yom Tov?
Verse 1 describes Gd as גואלי - "my redeemer" - Pesach.
2. The refrain is an appropriate introduction for Musaf, as it lists the korbanot and asks Gd to bring us back to our land in the merit of those korbanot.
This is a point that the Artscroll and Koren translations seem to miss, even though it makes the piyut a reiteration of the overall theme of the musaf amidah - remember our korbanot, and bring us back home.
The refrain lists the korbanot of various kinds, and then requests, "זכור נלאה אשר נשאה והשיבה לאדמתך - Remember the exhausted one who lifted up (or carried), and bring her back to Your land." The standard translations assume that this means "the exhausted nation who received Your favour" or "the exhausted nation who bore suffering," because they can't identify an antecedent for what it was that the nation lifted up/carried/bore. But the antecedent is that list of korbanot - "Remember the exhausted one, who lifted up all of these offerings, and bring her back to Your land."
3. And building off of #2, there is another layer of association, which turns Yeshayah's criticism of our festivals on its head.
In Yeshayah 1:14, Gd says that He hates our holidays, they are burdensome to Him, and נלאתי נשוא, "I am exhausted from carrying them."
Our poet reverses the line, describing us as נלאה אשר נשאה, the exhausted one, who carried the korbanot. Gd cannot tell us that He rejects our festivals and is tired of them; we exhausted ourselves, bringing those korbanot to Gd on those festivals, and we claim that merit for ourselves.
Some of you may remember my 2012 blog post, "G-d, please bring me back my son". This is directly related.
May it be Your will, HaShem, our Gd and Gd of our ancestors, that You tunnel beneath Your throne of honour and receive the repentance of so-and-so, for Your right hand is extended to receive those who return. Blessed are You, Gd, who desires repentance.
In ensuing generations, the Ari’s appeal to Gd for intervention appeared in multiple, increasingly stronger texts. In the 18th century, Rav Zvi Hirsch Kaidanover added, “יהופך לבבם לעשות רצונך בלבב שלם”, May You cause their hearts to be reversed, to perform Your will wholeheartedly. Gd, make them repent!
· And the Talmud speaks of praying for Gd’s assistance with teshuvah; think of the classic story of the local gang who tormented Rabbi Meir. Rabbi Meir davened for them to die; his wife, Beruriah, davened that they repent. And the conclusion seems to follow Beruriah’s view.
In truth, praying for someone to return is a dangerous game; it can easily feed into facile self-righteousness. Who am I to decide that someone needs teshuvah - and needs help doing teshuvah? And maybe they don’t want my help at all; maybe they view me as a busybody! But the idea is there, with a solid pedigree in Dovid, Beruriah and the Ari z”l. It requires cautious humility, but we are indeed empowered to ask Gd to help others repent.
We could ask many questions about the Ari’s prayer, and the examples of Dovid haMelech and Beruriah, but here’s one fundamental problem: How can we ask Gd to help with teshuvah? We are taught that Gd will not seek to control יראת שמים, that emotional awe which is so often the driving force impelling our return! How can we expect Gd to break that rule?
I am far from the first to ask this question. The Maharsha offered one suggestion, and the Ben Ish Chai offered another. But I would like to suggest a third approach, which is important not only if we daven for others to repent, but also in davening for help with our own teshuvah process.
In the middle of the era of the first Beit haMikdash, at the height of the reign of King Achav and Queen Izevel, at the apex of influence of the prophets of the Baal and Asherah over the Jewish people, Eliyahu haNavi issued an invitation for a showdown, a duel of dieties. In one corner, hundreds of prophets of idolatry; in the other, lonely Elijah. Both would attempt to summon fire from the heavens to consume their offering. At stake: The faith of a nation.
The priests of Baal batted first; they struggled mightily, they cried out and capered and cut themselves, while Eliyahu mocked them – and no fire came. At last afternoon arrived, and Eliyahu addressed Gd. He declared, “HaShem, Gd of Avraham, Yitzchak and Yisrael! Let it be known today that You are Gd in Israel, and I am Your servant, and all I have done has been at Your word. Answer me, Gd, answer me, and this nation will know that You are Gd -” And then he spoke fateful words, “For You have turned their hearts backward, ואתה הסבות את לבם אחורנית.” And at that, fire descended from the sky and consumed the totality of the offering – the animal, the wood, the stones of the altar, the dirt, even the water Eliyahu had poured over the altar.
“For You have turned their hearts backward!” As explained by Rabbi Elazar and most classic commentators, Eliyahu here launched an accusation at Gd: it’s Your fault that they sinned! You invested them with a yetzer hara driving them to sin, and You have failed to provide a counter-inspiration.
Long before this, Moshe accused Gd of setting up the Jews for their sin with the Golden Calf, but Eliyahu went further than Moshe. Moshe only asked Gd to forgive the Jews; Eliyahu demanded that Gd act constructively, and provide the impetus which would lead to our national return.
This may be what permitted the Ari’s prayer for Divine help. Gd invested each of us with a set of desires – ego, insecurity, lust, greed, laziness, rebelliousness, and so on. Assuredly, there was good reason for doing this; those traits even work to our advantage, at times. But the decision to design each human baby anew with these traits brings with it Eliyahu’s charge – ואתה הסבות את לבם אחורנית, You have led them astray! We know You want us to repent and to do right, so please help us out. Don’t rob us of free will, but give us a sign, as You did at Har haKarmel, to help us see the truth. Or decrease the temptations with which we struggle. Help us.
We lack the righteous track record of Eliyahu HaNavi, such that we could independently utter his intrepid demands with our mouths; blaming G-d is a popular sport, but Eliyahu’s righteous outrage seems a bit contrived on the lips of such willing participants in sin. Nonetheless, the Ari harnessed Eliyahu’s message and taught us that in this case we may use those words as well. It is legitimate and meaningful for us to daven to HaShem to balance things out, and to help those who have sinned to return.
May it be Your will – HaShem, my Gd, and Gd of my ancestors, that I not sin again.
It’s Eliyahu’s principle at work: We are entitled to claim assistance from Gd.
· We are obligated to perform cheshbon hanefesh, to account for our past deeds.
· We are obligated to regret, to make amends, and to apologize.
· We are obligated to devise methods by which we will replicate our good deeds and avoid replicating our transgressions in the future.
· But at each step, we are within our rights to say to HaShem, אתה הסבות את לבם אחורנית. I am doing my best – but I need Your help to clean up the mess I’ve made.
We have seen two points: We are justified in turning to HaShem for help with our own teshuvah, and we are empowered to turn to HaShem for help with the teshuvah of others. But there is one more step we must take.
Just as one must pray for himself, so one must pray for the sinners of Israel… to repent.
What is the nature of this obligation? What obligates us to pray on behalf of the teshuvah of others?
· One might suggest that it is a function of the mitzvah of Ahavas HaShem; we are commanded to increase love of Gd in the world.
· One might suggest that it’s an act of chesed; we hold doors for others, we give tzedakah, and we try to help others to repent.
· One might suggest it’s part of the mitzvah of tochachah; we are to educate others so that they don’t sin, and we help them avoid sinning in other ways – like by davening for their return.
· But we might look at it as a function of being a member of a community; it’s about ערבות, our mutual responsibility. My mitzvot are not complete until everyone’s mitzvot are complete – and so I must humbly ask Gd to help others to repent, too.
In a moment, we will stand as a community and commemorate our extended family – victims of the Shoah, victims of terror, and the fallen of the Machteret and the IDF. Individuals will recall immediate family members.
The main purpose is to daven and pledge tzedakah on behalf of those who have passed away, but we may also draw on their example. Kedoshim, many of whom acted heroically for others in the worst of situations. Soldiers who gave their lives to defend their brethren. Family members who raised, nurtured and protected their loved ones.
· to daven not only for our own teshuvah, but for the teshuvah of others.
· To use the words of the Ari z”l, or to use our own words.
· And to ask Hashem to be a partner in our own teshuvah, and in the teshuvah of our nation.
Eliyahu was correct – HaShem has had a part in our errors. But HaShem is צופה לרשע וחפץ בהצדקו, as we say in the piyut of וכל מאמינים, “He sees the wicked person, and desires his reform.” Or as some versions actually say, “וחפץ להצדיקו, Gd sees the wicked person and wishes to make him righteous.” May this be the year when Gd acts on this wish, for us and for all around us. ד' חפץ למען צדקו, יגדיל תורה ויאדיר.
 For an opposing view for which there is no room in this derashah, see http://www.yeshiva.co/midrash/outershiur.asp?id=18551.
 It is interesting to note that Dovid, too, in his abovecited prayer for Gd to turn the hearts of the Jews toward Gd, invoked the Gd of “Avraham, Yitzchak and Yisrael”.
 Berachot 31b; note Rav Saadia Gaon’s alternative approach, reading this in the manner of Dovid’s request, “Please turn their hearts backward [to You].” And see Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 6:3, Shemonah Perakim 8, and Daat Mikra to Melachim I 18:37.
There is a great deal to say about this, but do you know what I mean?
Once upon a time, Jews lived as a minority, subject to the whims of the regnant majority. Impoverished and unpopular, they began to fall away from Torah; they stopped speaking Hebrew, they stopped observing Shabbat and Yom Tov, and they married out. Then, suddenly, unbelievably, that regnant majority granted the Jews permission to return to Israel and build up their land, we even held Jerusalem again – but most of the Jews did not take advantage of the opportunity, unable to believe that their redemption had arrived. Those who did go encountered nasty neighbours as well as difficult living conditions; the feebleness of their settlement was taken as evidence that this was no Messianic time, and their leaders failed to inspire the majority of Diaspora Jewry to join them.
This sounds a lot like the early years of the State of Israel, but as I suspect many of you recognize, it is actually a story that is 2500 years old. It is the history of the Jews who were allowed by the Persians to return to Israel and build the second Beit haMikdash.
And on to this depressing stage stepped one man, who would electrify the Jewish people and change history. His name was Chaggai, and here is the story of his four inspiring prophecies.
· Recall that on the first day of Elul in the Jews’ first year in the midbar, Moshe ascended Mount Sinai to acquire the second set of tablets, replacing the first, broken Luchot.
· And on another first day of Elul, Chaggai proclaimed a message of equal renewal: Just as the original tablets were destroyed but replaced, so our Beit haMikdash, brutally shattered, will yet be replaced.
In other words: Don’t think that the default is to sit at home, and there is a particular time for building. Just the opposite: Sitting at home is only for a particular time! You are natural born builders, the default is to build, not to sit at home, so go do it!
Chaggai then followed up with a stirring second message which to me is the most important of his four prophecies: Don’t overthink it, don’t overanalyze your options and methods and particulars. Just build! “So declares Gd, the Master of Multitudes: Pay attention! Go up the mountain, bring wood, and build the house!” It’s that simple: just bring the materials, and ignore the static.
And unlike the experience of so many biblical prophets, the Jews listened to Chaggai. ביום עשרים וארבעה לחדש בששי, On the 24th day of the sixth month, the 24th day of Elul, the day before the anniversary of Creation of the World, the Jews began a new act of preparation for Creation, preparing wood as well as stone for the construction.
But Chaggai was not done. On the 21st day of the seventh month, the 21st of Tishrei, Hoshana Rabbah, Chaggai proclaimed a third message.
Hoshana Rabbah is the last day of Succot, the last day of prayers for rain, a time when the first Beit haMikdash saw שמחת בית השואבה, the great water-drawing. The Talmud states that one who never saw שמחת בית השואבה has never seen true joy; there were jugglers of torches, there was ecstatic dancing and singing! But there were neither jugglers nor dancers for these Jews, who had only sticks and stones and an altar, and they must have been a most forlorn band on that Hoshana Rabbah.
This was the third message: Despite your descent, Gd will be with you. If you build it, He will come.
And then there was one more message, בעשרים וארבעה לתשיעי, on the 24th day of the ninth month. The 24th of Kislev, Erev Chanukah, to us. For the Jews of that time, who would not know the Greeks for centuries, it was significant for another reason: it was the end of the season for bringing ביכורים, the offering of their first produce.
The process of bringing Bikkurim, dedicating the first of our crops to G-d, could not happen for those Jews in the first years of the second Beit haMikdash. And to them Chaggai offered one last message, a charge of responsibility. This message may be understood on many levels, but here I am following the approach of Rabbi Meir Leibush, Malbim.
Chaggai asked: “If you were to take meat from a korban inside your garment, and the garment were then to touch bread, stew, wine, oil or some other food – would that communicate holiness to the bread, etc?” And the answer was No; holiness cannot be communicated that way.
Then Chaggai asked:“If someone who was impure would touch any of these things, would that communicate impurity?” And the answer was Yes; impurity can be communicated with that kind of contact.
What in the world was Chaggai talking about?! All of the other messages were clear, but what is this riddle about sacred items and impurity? Malbim explains Chaggai’s message to those Jews who were distressed at the lack of Bikkurim: Impurity is highly contagious, communicated easily. But holiness, like that of a korban? That isn’t transmitted easily. It takes prolonged, direct exposure.
1. On the first of Elul I told you that you must build, this is your basic nature.
2. I also told you that you shouldn’t overthink it – just take the materials, go up the mountain, and do the job.
3. On Hoshana Rabbah I told you not to be depressed at your insufficiency, for Gd is with you.
4. And at the end of the season of the first fruits I tell you that you will need to persevere, to overcome obstacles and fight your way through challenges, in order to produce those fruits and parade with them to Jerusalem once more.
In context, of course, Chaggai’s message is about returning to Zion and building the Beit haMikdash – but it is equally applicable to each of us on the first of Tishrei.
· To start a new year means to recognize that we are builders by nature, that it is time not to sit in our homes but to act.
· Man’s obligations at the new year are to take wood, go up the mountain, and build the house. Don’t overthink teshuvah and self-improvement, the way you can change yourselves and the world; we know our weaknesses and the needs of our community and our world, and we know the way to correct the weaknesses and fill the needs. We don’t need intricate plans and we certainly don’t need fear of failure. Our King is with us.
· And what should we hope for, from ourselves? The perseverance to see the process through, catalyzing the communication of holiness by prolonged exposure and endeavour, so that when we come back here next year, we will be witnesses to a fine building perched atop that mountain.
Agnon saw in himself a child of a nineteen-hundred-year exile, employing that age-old perseverance to return to our land. As he explained, “At the age of nineteen and a half, I went to the Land of Israel to till its soil and live by the labour of my hands.” He took wood, he ascended the mountain and he built a house – simple, but powerful. And oh, was Gd ever with him, and oh, did he ever succeed!
All of us are exiles of Jerusalem. And on Rosh HaShanah, we remember that we are also exiles of our own souls, driven out by the foolishness of the year past. But we also remember Chaggai’s eternal words – We are builders by nature. We only need to take simple steps. And when we persevere, HaShem will be with us, and grant us a כתיבה וחתימה טובה.
 Mishnah Bikkurim 1:6; and Chaggai 2:19, which says they don’t yet have various forms of produce – 6 of the 7 bikkurim species – supports this association.
I wish I could take five minutes to blog; I have many topics in mind. But it's the old story - priority time must go to my classes and avreichim.
* To raise funds for our programs for university students.
For full details, and for source sheets and to watch on-line, click here; please share this with anyone you think might be interested. This program is modeled on the original "Longest Shiur", by Rabbi Shlomo Einhorn.
I presented this derashah last Shabbos, and it seems to have been fairly well-received. Since I haven't had time to post, I'll offer it here for (hopefully) your reading pleasure.
There where it is, we do not need the wall: / He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across / And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
With the mitzvah of shemitah, the Torah warns that walls separate haves from have-nots, preventing chesed. Yes, our property needs protection, but every seven years we must acknowledge the downside, drop our guard, and allow the world into our fields and vineyards. The Torah states, “You shall release your field and abandon it,” and the Mechilta comments מגיד שפורץ בה פרצות, that the Torah wishes us to actually smash holes in our fences, and remove that barrier.
Second, with the mitzvah of batei arei chomah, the Torah warns that walls separate urban life from agriculture. The Torah bans family estates in walled-in cities. If a family sells an open field, they receive the field back in the Yovel year. But if a family sells a building in a walled city, that building never comes back. Rav Shimshon Raphael Hirsch explains that farming is the natural focus of human creativity, and the Torah wishes us to remain close to the land. Yes, we need to shield civilization from the wild, but because of this downside to urbanization, we must eliminate the wall.
Third: The Torah’s tochachah threats of Divine punishment warn that there is even danger in the walls that separate us from our enemies, because they lead to faith in our manmade defenses. Walls of defense may be entirely necessary. But the Torah warns that if these fortresses breed misplaced trust in our own strength, then a day will come when Gd will demolish our walls.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, in the Torah. There are negative, unhelpful walls – walls that insulate the wealthy from the needy, walls that enable urban stagnation, walls that lead to arrogance.
On the other hand: The second neighbour, with his devotion to maintaining the wall, can also claim endorsement from the Torah!
Halachah identifies the manmade walls of Yerushalayim as sacred, imbuing the city with sanctity, just as the concentric walls of the Beis haMikdash enable a heirarchy of holiness within their precincts!
Further, Zecharyah promises regarding Yerushalayim, ואני אהיה לה נאם ד' חומת אש סביב, that Hashem will surround Yerushalayim with a wall of fire!
Further, we use walls for beautiful mitzvos – the succah in which we dwell with Hashem, the chuppah in which we initiate a Jewish home!
How, then, are we to understand the Jewish view of a wall? Are they bad, or good? Is there a single answer? What would Rabbi Robert Frost say?
In the 1940s, a team of MIT psychologists conducted the “Westgate Studies”, trying to figure out which interactions lead to friendships. They developed what is now known as the propinquity effect. To state it simply: Even though people say that “familiarity breeds contempt,” the truth of human nature is that the more you encounter someone, the more likely you are to like them, and to create a friendship with them.
Those studies have influenced the way companies design their workspaces. For example: the successful animation company Pixar initially housed its computer scientists in one building, its animators in another building, and its executives and editors in a third building. Steve Jobs, as CEO, redesigned the offices to bring all of the groups together, into one space. Why? Because inhabiting a shared, collaborative space encourages relationships. And this can be enhanced by a surrounding wall that accentuates the collaboration.
So perhaps there are two kinds of walls: Exclusive and Inclusive.
The Exclusive wall is the wall around the field, meant to exclude and obstruct: the wall that locks out the needy; the wall that separates the city from nature; the wall that provides overconfident defense. This is the wall the Torah would demolish.
But there is also the Inclusive wall, that creates collaborative closeness, even intimacy, by enhancing propinquity for those within.
We, as Jews, identify ourselves as part of a nation, a community, a team. To promote that shared identity and cohesion, we build walls encircling and identifying our team. This wall, designed to include, to embrace, to envelop in private community – this wall is not merely appropriate, but glorious!
The walls of the Succah seclude us with HaShem!
The walls of the Chuppah isolate a couple exclusively for each other!
And the walls of Yerushalayim demarcate מחנה ישראל, a camp which the Rambam said is invested with eternal holiness by those very walls.
Our sages acted to encourage this sense of community in Yerushalayim.
Three times each year, Jews from far and wide would gather there for Yom Tov, fulfilling the mitzvah of aliyah laregel. Some of these were very observant Jews, and others were less so. This meeting of populations could have been a disaster – there could have been an insistence on separate shopping spaces for the ritually pure, separate eating areas for those who tithe more carefully, and so on.
But the Chachamim understood that the only wall Yerushalayim will tolerate is the wall surrounding it, the wall which identifies all of us as part of the same team! As the gemara records, they decreed that when we gather in Yerushalayim for Yom Tov, every Jew should be viewed as a חבר, credible to declare his own purity, credible to have tithed his produce. We could travel together, eat together, meet together, within those walls of Yerushalayim.
This is what we want. There are legitimate differences between Jews, but what we want is not a nation divided by the questions of Who is a Jew, of Who goes to the army and who learns in kollel, of Who davens at the Kotel and in what way, but a nation that sees itself as one nation, indivisible, surrounded by walls which confirm our shared heritage and our shared destiny.
And this imperative for propinquity extends beyond Yerushalayim, mandating us to build physical and metaphorical inclusive walls surrounding us, marking us as one nation wherever we are, despite our legitimate differences.
No matter where they daven, and even if they don’t daven anywhere.
No matter what standard of kashrus they keep, and even if they don’t keep any.
No matter which approach they have to Israel, whether they believe it’s ראשית צמיחת גאולתנו or whether they believe it’s a secular catastrophe.
Inviting these people into our homes for a meal – not only because it’s kiruv, but because we are ערבין זה בזה.
Offering to daven on behalf of their relatives and friends who are ill – not only because davening for others a mitzvah, but because we care about each other.
Even just smiling and welcoming people who aren’t within the circle of friends and cousins with whom we grew up, and whom we’ve known for decades – not because it’s chesed, but because it’s the right way to build a wall.
These, like the walls of Yerushalayim, are the glorious, encircling walls beloved to the Torah.
That historic line almost didn’t happen. The speechwriter, Peter Robinson, wanted it in, but nervous diplomats insisted that Germans had grown used to the wall. So Robinson went to dinner with some local residents, and he asked them if they had “gotten used to” the Wall – to which the residents responded harshly that they certainly had not. The rest is oratorical history. And two years later, the wall did finally come down.
With the laws of shemitah and walled cities, with the warning of the Tochachah, the Torah teaches us to “tear down this wall” which divides. But with the succah and the chuppah and the holiness of Yerushalayim, the Torah teaches us to “build up this wall” of propinquity which encircles and envelops, creating shared identity and community. Such is the beauty of the walls of Yerushalayim.
May we see Hashem rebuild these walls with fire; may we see Hashem rebuild these walls now; and may we view them not by live stream on our phones in Toronto, but as part of that sacred community, from the inside.
 Although the law does not require it due to its impracticality. And see Mishneh Torah, Hilchos Sheviis 4:24.