To Mr Ehud Olmert
Mayor of Jerusalem
January 2001
I will not be joining you at the Jerusalem Rally on Monday because of my concern that, despite the intentions of the organisers, it will be seen as a political gesture in the midst of an election campaign. As a matter of principle I do not believe that religious leaders should be involved in party politics, and therefore I shall not attend.
I would not wish the moment to pass, however, without making clear my support on a matter which transcends politics.
In all of history there is no story to compare with the love of the Jewish people for Jerusalem the holy city, and in particular, the Temple Mount. It was here, almost 4000 years ago, that Abraham and Isaac walked to their great trial of faith; here that 3000 years ago, David established the capital of the Jewish kingdom and Solomon built the Temple as the earthly home of G-d. It was to this spot that Jews, wherever they were across the globe, turned their faces and thoughts in prayer.
Two and a half thousand years ago, after the destruction of the First Temple, the Jewish exiles in Babylon made a vow which we, their descendants, have kept ever since. "if I forget you, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill. May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest Joy." Jerusalem is the home of the Jewish heart and the heart of the Jewish home. Israel my no more give away the Temple Mount than a human being may donate his heart. We may not save someone else's life at the cost of our own.
A thousand years before the birth of Christianity, more than one-and-a-half thousand years before the birth of Islam, the people of Israel were given Jerusalem as a sacred trust on behalf of G-d and humanity as a whole. From King Solomon's great prayer at the inauguration of the Temple to the prophetic visions of the time to come, Jerusalem was seen as a place which people of many faiths would consider holy. The Jewish people was charged to be its guardian, not for their sake only, but for the sake of all those who turned to heaven in prayer.
That is what the State of Israel has done since 1967. With care and sensitivity it has preserved, for all faiths, access to their holy sites, in sharp contrast to the systematic desecration of Jewish holy sites that took place between 1948 to 1967, when Jerusalem was under different hands. Israel has both the right and duty to continue its supervision of the Old City, under the arrangements that have served many faiths and denominations so well until now.
Israel is a State, but it is more than a State. It is the continuation of the story of the people of the covenant that stretches across more centuries and continents than the story of any other people. Jewish history - which extends for three - quarters of the history of the civilisation of mankind - has been, almost from the beginning, a journey towards Jerusalem. It stands at the epicentre of Jewish memory and hope. Is it conceivable that the Jews of any generation could give away the holy of holies of the Jewish should - so that instead of saying "Next year in Jerusalem" we should be condemned to say, "Last year in Jerusalem" it cannot be. None of us, not even a democratically elected government of Israel, has the authority to abandon the prayers and dreams of a hundred generations of our ancestors.
Therefore I pray with you for the peace of "Jerusalem rebuilt as a city united together," the city we hold as G-d's guardian for the sake and benefit of mankind.
Chief Rabbi Professor Jonathan Sacks
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