Every year we greet one another with the words “Yom Yerushalayim Sameach.” But this year, as Israel faces missiles and threats from Iran and Hezbollah, it is worth asking a harder question: What exactly are we celebrating?
Yom Yerushalayim commemorates the reunification of Jerusalem during the Six Day War – a moment that felt to many Israelis like a moment of redemption. Soldiers stood at the Kotel and wept. Our divided capital city was restored. After two thousand years, the Jewish people had returned not only to their land, but also to their heart.
And yet, within days of that victory, Moshe Dayan made a decision that still defines Jerusalem today. Although Israel had captured the Temple Mount, he returned administrative control of the site to the Muslim Waqf. He considered it a strategic step to prevent a religious war at a fragile moment. But it also created a paradox that remains unresolved nearly sixty years later: Jerusalem is united geographically, and yet we relinquished control over its holiest space.
The Mishnah teaches that there are ten levels of holiness within the Land of Israel, eight of them located within the Beit HaMikdash compound itself (Keilim 1:6–9). So, while Israel governs nearly all of Jerusalem, the majority of the spiritual essence of the city remains beyond our control.
So, perhaps Yom Yerushalayim is not yet fully “sameach.”
That tension has become sharper during the current war. As Iran and Hezbollah fired missiles at Jerusalem, some Jews quietly wondered what might happen if a rocket were to strike the Dome of the Rock, the location of our Holy of Holies (one or two of them came close!). No one was calling for its destruction, but history sometimes moves through unexpected openings. Would such an event change the status quo that has remained frozen since 1967? Perhaps the fact that it did not happen was itself meaningful.
Even had such a strike occurred, Rabbi Ari Landa suggests that Israeli politicians would have felt obligated to rebuild the Dome of the Rock in order to preserve regional stability. Additionally, even among Jews who long for the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash, there is no consensus about how the redemption will unfold. For those who believe that the Third Beit HaMikdash will descend miraculously from Heaven, even a missile falling from the sky may not be recognized as the hand of G-d. They would likely claim that redemption cannot simply be engineered by circumstance.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle we face is not spiritual but political. Any decision to rebuild the Beit HaMikdash would require a Sanhedrin of seventy leading rabbis capable of working together. At present, such unity remains beyond our reach. That may be the most painful reality of all.
So, we remain where we have been since 1967: sovereign, but not complete; reunited, but not whole.
Meanwhile, our enemies are telling us exactly what they think this struggle is about.
Hamas called its October 2023 assault “The Al-Aqsa Flood.” Iran frames its confrontation with Israel as a fight for Jerusalem and marks its own Jerusalem Day annually on the streets of Tehran. Hezbollah places “the liberation of Jerusalem” at the center of its ideology. Our enemies understand something essential: Jerusalem is not just a city. It is the place where G-d’s Presence rests.
Which raises a deeper question – not what Jerusalem means to our enemies, but what it means to us.
Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook taught that it is not only the Jewish people who build the Land of Israel; the Land of Israel builds us (Orot, Eretz Yisrael, sec. 1). And perhaps this is even more true of Jerusalem itself. Jerusalem is not simply a territory that we recovered in 1967. It is a calling that continues to shape us – morally, spiritually, and nationally. A truly unified Jerusalem is the litmus test of a truly unified Jewish nation.
Perhaps that is the real meaning of Yom Yerushalayim today. It is not yet the celebration of a completed story. It is the anniversary of a chapter still being written.
This year, instead of saying “Yom Yerushalayim Sameach” as a statement, perhaps we should say it as a prayer: “May we soon merit to celebrate in Jerusalem – complete in geography, holiness and Shalom.”
Rabbi Leo Dee is an educator living in Efrat. His book “The Seven Facets of Healing” is dedicated in memory of his wife Lucy who, together with his daughters Maia and Rina, was murdered by terrorists in April 2023. It is available from Amazon.com and in Israel from Bookpod.co.il.