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Tuesday, May 31, 2022

Mother of the Child That was molested by Chareidie Pedofile in Bayit Vegan Speaks Up .. Wants the media to name him and publish his photo

The "Chazor" is blurred out 
Loose Translation of letter below by DIN

By Yael Elon 

Truth for our children !!! 

להיות נבל ברשות התורה

"To Be a Pervert with permission from the Torah !!!"

Hello, my name is Yael, and I am the mother of one of the children who was harmed by an educator in the shocking incident that took place in a kindergarten at Bayit V'gan.

Many have inquired why I haven't spoken out since the news spread  about the case in the kindergarten where my son studied…

I will speak up now as once again I found a Facebook post full of fake news disrespecting the parents who are keeping up the fight against this pedofile, from when this happened on the cursed tragic date: April 8, 2022…

So I decided that what I really needed to do was to find a way to change the situation, and I'm going to give it a try, as any mother should.

The "hanhala" of the school , supports this pedophile, paid to bail him out, and even came to support him in court!

What was even worse, was that the police decided that the direct evidence found at the scene ( a mattress, and the ax with which the criminal threatened the children to silence them), was not found as sufficient evidence for his prosecution !!!

So I  am disrupting the lying routine of these dirty and violent teachers, and of this cold, heartless hanhala. And am exposing everything this damn staff uses as talking points to protect themselves. 

They state that this whole story was invented by a "group of French mothers", who are perhaps coddling  their children !!!!

But everyone who knows me - near and far - understands how unlucky this criminal is, in that he chose to harm my baby!

Know that I am the opposite of silence, the opposite of calm and passivity.

I also feel like we are not addressing mothers enough in this whole story.We are the ones who fight like lionesses for their puppies! We are the ones who went out to fight yesterday in court, with the aim that the judge should  remove the ban on publishing the name and picture of the criminal!

We have become a bunch of united and powerful women, who have been fighting for the truth for close to two months.

In the eyes of the Israeli press and our lawyers, what happened yesterday in front of the court never happened and we made history! Because (frum woman) demonstrating, is not something in the Israeli mentality and culture at all!

Yesterday, ultra-Orthodox women wearing wigs and kerchiefs stepped out of their comfort zone by going out to demonstrate. They came and appeared before the court, and cried out in grief and sorrow, and even ran after this pedophile, in the unbelievable heat of Jerusalem, without fear and without shame!

It's time to change awareness and open up public thinking!

It is written in the Torah, "And you have chosen life," but these monsters don't not represent the way of the Torah and the truth in general! These people are killing children !!!

So please then, mothers, and expectant mothers, try to identify problems in your children, understand the signs, create in them a sense of security, and believe them when they tell you everything that happens in school.

And remember, there is nothing greater than the power of a mother!

Once you have the information, don't shut up, because in silence you may harm your child! Because silence is the real crime (in addition to the direct harm)! Come on and shout! File a complaint with the police!

Dear mother, ignore what the neighbors will say, and what your husband's rabbi, or any other person, will think…

Play the role of your life! File a complaint and go to the end with your truth! Everything should stand aside when it comes to our kids!

Know that about 50% of a child's healing stems from his parents' fighting for him and protecting him, so that he feels free to speak in an atmosphere of security at home. If it does not happen this way, the child's life can be ruined forever…

Think twice, before you choose to be silent and your worry to keep a "good name", before thinking about what's good of your children…

Thank God, I  recognized and understood the signs in my son, and with a simple question, he felt free to speak and tell, he felt I was attentive to him and I allowed him to let go.

I thank Gd for the opportunity to get the horror out of my little son's mouth, and with that I was able to put an end to the nightmare in this cursed kindergarten!

So please understand, I'm not quiet…I just needed time to help and fight for these pure children! I have never been ashamed or afraid of my future in life, much less of my son's future, because we are in the best hands... of G-d!

We plan with the help of Hashem , immediately after Shevuois, to hold a large conference with specialists who are experts in this field. The purpose of this meeting is to educate parents on this issue, and to raise public awareness of these issues.

Update me in a private message if you plan to be present at the meeting, or attend remotely.

The struggle has just begun! Good week to you all!

Yael.

Chinese Demand "The Jerusalem Post" Take down Story About Their Threats to Taiwan

 

Palestinian Takes a "piss" on the roof of Al Aqsa Mosque

 

What do you want to be when you grow up "I want to be a murderer"

 


Yeshivas send thousands of letters pushing back against draft state oversight rules





 A group of religious schools in the city, including a large number of yeshivas, are pushing back against new oversight rules they feel will infringe upon their rights to provide children with an education.

The schools have sent 180,000 letters to the education department Tuesday opposing draft guidelines for new measures on the religious institutions.

While state officials maintain that the oversight will ensure students a fair education, the schools say the actions hinder their ability to give religious education to Jewish children.

Under the proposal, nonpublic schools would need to get accredited, or register through the state, or demonstrate academic progress on state-approved exams. Schools that do not comply must submit to review by their local school districts.

“We have done a magnificent job in educating our children,” Aaron Twerski, a Brooklyn Law School professor and Yeshiva parent, wrote to state officials. “They are deeply religious, highly disciplined, hard-working and industrious.”

Monday, May 30, 2022

2 Minute Clip of how guests badmouth the Hosts at a wedding ... For Hebrew Speakers

 

When Biden urged all Americans to buy Shotguns

 

“Real Threat:” Israel Issues Travel Warning To Turkey

 

Israel on Monday issued a travel warning to Turkey, saying that there is a “real threat” to Israelis in the country.

The warning comes due to fear that Iran will intensify its attempts to harm Israelis in the countries bordering it in the wake of the assassination of a senior IRGC officer in Iran last week. Concern grew after The New York Times published a report saying that Israel confirmed its responsibility for the assassination to the US. Another Times report on Friday said that the unexplained “accident” at a sensitive Iranian military site east of Tehran on Thursday was actually a drone strike similar to past strikes attributed to Israel.

“For several weeks, and even more so after Iran blamed Israel for the death of a Revolutionary Guards officer last week, there has been growing concern in the security establishment about Iranian attempts to harm Israeli targets around the world,” a statement from the Counter-Terrorism Division at the National Security Council (NSC) said.

The statement continued that the NSC is “sharpening the warning for travel to Turkey and wants to clarify that this is a country at a high level of risk to Israelis these days.”

Sources in the defense establishment emphasize that these are “warnings on the background of a real threat to Israelis in the Turkish arena.”

The statement also noted that “the level of threat has also increased in other countries bordering Iran. Therefore, Israeli citizens must remain vigilant and adhere to the necessary precautions when traveling to one of these countries.”


Fear For Iraqi Jews In Wake Of Law Imposing Death Penalty For Ties With Israel

 

Iraqis celebrate the passing of the law criminalizing the normalization of ties with Israel, in Tahrir Square, Baghdad, Iraq, Thursday, May 26, 2022. 

The law passed in Iraq last week banning ties with Israel on penalty of death or life imprisonment has aroused fear in Iraqi Jews, Yisrael Hayom reported on Sunday.

Some Iraqi Jews have been drawing closer to Yiddishkeit thanks to the work of the Shorashim department of Yad L’Achim, which publishes material in Arabic. The head of the Shorashim department said that the Iraqi Jews he’s been in contact with are very fearful of their fate.

“The situation there is growing worse day by day and there’s tangible fear,” he wrote in a report to the Yad L’Achim administration. “The law bans us from having any contact and fear of the law is already being felt. Several Jews that I’ve been learning with sent me messages that they’re afraid to continue and I shouldn’t contact them anymore or  send the daily shiurim and divrei Torah.”

Yad L’Achim is loath to lose contact with the Jews altogether and they’re trying to develop alternative ways to continue the relationship, such as through a third country. “After we returned these lost Jews to Am Yisrael, we’ll make every effort to maintain contact with them without harming them of course so that they won’t be lost again to Am Yisrael.”

In a message seen below, one of the Iraqi Jews who was learning about Yiddishkeit told her Yad L’Achim contact: “Anyone who contacts the state of Israel, even on social media, will be punished. We need help urgently.



Hatzalah Spent $250,000 of Tzadaka Money to Sue Hatzalah of Florida in Secular Court

 

New York-based Jewish ambulance service Chevra Hatzalah is trying to snuff out a similar group in Florida — because they employ female EMTs, the founder of the Sunshine State-based volunteer program claims.

When Isaac Hersh, 30, started Hatzalah of Palm Beach and Hatzalah of South Florida last year — modeled off the Big Apple’s Chevra Hatzalah EMS corp — he was proud to be giving back to his Orthodox Jewish community.

But now Hersh says he is drowning in legal fees after Chevra Hatzalah sued him in November for using part of its name. He alleges the suit is actually a ploy by the Big Apple service to maintain market control and punish him for hiring women.

Allowing women to be EMTs is “a highly controversial move in the eyes of Chevra Hatzalah, who has a strict policy of orthodox males being the sole applicant allowed to join in most capacities,” Hersh said in a statement to The Post.

Still, “our initial reaction was shock,” he said of the lawsuit, adding it is “inconceivable to think that one lifesaving non-profit organization would behave like this to another.”

In its 12-page complaint, Chevra Hatzalah, legally named Hatzoloh Incorporated, claimed Hersh infringed upon and counterfeited its registered service marks.

The suit makes no mention of female EMTs. But Hersh says he believes the impetus for the complaint was the fact that he employs both men and women.

Blacks hold down and beat Asian man in NYC subway station

 

Kudos to Rabbi Yair Hoffman for writing that we have to have "Hakaros Ha'toiv" for the Kotel


I have to give credit when credit is due. Rabbi Hoffman wrote this knowing that he will get flack from the Lakewood/Satmar "amaratzim."

 by Rabbi Yair Hoffman

55 years ago, something remarkable happened.  It happened for the very first time in nearly two millennium.  What was it?

he Kosel and Har Habayis came back under Jewish control.

Yerushalayim. 1967 was very special. The people of Eretz Yisroel defended her against attackers that wished to annihilate her at every border. It is special not because we captured the eastern half of yerushalayim. But because Hashem gave her back to use and freed her.

It is a very essential difference.

That reunification was the culmination of the tefilos of our bubbies and zeidies for two thousand years – something that our ancestors could only dream of. For the previous 19 years before 1867, we American Jews could only access the Kosel as Americans, flying to Amman, Jordan, on an American passport. After 1967, we could visit the Kosel once again through Eretz Yisroel.  And the Jews of Eretz Yisroel could not visit at all.

Yerushalayim was once as remote as the stars in the sky to the victims of the Crusades. To the victims of Rindfleish massacres, and to the victims of the Chmelnieki Massacres of tach vetat. Indeed, even to the victims of the pogroms of Europe and to the victims of Auschwitz and Treblinka, she was unimaginable.

But now, we have her and we must feel that sense of hakaras hatov to Hashem yisarach that seems, of late, to be a bit lacking.

We must continuously fulfill the words of the navi Yishayahu (62:1), “Lemaan tzion lo echesheh, ulemaan yerushalayim lo eshkot!”

Sunday, May 29, 2022

The 1930 Kotel Affair And Harav Kook z"l


Rabbi Zvi Yehudah Kook recalled the tremendous pressure placed upon his father, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, that evening in 1930 in the Kiryat Moshe neighborhood of Jerusalem.

“How intense, how grave, how dire were the warnings and intimidations at that time, with all of their menacing threats. Two nations [the Arabs and the British] were goading us with lies and murderous traps, to sign an agreement and relinquish ownership over the Kotel, the remaining wall of our Holy Temple...” (LeNetivotYisrael vol. I, p. 65)

The Mufti’s Ambitions

Yom Yerushalyim March Thru Shaar Shechem

 Jews building homes in Jerusalem is a "provocation"!


Jews visiting their holiest site is a "provocation"!

Jews marching in J'lem is a "provocation"!

Jews singing in J'lem is a "provocation"!


Chareidie Pedofile Hanging out in Har Nof .. Warning!

 Victims begging police to have his photo and name released. As soon as we get the Ok we will publish it, meanwhile watch your children! 


Not One Chareidie Newspaper Mentioned the Gerer Pogrom ..Not One


The Ger Civil War Explained in Yiddish


Japanese Terrorist behind Lod airport massacre that murdered 24 including 8 Israelis in 1972 freed and given Flowers


 Fusako Shigenobu, who co-founded the Japanese Red Army terrorist group that carried out a 1972 massacre at Israel’s main airport, was released from a Tokyo prison Saturday after serving a 20-year sentence, and apologized for hurting innocent people.

Once described as “the empress of terror,” Shigenobu, 76, was freed just two days before the 50th anniversary of the terror group’s deadly assault at Lod Airport that killed 26 people and injured an estimated 80 others.

“I feel strongly that I have finally come out alive,” she said, welcomed by her daughter and a crowd of reporters and supporters in Tokyo, some waving Palestinian flags.

“I have hurt innocent people I did not know by putting our struggles first. Although those were different times, I would like to take this opportunity to apologize deeply,” said Shigenobu, who was draped in a keffiyeh — the Arab headdress which has become a symbol of Palestinian nationalism.

Shigenobu was convicted of masterminding the 1974 siege of the French Embassy in The Hague, the Netherlands.

She was arrested in 2000 in Osaka in central Japan, where she had been in hiding.

The holiness of the Six Day War - story

 

HaRav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, the “Nazir,” Rabbi Goren, and Rabbi Menachem HaKohen with the shofar.

During the annual Yom Ha'atzmaut celebration at Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem, some three weeks before the Six Day War, the Rosh Yeshiva, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook, gave a powerful and prophetic speech to the students and gathered guests, describing his initial anguished reaction when he had heard the news, some twenty years previously, that the United Nations had voted to partition the Land of Israel in approving the creation of a truncating Jewish State.

While joyous Israelis danced outside on the streets, he sat at home, stunned by the announcement that the Inheritance of Hashem and Jerusalem had been cut into pieces and divided. 

Raising his voice, he shouted, 

“THEY DIVIDED OUR LAND!” Everyone in the hall was silent. “AND WHERE IS OUR HEVRON? AND OUR SHECHEM? WHERE IS EVERY METER OF THE LAND WHICH HASHEM BEQUEATHED TO US ALONE?! HAVE WE FORGOTTEN THAT ALL OF THE LAND IS OURS?!”

One of the yeshiva’s students, that late HaRav Yehuda Hazani wrote down his teacher’s words. “Yehuda had a phenomenal memory,” his wife, Hannah, told the Jewish Press. “After he made a neat copy of his scribbled writing, he showed it to HaRav Tzvi Yehuda for final editing, and then arranged for its publication in the HaTzofe newspaper. At the time, no one in the country spoke about our returning to Judea and Samaria, nor about capturing the Temple Mount. The idea was like a science fiction. Then, three weeks later, it came true.”


At the same time, in the late spring of 1967, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, Chief Rabbi of Tzahal, was in Australia, raising money for Israel Bonds, when he read in a local newspaper that Egypt’s President Nasser had closed down the Straits of Tiran leading to Eilat. At Nasser’s request, United Nations Peace Keeping Forces abandoned the Sinai Peninsula, and vast numbers of Egyptian tanks and infantry units were stationed along the Israeli border. Certain that the belligerent actions would lead to war, Rabbi Goren decided to fly back home to Israel. “In a matter of weeks, I will pray at the Kotel and on Mount Sinai as well,” he prophesied to the large crowd at his farewell appearance in Australia.

In Israel, the population was seized with worry and despair. Nasser’s promises to drive the Jewish State into the sea had unnerved the country. The armies of Syria and Jordan were mobilized to join Egypt in a devastating attack. Israel’s top military echelon advised Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, the acting Defense Minister, to strike first before Israel’s forces received a deadly blow, but the cautious politician wanted to give the Administration in Washington time to convince Nasser to withdraw his forces and allow the UN troops to return to their positions. The IDF brass disagreed, not wanting to put the fate of the country in foreign hands, by counting on America to save it from extinction.

Arriving in Israel, Rabbi Goren immediately drove to a meeting with the IDF Commander-in-Chief, Yitzhak Rabin, who tensely informed him that the surrounding Arab countries were preparing their armies for an all-out attack on the tiny Jewish State. Rabin told him that two cabinet ministers from the National Religious Party, who opposed going to war, Moshe Haim Shapira and Zerach Warhaftig, were preventing Prime Minister Levi Eshkol from unleashing IDF forces. Rabin asked Rabbi Goren to speak with them and persuade them to change their minds. “After I see for myself the morale of our troops,” the army chaplain replied in his forceful and independent manner.

The journalist, Avi Rath, who spent several years with Rabbi Goren's editing his autobiography, "With Might and Strength," told the Jewish Press that the former Chief Rabbi was first and foremost a prodigious Torah scholar. “Verses of Torah, Tanach, and Tehillim were always on his lips, and when he accompanied Israel's soldiers into battle, the spirit of the Torah which filled his being crowned him with a towering faith, untiring energy, and valor. For him, the war was not only a matter of saving Israel, it was, in the words of King David, so that, ‘the whole world will know that there is a living G-d in Israel.’"

Rabbi Goren journeyed to the southern Negev, where he met the commanders of Israel’s anxious battalions. Receiving conflicting reports, between optimistic expectations of victory and gloomy predictions that the government’s stalling for time had already soured the opportunity, he gave an order to the Army Rabbinate to be prepared to dig thousands of graves across the country, in case the forecasts of terrible losses proved true.

Then, charged by the growing threat of war, he raced to Tel Aviv to meet with the reluctant religious cabinet ministers who put the blame for their opposition on Yitzhak Rabin who, they claimed, had balked when asked about Israel’s chances of success. Rushing to confront Rabin once again, Rabbi Goren discovered a broken warrior. In his autobiography, he writes that Ben Gurion, Rabin’s mentor, had shattered the young Commander in Chief’s confidence, accusing him of endangering the entire country, claiming that Israel alone could never defeat a joint attack by the powerful and massively-equipped forces of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan combined.

“Ben Gurion’s words affected Rabin deeply bringing about a nervous breakdown,” he noted. “He simply fell apart. All of the army was poised for war, and our Commander-in-Chief fell apart.”

To complicate matters, in a special radio broadcast, a tense, sleepless, and indecisive Eshkol stumbled over the words of his speech, further eroding the spirit of the nation. Dismayed by Eshkol’s procrastination, people demanded that the popular and charismatic Moshe Dayan be appointed as Minister of Defense.

As if possessed by a Divine Spirit, the IDF Chief Rabbi phoned Moti Hod, Chief Commander of the Israeli Air Force who insured him that a surprise first strike on Egypt would leave its entire air force paralyzed within two hours. Rabbi Goren hurried to meet once again with Interior Affairs Minister, Moshe Haim Shapira, and reported in his bulldozer manner that IDF commanders in the field were confident of an Israeli victory, if the order came now. The glaring-eyed Rabbi used all of his high-powered Torah persuasiveness to influence the peace-loving, religious, cabinet minister to adopt a more militant stance. Shapira assured him that he would support the appointment of Moshe Dayan as new Defense Minister during the emergency cabinet meeting, a few hours away, and that he would withdraw his opposition to sending Israel’s soldiers to war.

Wanting to be with the troops when they stormed into the Gaza Strip and Sinai, Rabbi Goren once again drove south to the Negev. Before Israeli jet fighters took to the skies, the Chief Rabbi entered the Air Force command bunker and distributed the prayer he had written, with a personal note to Moti Hod from the Book of Lamentations, exhorting him to: “Pursue them in anger and destroy them from under the heavens of the L-rd.”

Certainly, many factors influenced Levi Eshkol’s decision to go to war, and the change-of-heart of the formerly reluctant Shapira was one of them. Upon the official announcement that war had been declared, as Israel’s highly-trained Air Force soared into the skies,

Rabbi Goren’s previously-prepared address to the soldiers of Tzahal was broadcast by “Kol Yisrael” over radios in every home and office throughout the country: “On this day of victory, Hashem is with you, all of the soldiers of the armies of Israel, on land, on sea, and in the air, to lead you in battle to triumph over enemies who have risen against us to destroy us. Let your hearts not be weakened for it is Hashem who fights by your side to save you….”

In a matter of hours, and throughout the next two miraculous days, the skilled pilots of Israel totally destroyed out the air forces of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria, while determined Israeli ground troops crushed Nasser’s battalions in the Gaza Strip and Sinai, fighting their way to the Suez Canal. As the smoke cleared over decimated enemy runways and battlegrounds, Israeli Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol, had to make a decision – to give Israel’s army commanders in Jerusalem a green light to capture the Old City, or to accept the ceasefire which the United Nations had hastily organized in order to save the Arab world.

The clock was ticking. At four in the morning, Knesset member, Menachem Begin, had woken Levi with a phone call, urging him to keep fighting in Jerusalem before the chance was lost to return the Temple Mount and Western Wall to Israel’s eternal possession. Already worn down by weeks of pressure and a deep, father-like concern for his small, besieged country, the mounting international pressure against Israel had further weakened Levi’s resolve. His military echelon, new Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, a recovered Yitzhak Rabin, Uzi Narkiss, and Haim Bar-Lev, were waiting impatiently for his order, but he wasn’t sure that America would back such a decisive and history-impacting move, which would so dramatically challenge the age-old superiority myths of Christianity and Islam.

The indefatigable Rabbi Goren hurried to Rockefeller Museum just across from the Old City wall, where Mota Gur’s paratroopers were under Jordanian fire from Augusta Victoria Monastery at the northern peak of the Mount of Olives. Though Israeli soldiers had suffered heavy casualties fighting against entrenched Jordanians forces in the north of the city, at Ammunition Hill, the faith-filled Rabbi was certain - just as the Hashem had guided the pebble which toppled the mighty Goliath, the Eternal One of Israel was fighting alongside the brave soldiers of the IDF. Gur told him that although Israeli divisions had surrounded the Old City, he had orders from the government not to enter its gates, lest the entire world rise up against Israel. The United Nations had pressured Jordon to accept a cease fire, but the proud King Hussein meanwhile ordered his troops to keeping fighting.

With a look of fire in his eyes, the army’s Chief Rabbi barked at the paratrooper commander:

“This historic opportunity to liberate the Jerusalem and the Temple Mount has fallen into your hands, and you hesitate?! I will take the responsibility. Come with me and free the Old City. If they court-martial us, I will accompany you to prison. It is an honor to die to liberate Jerusalem. Now is the chance!”

Rabbi Goren’s aid, Rabbi Menachem HaKohen, who didn’t leave the IDF Chief Rabbi’s side during the war, said that Gur accepted the passionate plea in good-natured fashion, joking about the situation, as if to temper the mounting pressure all around them, promising to take the drill-hammer of a Rabbi along with him when his troops entered the city.

Frustrated, the Rabbi Goren rushed to Tel Aviv to find Yaacov Herzog, the Prime Minister’s closest advisor, and demand that he convince Levi Eshkol to seize the hour.

“I was the army Chief Rabbi’s driver and aide,” Rabbi HaKohen relates. “From Jerusalem to Gaza, then to Tel Aviv, back to Gaza, up to Jerusalem, down to Tel Aviv, back up to liberate the Holy City, then on to Kever Rachel, Kfar Etzion and Hevron. He hardly slept the whole time. Even at night, he had a portable light in the car so he could keep studying Gemara. He learned seven pages of Gemara each day, even during the war. He also talked to me a lot to make sure I didn’t fall asleep at the wheel, just the way the Kohen HaGadol was kept awake all night before Yom Kippur by telling him intriguing narratives. We would even joke about how people would eulogize us if we were killed in the war. Although Rabbi Goren was a very serious talmid chacham, he quoted Kohelet, saying there was a time to weep and a time to laugh.”

From Tel Aviv, Rabbi Goren drove back south to Gaza in time to accompany Division 11 as it set off to encounter the Egyptian forces massed along the border. As the unit roared forward, an enemy shell hit the Rabbi’s command car. All of the soldiers with him were injured. The shofar he was carrying was burnt from the fire and heat of the explosion, along with his officer’s cap. Miraculously, the small Sefer Torah he had brought with him remained unscathed. Treating the wounded as best he could, he carried bleeding soldiers to the ambulances that arrived, grabbed a helmet and pressed forward with the troops while under heavy Egyptian fire.

As Israeli tanks advanced, after the first fierce round of fighting, the enemy surrendered its position and fled in panic. “I saw with my own eyes the truth of the verse, ‘Five from among you shall pursue a hundred, and a hundred from among you shall pursue ten thousand, and your enemies will fall before you by the sword.’ Rashi notes that the mathematics are not in exact proportion, and explains, ‘you cannot compare a few who perform the commandments of the Torah to many who perform them.’ We learn from this that fighting the wars of Israel is Torah in and of itself.”

As sunset fell over the battleground, Rabbi Goren decided to return to Jerusalem. In the middle of the night, he arrived in the Holy City, where the sounds of explosions and gunfire filled the air from all parts of the city. Immediately, he rushed to the home of his father-in-law, the saintly Rabbi David Cohen, known as the “Nazir,” asking to borrow the shofar of his shul. Rabbi Goren’s aid, Rabbi Menachem HaKohen, told the Jewish Press that he stood on a chair and pulled the shofar down from the top of a bookcase. Running to the Rockefeller Museum, they discovered that many soldiers had been killed by enemy shells and the fierce fighting throughout the city.

When he woke up in his jeep after an hour of sleep, Rabbi Goren learned that Mota Gur had set off to command an early morning charge on Augusta Victoria. Supported by Israeli jets, two IDF divisions converging from different directions seized control over the strategic ridge overlooking the Jerusalem from the east. As Jordanian snipers fired from the walls of the Old City at approaching Israeli troops, Rabbi Goren jumped into his jeep and drove toward the Lion Gate, picking up a “trempist” (hitchhiker) on the way, Yosi Ronen, the sound recorder for “Galatz,” the army radio station, who managed to capture the sounds of Rabbi Goren’s shofar, and victorious shouts and singing of the history-making battle.

Finally receiving orders to liberate the Old City, Mota Gur led a paratrooper brigade down the Mount of Olive hillside toward the Temple Mount. At 9:45, with the song, “Jerusalem of Gold,” playing on radios throughout the country, Israeli tanks opened fire on the Lion’s Gate, blowing up the bus that had been positioned there to seal off the fifteen-meter-high stone gateway. Under consistent sniper fire, the Israeli forces charged forward. A tank tried to move the bus aside but got stuck.

As Rabbi Goren ran toward the gate, a paratrooper captain screamed at him to take cover by the wall, alongside the other soldiers, lest he get shot. Torah scroll and shofar in his hands, the exuberant Rabbi ignored the command. “I am the highest-ranking officer present,” he answered. Don’t try to stop me!” Blowing the shofar as loudly as he could, he led the charge into the Old City, climbing over the stalled tank in the gate and jumping down on the other side.

“The Shechinah, which never left the stones of the Kotel, prepared the way before the soldiers of Israel, protecting them with her Clouds of Glory.” he later wrote. Then, as if in a dream, he reached the gate leading to Har HaBayit, the Temple Mount. With another long blast of the shofar, he called out to the troops behind him, “In the Name of Hashem, liberate Jerusalem! Rise up and conquer the Mount!”

Rabbi Yisrael Ariel, then a student at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, and now head of the Temple Institute in Jerusalem, reached the Mount after it had been liberated by the paratroopers. “My orders were to enter the Dome of the Shrine and guard the rotunda containing the Foundation Stone,” he told the Jewish Press. “The fact that I was standing in the place of the Holy of Holies was like a spiritual explosion, the reverberations of which have stayed with me until today, inspiring everything I have done. When I heard that two holy elders with long white beards had arrived at the Kotel, I was certain they must be the Mashiach and Eliahu HaNavi. A short time later, after receiving permission to join the crowd at the Wall, I discovered that the two holy elders were my Rabbis, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda Kook and HaRav David HaKohen, the holy ‘Nazir’. ”

At the start of the war, Zvi Friedman had fought with the troops who had forced Egyptian tank units to withdraw from Gaza. Hurrying to Jerusalem with Rabbi Goren to strengthen the forces in the Holy City, he too found himself on the Temple Mount as the army Chief Rabbi read out a victory speech of thanksgiving to Hashem which he had ready in his uniform pocket. Freidman told the Jewish Press, “If you want to know the truth, finding myself on the Temple Mount didn’t mean anything to me. No one talked about the Temple Mount back then. Unlike today, it wasn’t a part of our vocabulary. Mota Gur called out, ‘Har HaBayit is in our hands!’ but I am sad to say, the Arabs are still in charge there. I looked at Hanan Porat, a young paratrooper and student of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, and his eyes were shining with happiness and tears, but I didn’t feel anything special until I reached the Kotel.”

Sometime later, commanders Mota Gur, Uzi Narkiss, and Defense Minister, Moshe Dayan, stood amidst the singing and dancing soldiers, as if wondering what to do with the treasure that had fallen into their hands. Rabbi Goren approached them. “Why don’t we gather all of the explosives we have and demolish all of the shrines and mosques on the Mount while we still have the chance,” he suggested to his serious and startled listeners. Realizing that he would find a more receptive ear at the Kotel, he hurried off in search of a path to the Western Wall, which for almost two decades had been off-limits for Jews. His bearded aide-de-camp, Rabbi Menachem HaKohen, had grown up in the Old City and knew the way. Joined by a few other soldiers, it wasn’t long before they faced a locked metal gate which they knocked down with their shoulders.

Rabbi Goren recalls in his autobiography, “As I reached the narrow plaza in front of the Kotel, I felt a great burst of light which blinded me. An Arab ran out from the adjacent tunnel and slid a chair under me before I toppled with dizziness.”

Tired, yet ecstatic paratroopers rushed to embrace the stones of the Wall. Above them, another student from the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, Captain Yoram Zammush, hung the Star of David flag from a metal bar at the top of the Kotel. Blowing the shofar, and clutching the Torah scroll, Rabbi Goren recited Kaddish for all of the fallen, and all of the gathered called out, “Amen!” The “trempist” from the “Galei Tzahal” radio station was on hand to record all of the euphoric prayers.

Rabbi Menachem HaKohen, who later became Chief Rabbi of the Moshavim and the Histadrut, told the Jewish Press, “Not since the Jewish People stood united at Mount Sinai had there been a moment of Jewish unity so absolute at this. Jews all over the world, from Moscow to the United States, in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, heard our prayers and answered, ‘Amen!’”

After draping the flag over the ramparts of the Wall, Yoram Zammush requested that his Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, be brought to the Kotel.

“Rabbi Goren instructed me to bring both Rabbi Kook and the ‘Nazir,’ to the Old City,” Rabbi HaKohen recalls. “The Dung Gate still hadn’t been captured, so I took Zammush’s jeep which was still up on the Temple Mount. Deciding to wait until Mincha time before hurrying to Mount Herzl to take care of burial arrangements for Tzahal’s many fallen soldiers, Rabbi Goren returned to the sacred site of the Beit HaMikdash to recite Tehillim, and take advantage of the halakha which permits Jewish soldiers to enter the grounds of the Mikdash during the conquest of the Temple Mount, which was still taking place, as sniper fire continued throughout the Old City. Praying with all of his strength, in the back of his mind was the reminder that Kever Rachel, Kfar Etzion, and Hevron still hadn’t been captured, and he wanted to have a part in their liberation as well.

Driving the army jeep through the jubilant crowds on their way to the Old City, Rabbi Menachem HaKohen parked on the Temple Mount and led the two elder Rabbis to the narrow passage in front of the Wailing Wall, now jammed with soldiers: “The saintly ‘Nazir’ embraced the stones of the Kotel and remained there frozen. HaRav Tzvi Yehuda looked overwhelmed, as if he couldn’t comprehend where we were. Shaking off his disorientation and wonder, he began to weep. He asked Rabbi Goren to recite a chapter of Tehillim, and I sounded the shofar.”

HaRav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, the “Nazir,” Rabbi Goren, and Rabbi Menachem HaKohen with the shofar. GPO

“It is impossible to forget that day,” Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook recalled in a speech he later delivered on Jerusalem Day in the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva. “Each hour that passed, expectation quickened. One of our students who had enlisted raced back to the yeshiva during a break in the fighting and announced that, with the Almighty’s help, our paratroopers would soon reach the Kotel! A little later, a bearded army officer appeared with a message from HaRav Goren. ‘The Chief Rabbi of the army invites the Rosh Yeshiva to come to the Kotel,’ he announced. ‘An armored car is waiting outside.’

“HaRav David Cohen, the Nazir, joined us on the way. He too had been invited by his son-in-law, HaRav Goren. The army car progressed slowly through the joyous crowds who were thronging the streets of the city – thousands of singing and dancing people. Many of them had tears of joy in their eyes over the liberation of Jerusalem. We prayed the first national prayer at the Kotel after a nineteen-hundred year separation, not as individuals, but as representatives of the reborn Medinat Yisrael. The prayer that was an utter cleaving to Hashem. Every eye was filled with tears. Everyone chanted the Psalm, ‘A Song of Ascent: When the L-rd brought back the exiles of Zion, we were like those who dream.’

“Before we left the liberated city, I was interviewed by radio and television reporters from Israel and from around the world. They wanted to know my opinion on what had transpired. ‘Behold,’ I said. ‘We announce to all of Israel, and to all of the world, that by a Divine command, we have returned to our home, to our Holy City. From this day forth, we shall never budge from here! We have come home!’”



The Capture of Jerusalem in a 2 minute clip ...In Honor of Yom Yerushalyim


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