(this requires an overhaul, and is probably the right place for a discussion on what a proper contemporary theology on the State of Israel should look like)

וְלִירוּשָׁלַיִם עִירְךָ בְּרַחֲמִים תָּשׁוּב. וְתִשְׁכּן בְּתוכָהּ כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבַּרְתָּ. וּבְנֵה אותָהּ בְּקָרוב בְּיָמֵינוּ בִּנְיַן – עולָם.- וְכִסֵּא דָוִד מְהֵרָה לְתוכָהּ תָּכִין. בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’, בּונֵה יְרוּשָׁלָיִם And to Jerusalem, Your city, return in mercy, and dwell therein as You have spoken; and rebuild it soon, in our days, as an everlasting structure, and the throne of David, Your servant may You speedily establish therein. Blessed are You, Hashem, Who builds Jerusalem.

A link in the chain

One embedded assumption in prayer is a sense of deficiency or lack; we want something. Many blessings are intuitive; it’s obvious why we need wisdom, health, repentance, redemption, and prosperity. We know what those things are and what they mean; we understand that life gets complicated fast without them.

But what might Jerusalem rebuilt mean? It’s not something we have ever seen, and while we have many abstract ideas about what it could be like, it’s not a concrete concept we fully understand and relate to.

If nothing else, Jerusalem is being rebuilt right now. The amount of construction, investment, and redevelopment in Jerusalem is unprecedented.

But that’s not what we truly mean when we ask for Jerusalem to be rebuilt.

The land of Israel features in our books from the very outset of Jewish history. Jerusalem is the center going back to the beginning; it’s believed to be the center point of creation, the site where humans were created, the place Noah’s ark landed, the place Avraham bound Isaac, and the focal point of the religion for millennia. Jerusalem’s importance to Christianity is peripheral, and at least a thousand years later, its significance to Islam is also peripheral, and at least fifteen hundred years later.

It was a gathering place for all, where all the tribes from across the country and people from all over the world would come together, breaking social and economic barriers, standing alongside each other shoulder to shoulder to encounter the divine. It was a city of a peace and unity, a place for seekers to uplift their spirits.

Jerusalem isn’t just one of our holy places; it’s the only one – כִּי־רָצוּ עֲבָדֶיךָ אֶת־אֲבָנֶיהָ וְאֶת־עֲפָרָהּ יְחֹנֵנוּ.

Long ago, our sages kissed the rocks, rolled in the dust, and repaired the roads. In our time, people get off the plane and kiss the earth. When the Nazis entered Vienna, they subjected leading rabbis to public humiliation and forced the Sadigura Rebbe to sweep the streets in front of laughing Germans. The Rebbe vowed that if he could escape Austria and get to the Land of Israel, he would gladly sweep the streets there. He obtained a visa that year and kept his promise. For long after he arrived in Tel Aviv, he could be found sweeping the streets around his house early each morning.

Our love for the Land of Israel is not a new thing; it’s what generation upon generation of our ancestors were promised, yearned for, and dreamed of.

We might not fully understand what Jerusalem rebuilt is, but they did.

Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yakov counted on God’s promise for the Land of Israel; setting foot inside was the only thing Moshe ever wanted; it’s what Yehoshua prays for, what the exiles pray for, what Mordechai hopes for and works towards.

Some things are part of us that we don’t get to know. When grandparents live far away or overseas, it is difficult for the new generation to have any degree of familiarity with them, and this was especially true in the days before video or phone calls; snail mail was the best there was, and before that, even less. Even today, it is difficult to comprehend how life in pre-war Europe truly was, and that wasn’t even so long ago; there is a whole life and world that we will never know.

And yet, when a grandchild loses a grandparent they never knew, they’ll still be sad; because their parents are sad, they know what they lost. The loss of European Jewry is unfathomable for people born after the years of darkness and fire, yet we understand that the loss is enormous, and that for the people who did know, they lived with a void that never went away.

While our sadness isn’t precisely directed at the thing itself, we have a vague enough understanding to be directionally accurate, and we can also be sad by the transitive property, our awareness of the reaction by people who were deeply familiar with it.

We might not have a complete understanding of what Jerusalem was to fully understand what a rebuilt Jerusalem might be, but our ancestors did.

Jeremiah was so devastated at the loss of Jerusalem that he tried to stay in the smoldering ruins; the survivors had to force him away with them. There is a law to cover knives when saying the blessings after the meal; several blessings are about the loss of and rebuilding of Jerusalem, and one person was so distressed by grief that he stabbed himself.

It’s not a trivial blessing; someone living with grief always feels something missing, even as if life goes on. As life resumes, there may not be an unhealthy and constant preoccupation, but it’s always there.

As R’ Shlomo Carlebach so powerfully sang, there is no pain in the world which could make us forget Jerusalem, no joy in the world which can make us forget Jerusalem. Every Jew on their way to the gas chambers was thinking about and on their way to Jerusalem; every Jew on their way to Siberia was thinking about and on their way to Jerusalem; every single Jewish wedding has taken a moment to think about about remember that we are on our way back to Jerusalem.

We are the generation fortunate enough to see the beginnings of a Jerusalem rebuilt; but it’s not because of our merits. It has been a relay race through generations; if we have reached further it was by standing on the shoulders of giants.

One prayer won’t rebuild Jerusalem, but stacking them all together will.

וְלִירוּשָׁלַיִם – What is the etymology of the word Jerusalem?

Jerusalem is a noun, the name of a place, but names in Hebrew aren’t like names in other languages, not just an arbitrary string of sounds. In Hebrew, names are meaningful, a concept called nominative determinism, the idea that a name describes some essential quality or predisposition.

As brunch is to breakfast and lunch, Jerusalem is a portmanteau, a blend of two other words that combine their meanings. The root words are seeing or fear and awe – YIRAH, and peace or perfection – SHALEM.

Taken together, the city’s name suggests that it is built on peace and fear of Heaven; it follows that when the inhabitants are no longer godfearing, or peace is fractured by hatred, the city can no longer stand.

וְלִירוּשָׁלַיִם – Plural

(!ed needs reworking)

The second explanation is that ירוּשָׁלַיִם is a plural word. This is because there are two Jerusalems. There is the ירוּשָׁלַיִם של מעלה – the Heavenly Jerusalem, in addition to the ירוּשָׁלַיִם של מטה – the Jerusalem on Earth. When we are worthy of it, the two Yerushalayim co-exist together, which is what occurs in times of peace and harmony. So we daven וְלִירוּשָׁלַיִם – we want Hashem to reside in both, the של מעלה and the של מטה.

not yerushleim – it’s pluralized

there are two

the Jerusalem above, and the Jerusalem below

as above, so below

correspondence – the angel michael presents the souls of the righteous before the Creator

King David designs Jerusalem to mirror his understanding of upper Jerusalem

if the lower one is full of sin and hatred and empty rituals, the city is sticks and stones and can be destroyed

we want our Jerusalem linked to the heavenly one

The order of the blessings is sequential and thematically follows each other.

The first letter, the vav, means “and” – it connects what precedes to what follows. There are several explanations of what this is connected to.

The first is that it is related to תְּקַע בְּשׁופָר גָּדול – where we ask Hashem to bring an end to the Exile so all the people can return to Israel, and we are now asking for the place to which we return, ירוּשָׁלַיִם עִירְךָ,  to be rebuilt.

conjunctive vav – and

vav literally means hook

connects to what came before

connect to teka bshofar

There third explanation, by R’ Yisroel Reisman, that וְלִירוּשָׁלַיִם continues from עַל הַצַּדִּיקִים. The Yerushalayim of today, of bars, restaurants, and shopping, is not the Yerushalayim we daven for. We want the Yerushalayim of tzaddikim back.

וְהָיָה הַמָּקוֹם אֲשֶׁר־יִבְחַר ה אֱלֹהֵיכֶם בּוֹ לְשַׁכֵּן שְׁמוֹ שָׁם שָׁמָּה תָבִיאוּ אֵת כּל־אֲשֶׁר אָנֹכִי מְצַוֶּה אֶתְכֶם עוֹלֹתֵיכֶם וְזִבְחֵיכֶם מַעְשְׂרֹתֵיכֶם וּתְרֻמַת יֶדְכֶם וְכֹל מִבְחַר נִדְרֵיכֶם אֲשֶׁר תִּדְּרוּ לַה׃

World bridge

The Torah tells how Yakov fled from his enraged murderous brother Esau to the house of his uncle Lavan, in far off Haran. Along the way, and in between places, Yakov put his head down for some rest and had a vivid prophetic dream of a ladder to the sky.

Jacob’s Ladder is a universal motif with many counterparts in mythology. It is known as an axis mundi — also called the cosmic axis, world axis, cosmic bridge, world bridge, cosmic pillar, world pillar, the center of the world, or world tree; and they universally serve as a connection between Heaven and Earth, a bridge or gateway between higher and lower realms. The axis mundi is almost always a center point, where blessings from higher realms descend to lower realms and disseminate to all. 

A bridge and ladder function in the same way, except that a bridge is for lateral movement, and a ladder is for vertical movement. There are two separate domains, and there is no way to move from one to the other; they are separated with distinct boundaries that cannot be crossed. A bridge or ladder crosses the gap, linking the domains so the disparate parts can interact.

The cosmic bridge works in the same way, expressing contact and correspondence between higher and lower realms – מֻצָּב אַרְצָה וְרֹאשׁוֹ מַגִּיעַ הַשָּׁמָיְמָה. In Jacob’s Ladder, angels ascend and descend – וְהִנֵּה מַלְאֲכֵי אֱלֹהִים עֹלִים וְיֹרְדִים בּוֹ – overtly symbolizing a kind of transfer, a reciprocal interaction and exchange of energy where Heaven comes to Earth, and Earth is elevated to Heaven.

Our sages identify the location of Yakov’s dream disparately as Mount Sinai, Mount Moriah, the Land of Israel, or imagining a diagonally aligned ladder, some combination of these. Still, the effect is the same – the cosmic bridge is at one of these spiritual centers, a place where Heaven and Earth can meet and blessing comes into the world. Legend has it that beneath the Beis HaMikdash on Mount Moriah, possibly the Dome of the Rock and the site of the Akeida, lies the Foundation Stone – אבן השתיה – the focal point and source of creation, itself tying intimately into the imagery of a source of blessing, connection, and expansiveness. 

The motif of a world bridge is recursive – once you know how to spot it, you see it everywhere. Our sages note how Sinai has the same numerical value as Jacob’s ladder – סלם / סיני – suggesting that the Torah is a kind of world bridge. The Midrash indicates that the sacrificial offerings were a world bridge; the altar is described as “of the earth” – מִזְבַּח אֲדָמָה – and legend has it that the smokestack wouldn’t diffuse into the air; it rose in a straight line, straight up to the sky – a world bridge. Many have noted that the expression for prayer and voice also has the same numerical value as Jacob’s ladder – סולם / קול.

Our sages suggest that our homes and marriages are reflections of the Beis HaMikdash – both are called בית, and both are a spiritual center and foundation – and so, like the Beis HaMikdash, are themselves reflections of a world bridge.

עִירְךָ – Your City

The blessing is not simply about Jerusalem, but Jerusalem, God’s city; this suggests the possibility of a Jerusalem that isn’t God’s city. When it’s a Jerusalem that isn’t god-fearing or a Jerusalem of argument and strife, it’s not God’s city.

As long as communities fight each other over nonsense, call each other parasites or godless, and throw rocks and hate, that’s not the Jerusalem our ancestors dreamed of.

Some communities say a prayer for the State of Israel and call it the beginning of the flowering of redemption – REISHIS. Whether it is or isn’t, there’s only one way to find out; who knows if it’s the beginning before we see the end? But if we believe there’s an end, isn’t it plausible that this is what the beginning of the end might look like? Most of Jewish history is written in blood; modern antisemitism isn’t so bad when you compare it to massacres, ethnic cleansing, genocide, expulsions, and systematic persecution. If you showed most of the Jews of those times what life is like for the Jewish People today, they’d probably call that the beginning of redemption.

But it’s essential to understand that the Jerusalem of high-rise apartment buildings and the Jerusalem of boys and girls laughing and playing in the streets of Jerusalem are part of the dream, the hope, and the vision of the future, but it can’t end there, that’s not the end goal.

We don’t want the Jerusalem of apartment developers or the Jerusalem of fine dining; we don’t want the Jerusalem of judgment and hatred. We want the Jerusalem of holiness and spirituality, peace, and fear of Heaven – וְלִירוּשָׁלַיִם עִירְךָ.

it’s not just a place to be safe

this blessing makes clear that we want more than safety – we want god’s return

the return of spirituality and presence to the world

the way to safety is through spirituality

invest in security, but invest in education, charity, communal infrastructure

the world has been a scary place for a long time

maybe always

baal haturim

avraham has yitzchak and yishmael

torah says kings of yishmael before toldos yitzchak

baal haturim says the kings of yishmael will fall before Mashiach comes

בְּרַחֲמִים תָּשׁוּב – return with mercy

Jerusalem is associated with God’s presence; the prophet Jeremiah describes God’s departure from Zion in anger  – ki al api val chamosi hoysi li ir hazos.

This prayer asks not just for God’s return but for an undoing of God’s departure – mercy, not anger.

Our sages have long reflected on eschatology, the subject concerning the end of days, the end of history, and the utopian era of Mashiach. There are many prophecies, allusions, and interpretations of what they might mean. Taken together, they reflect the range of possibilities that Mashiach’s arrival could mean.

The most fundamental difference between approaches is that Mashiach’s arrival can be quick and easy or drawn out and painful, a smooth transition or a turbulent shift – רַחֲמִים or דין.

The resurrection of the dead, gathering the exiles, return to Israel, restoration of the monarchy, world peace, and an undying era of wisdom and enlightenment sound spectacular! But this is, perhaps, preceded by a cataclysmic world war and apocalypse beforehand; no one wants that.

We want the return in mercy – בְּרַחֲמִים תָּשׁוּב.

But although so much has been written about what the arrival and age of Mashiach will look like, our sages teach that the Creator did not reveal it to the prophets; the simple reality is no one knows. Every discussion about Mashiach falls under one genre – speculation; we ought to be humble about our expectations of what it looks like.

What if it doesn’t look the way we expect it to?

Would we only accept Mashiach if a flaming Beis HaMikdash fell out of the sky fully built with working plumbing?

What if he didn’t look the way he expected? What if he was from another community?

Perhaps in part, we ask for ourselves to see with mercy as well – בְּרַחֲמִים תָּשׁוּב.

Moreover, this prayer maintains no false illusions about our greatness; it suggests an admission and recognition that we all have work to do. God will only come back in mercy when we act in mercy. When we care about our brothers and sisters and help them care for each other, we can ask God for compassion and mercy.

When you see someone make a mistake, you can judge them, write them off, or look at them with mercy – they’re not perfect, nor am I. God will only return in mercy when we act with mercy and can build a city of peace where mercy is the norm.

That’s not to say there would be no room for disagreements; every argument is about something, not nothing. There can only be a lack of dispute when there’s nothing to disagree about and nothing to fight for. But the Torah is something; as soon as morality and inclinations exist, there is a right thing to stand up for and fight about.

But there’s a way to disagree.

It’s sad and ironic that people who can be so meticulous about one mitzvah or several let others fall by the wayside; sometimes, the people who look like they keep the Torah the most are the most guilty of not respecting others. Hillel taught that the Torah’s Golden Rule is don’t do to others what you wouldn’t want them to do to you; R’ Akiva said it is to love your neighbor; Ben Azzai suggested it was that humans are created in God’s image. Someone rude or nasty to others, for the best reasons, hasn’t missed out on one mitzvah; they have missed the whole Torah.

pluralism

two jews, three opinions, one heart

וְתִשְׁכּן בְּתוכָהּ

Our people have said this prayer for centuries if not millennia; if we’re still asking for Jerusalem to be rebuilt, it hasn’t happened yet. We might not deserve it yet; we might not have prayed enough, or it might not be the right time.

But it’s not all or nothing. The Vilna  Gaon explains that God’s presence is not contingent on rebuilding Jerusalem.

When someone receives a terrible health diagnosis, they might track down the doctor doing cutting-edge medical research and clinical trials. Is it approved yet? Is it ready for testing? The answer might be no, and the patient will keep checking. Eventually, the patient might say he is happy to wait until human trials are approved, but it hurts today, so what can he do meanwhile to bridge until then?

The final redemption is excellent, and that might not be for right now, but God’s presence with us will take us pretty far – וְתִשְׁכּן בְּתוכָהּ

If our prayer isn’t answered in full, let it be answered in part; we might recognize it in the yeshivas, seminaries, shuls, and schools full of people from all over the world seeking to understand – וְתִשְׁכּן בְּתוכָהּ.

כַּאֲשֶׁר דִּבַּרְתָּ – you promised us!

we daven with that faith

We affirm that Hashem told us He would rebuild Yerushalayim, and we depend on this. It is not possible that Hashem would not keep His word.

We are saying that we have perfect faith in what Hashem told us.’

god speaks truth and straightness; world made with truth,

וּבְנֵה אותָהּ בְּקָרוב בְּיָמֵינוּ – we want it in our day, in our lifetime

We do not want to wait until tomorrow or for our grandkids to see the day. We want Jerusalem rebuilt in our days, in our time.

But there’s something more to Jerusalem rebuilt in our days – בְּיָמֵינוּ; we want Jerusalem built with our days – בְּיָמֵינוּ.

When the Torah describes Avraham’s death, it says he died with all his days fully accounted for – וְאַבְרָהָם זָקֵן בָּא בַּיָּמִים; the Zohar takes this to mean that he literally died with his days, making every day count, with a similar teaching about Sarah, every day brimming with fullness – שְׁנֵי חַיֵּי שָׂרָה.

Every day has downtime in between moments. Eating, sleeping, resting, daydreaming. The greats are also human; they also do all those things, but they do them differently.

A student and sage both make a blessing and eat an apple; the student asks what makes the sage a sage. Says the sage, a student makes a blessing to eat an apple, and a sage eats an apple to make a blessing. Teachers often tell students to eat and play sports so they can study better; it’s something real.

Redemption is built with our merits; every good deed is a brick. Shir Hashirim talks about a palace made of incredible engineering and design – inside is paved with the love of the daughters of Zion – CITE. In this conception, redemption is a physical manifestation of the human connection to God and each other. Every nasty comment and selfish act destroys; every kind word and good deed builds. Perhaps we may even be able to point to our own bricks!

We ask that our days be fit for use to rebuild Jerusalem; use our days –  וּבְנֵה אותָהּ בְּקָרוב בְּיָמֵינוּ.

בִּנְיַן עולָם

There was a first Beis HaMikdash; there was a second.

We don’t want a third; we want the last. No one needs a temporary fix that will burn again; build one that will never disappear or be destroyed.

But the bitter reality that we know all too well is that the Jerusalem of the twenty-first century that we have been gifted, however beautiful, is fragile and impermanent, held together weakly from moment to moment from one loose political alliance to the next.

Every wave of internal political strife, as much as each bombing, stabbing, and shooting, highlights the delicate foundations of the Jerusalem we have built so far.

We pray for help building a Jerusalem with the staying power to last forever – בִּנְיַן עולָם.

But not just for all time – עולָם, but that will also be for the world, all people in all places – עולָם.

CITE

beisi beis tefila lechal hammim

lmelech al kol haaretz

– וְכִסֵּא דָוִד מְהֵרָה לְתוכָהּ תָּכִין

This prayer contemplates three things: Jerusalem, the Beis HaMikdash, and King David’s throne, and the throne is part of both. Only one person can sit in the Beis HaMikdash; the king descended from King David. One of the late kings of Israel, not descended from King David, sat down in the Beis Hamikdash, and the sages were too frightened to speak up; it was the beginning of the end.

This is the place of God’s presence; this is a prayer for the return of how things ought to be.

Peace. Seeing one another. Fear of Heaven.

There is a mystical teaching here as well. Many key figures in Judaism are identified with multiple names; each name suggests a different identity. One of Mashiach’s names is David; this identifies him as the rightful heir of the House of David. In this light, it’s not a prayer for the symbolic return of David but the literal occupation of the throne by David – וְכִסֵּא דָוִד.

Going a step further, the Arizal teaches that the word for throne is a codeword – כִסֵּא. This makes intuitive sense for the simple reason that God can’t sit down. When we use the word throne, we mean the thing that makes the person in it a monarch. In the eschatological teachings of our sages, there are two Mashiachs; everyone familiar with the concept knows of Mashiach ben David, but his arrival is prefigured by the groundwork of another Mashiach, Mashiach ben Yosef.

For many complex reasons, these individuals represent powerful archetypes of redemption. Still, a prominent element of this phase is that Mashiach ben Yosef paves the way for and enables the last redemption and dies in a great battle. In other words, we might see he is the thing that makes Mashiach ben David the monarch – כִסֵּא. On this reading, this prayer can be taken as a request to strengthen Mashiach ben Yosef, that he live – וְכִסֵּא דָוִד מְהֵרָה לְתוכָהּ תָּכִין.

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה ה’, בּונֵה יְרוּשָׁלָיִם – Blessed are You, Hashem, Who builds Jerusalem

Interestingly, this blessing ends in the present tense, not the future tense, which further suggests that this rebuilding is already underway and ongoing; every act, prayer, mitzvah, kind word, and good deed every day is counted and shaped into a brick.

On the destruction of the second Beis haMikdash, our sages suggest the angels sang a song about how God chose Zion – CITE. Yet our sages suggest that at the culmination of the final redemption and Jerusalem rebuilt; the angels will sing the same song, how God chose Zion – CITE.

If you think about it, a song about choosing or desiring Zion makes sense as the song of Jerusalem rebuilt; but destruction is the opposite of those things, so why is it also the song of destruction?

Our sages teach that on Shabbos; we cease all creative work, one form of which is demolition, specifically for constructive purposes; we recognize that demolishing an old house to develop an apartment building is constructive.

When God was destroying, it was a reciprocal form of building, destroying the empty husk of a failed Jerusalem already lost to lay the foundation of the real thing, a place God’s presence would dwell – and the angels sang how God chose Zion.

When you go past a construction site, you can tell how big the building is going to be from the size of the foundations. If there is no foundation, it’s not going to be more than a barn or shed; regular foundation, regular house; big foundation, big house. When the foundation is several plots wide and stories deep, you can tell it’s going to be a skyscraper.

Construction of Jerusalem has been ongoing and has been well underway for a long time – בּונֵה יְרוּשָׁלָיִם.

Our exile has been longer and darker than we might have hoped, but it is the foundation into which the future city will be poured. If we know how massive the foundation is, we can only imagine the finished product.

When God sends us debilitating problems, challenges, setbacks, failures, and depression; know that not always, and not for everyone, but the possibility exists that it can be a variant form of building Jerusalem, breaking it down to make it the way it’s supposed to be.

This phase, sometimes called the dark night of the soul, can be liberating on the other side, dissolving ego or attachments to things that don’t serve us. May God see our prayers, see our pain, see us trying to build bridges and be proud of us.

Our sages teach that whoever mourns Jerusalem will merit to see it rebuilt. We can be the people who didn’t have any intention or the people who built Jerusalem.

Hatred and injustice destroyed Jerusalem; love and kindness will see it rebuilt – צִיּוֹן בְּמִשְׁפָּט תִּפָּדֶה וְשָׁבֶיהָ בִּצְדָקָה