Jerusalem has always been our beating heart - The Jewish Chronicle

I am a Jew who is well aware of her heritage. I am an Israeli who knows the stories of the cities she travels and the history of the hills she hikes. Yet a recent excursion to the biblical City of David affected me so deeply that it will affect the way I guide my children and how I address the world.

I am a Zionist. I believe in the Jewish people’s right to self-determination in our homeland. I have watched with pain as Jewish history is denied and even Jews turn their backs on their heritage, their history and their people, joining those who slander Zionism as “Jewish supremacy”, colonialism, racism, and other slurs.

I have seen Jews bullied into silence while those they formerly marched with to demand rights for other groups deny those rights to Jews, call Israel “apartheid” and paint Jews with shame by association.

At the centre of this assault is Jerusalem. Until recently, the city was universally acknowledged as home to the Jews. Yet it is now the target of a global campaign to sever its Jewish history.

This is why my recent tour of the City of David just outside the Old City was both intensely sobering and incredibly empowering.

King David’s Jerusalem is not the Jerusalem we see today. Today’s Old City walls were built by the Ottomans, just 480 years ago. King David conquered Jerusalem 3,000 years ago. Until recently, no evidence of David or his palace existed. And for a long time, some historians considered him simply a myth.

But 30 years ago, an inscription found in Tel Dan which spoke of the House of David was discovered. Now, while some think his legend is overstated, none can deny his existence.

Seventeen years ago, Israeli archeologist Dr Eilat Mazar uncovered a structure to the south of the Temple Mount. In his psalms, David sang of “Jerusalem, surrounded by hills”. The description is bewildering when standing in today’s Old City. But walk a few hundred yards south, to the site Mazar chose, and around you lie valleys, the East and West crowned by the Mt of Olives and Mt Zion and to the north, Mt Moriah — the Temple Mount.

It is this site that the City of David has lovingly excavated and made accessible to us.

Here, we see Jerusalem through David’s eyes. And the words of the psalms come to life. Carbon dated organic materials, pottery and columns of majestic ruins directly match the time of David.

Seals (bulot) hardened by the fires set by the Babylonians in 586 BCE, which destroyed the First Temple and the city of Jerusalem, were unearthed here bearing names of scribes mentioned in the Bible, proving beyond doubt that this was Biblical Jerusalem.

The sensation of standing where David stood, where the prophets warned of the coming destruction, where our people was exiled, was breathtaking. Hearing my children recognise the names of biblical heroes was… redeeming.

With the return of the Jewish Babylonian exiles after 70 years, the Second Temple period began. Jerusalem was rebuilt and a stone road was set from south to north to facilitate the pilgrimage to the Temple made by Jews three times a year. The Talmud describes this road with its market stalls, the Shiloach (Silwan) pool and even the world’s oldest lost property facility.

Several yards under the current street level, in a section not yet open to the public, we stood on this road.

In the Talmud, the Sages recalled: “There was a Claimant’s Stone in Jerusalem, and anyone who lost an item would be directed there and anyone who found a lost item would be directed there” (Bava Metzia 28b).

My parents, children and I stood on this platform. Children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren of Holocaust survivors touched the history of our people buried these last 1,953 years. We saw soot, still black for lack of oxygen, the burned remains of Jerusalem.

We stood in awe as our history surrounded us. We could almost hear it calling: “Do not forsake me. I have waited for you.”

Jerusalem was taken from us. But the Jewish presence never left. No matter how many nations built atop us, smothering our past, seeking to sever our connection, we never forgot her. And now that we have returned to our land, we must refuse the charges of “foreigners” and “interlopers”, the insanity that we are “Judaising” Jerusalem, made by those who seek to deny our future by denying our past. Jerusalem was, is, and always will be, the beating heart of the Jewish people.