Israel’s latest operation in Gaza, a few weeks ago, ended like most of the other conflicts and campaigns over its 73 years of statehood: in military victory but widespread vilification by the nations of the world: in other words, a bittersweet victory.
But there was one conflict, whose
“yahrzeit” is this June, that turned
out to be one of the most dramatic and emotional events in modern Jewish
history – a mix of Chanukah’s “many in the hands of the few” and Purim’s vena’apoch hu. Those who remember what
happened share their memories of the terrifying three-week prelude to the Six
Day War and the utter jubilation at its miraculous conclusion.
* * *
It was 1967. After the difficult early days of the new state of
Israel, things had settled down. People accepted reality and lived within the “crazy” borders and without Yerushalayim’s Old City and its
Kotel.
It was a very different Israel then,
a third-world country. Few people had telephones or cars. There was no television.
In the poorer neighborhoods of Yerushalayim, people had only one faucet in the
house and cooking, heating, and even light were fueled by kerosene.
Yerushalayim was small; you could
walk from Geula in the north to its southernmost neighborhood in less then an
hour. The Old City, to the east, was like a faraway country behind a barbed-wired
barrier. A barren, weed-infested no-man’s-land occupied the space where the
light rail turns north today. On Tisha b’Av, people climbed up to Har Zion to
gaze at the Old City and the Temple Mount, the site of the Beis Hamikdash. A
less welcome sight was the Jordanian soldiers in red-checked kaffiyas with
their rifles.
* * *
Rebbetzin Rochel Kelemer came to
Eretz Yisrael in 1966 with her husband, Rav Yehudah Kelemer, zt”l (subsequently the longtime rabbi
of the Young Israel of West Hempstead). They were newlyweds, one of only a
handful of American couples in the Mir Yeshiva. “We lived in the one house on Rechov
Hamaapilim in Katamon,” says Rebbetzin Kelemer. “Today, the street goes way
down. It was the only furnished apartment we could find, available only because
it belonged to a diplomat who was sent to Vienna. In those days, chareidim lived all over the city. The
only predominately chareidi neighborhoods
were Bayit Vegan and Mattesdorf. The last house in Bayit Vegan was number 84,
and there were only two buildings in Mattesdorf.”
* * *
Rabbi Binyamin “Benji” Levene, the
grandson of Rav Aryeh Levene, the fabled “tzadik
of Yerushalayim,” grew up in America, in Jersey City, and spent his summers
with his grandfather in his Nachlaot room.
“My grandfather would get up at
5:30 and go daven in a shul on Rechov Yafo called Zoharei Hachama, opposite
Machaneh Yehuda. It was called that because it was in a building with a big
sundial on it….I went to shul later, and when I came home, my grandfather
wanted to cook me breakfast. First I had to go upstairs to my aunt to get some
eggs and olive oil. He didn’t have a stove, just a Primus, which was more like
a camp stove. Nest, he took out a frying pan that I was sure came from the Beis
Hamikdash. He filled it with olive oil. He would make me an egg; then he gave
me some matzas left over from Pesach. I’ve eaten breakfast in many places, but
that was the most delicious breakfast I ever had.
“My grandfather was the rav of a little
shul,” Rabbi Levene continues, “where many of the members were the underground
freedom fighters from pre-State days – the Lechi, the Irgun. They were really
tough. Menachem Begin would drop in there, and a seat in the front row still
has the name Ruvi Rivlin, today’s president.”
War Is Coming
The lead-up to the war began in mid-May, 1967. Gamal Abdul Nasser,
the president of Egypt, decided that the time was ripe to destroy the Jewish
state once and for all. Over the course of a week, Nasser mobilized his troops and massed them in the Sinai desert.
He blocked the Straits of Tiran to Israeli shipping. And he demanded the
evacuation of the UN buffer force in the Sinai. All were acts of war and violations
of agreements and guarantees made after the Sinai campaign of 1956. They were
accompanied by riotous mobs in the Arab capitals screaming that they would “drive
the Jews into the sea.”
The Israelis were
terrified. Just 19 years after the founding of the state and 22 years since the
Holocaust, Jews were once again threatened with genocide. In America and around
the world, Jews davened, collected money and shared in the fear.
Rabbi Dr. Ivan
Lerner says, “In the weeks leading up to the Six Day War, I vividly recall my
grandfather saying, ‘After pogroms, after six million were murdered, after so
many died in 1948, we are now watching another Holocaust about to take place.
The world hates Jews, the UN is against us, the U.S. and the Europeans are
doing nothing to help Israel. The situation is hopeless.’
“My grandfather
wasn’t the only one who thought that. My parents and most of the Jews I knew
felt that Israel’s end was near. The fully-equipped armies and air forces of
Egypt, Jordan, and Syria – supported by Jordan. Iraq, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Tunisia,
Libya, and Morocco – combined their resources in
order to destroy Israel. They stated their objective – Israel’s annihilation –
and amassed huge armies on Israel’s borders poised to attack.”
As Prime Minister Levi Eshkol
stalled, trying to gain American support for an Israeli attack, and diplomats
scurried around world capitals, the people of Israel languished in anguish and
anxiety.
“It is hard to exaggerate what it was
like for Israel in those three weeks,” wrote Charles Krauthammer, columnist for the Washington Post. “With troops and armor massing on Israel’s every
frontier, jubilant broadcasts in every Arab capital hailed the imminent final
war for the extermination of Israel. ‘We shall destroy Israel and its
inhabitants,’ declared PLO head Ahmed Shuqayri, ‘and as for the survivors – if there
are any – the boats are ready to deport them.’”
In Israel, all the reservists were
called in. The Chief Rabbinate consecrated city parks as cemeteries, and many thousands
of graves were dug in Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park. Hotels were designated as first
aid stations. The basement bomb shelters of buildings were cleared out, and
citizens blackened their windows and packed emergency bags for when the sirens
began. The soldiers sat on the borders for two long weeks, waiting for
they-knew-not-what, and the cities and villages were emptied of men. The crops
were not tended, the economy bled, and future war hero, Chief of Staff Yitzhak
Rabin, had a nervous breakdown from the unbearable tension.
Americans Choose
Meanwhile, Americans in Israel had to decide whether to go or stay.
Rosh Yeshiva of Ner Yisrael, Harav
Aharon Feldman, was learning in Kollel Chazon Ish in Bnei Brak. Rebbetzin Lea
Feldman remembers the dilemma. “We had five children, and we were citizens of
America,” she says. “We could escape if we wanted to. My husband went to the
Steipler and asked if we should go back to America. The Steipler said, no,
don’t go back. Nothing serious is going to happen; it will end in the best way;
don’t worry. I remember davening to Hashem: ‘Please, Hashem, I went through
hunger and difficult times during World War II. Please don’t let my children do
the same.’ One good thing came of it,” says Rebbetzin Feldman. “Our neighbor
told us later that he used to look out his window. Every time he saw our
children playing on the mirpesset (balcony),
it gave him tremendous encouragement.”
* * *
Lieba Brown, who made aliyah about 15 years ago after a long
“detour” through Los Angeles, was 18 and on a gap-year program. “I was in Saad,
a religious kibbutz right next to the Gaza Strip. One Friday night, I saw the
men leave the chadar ochel with guns
and jeeps – on Shabbos. I knew something was up. Our leaders came and took us
to Yerushalayim. On the way, we passed columns of tanks traveling south. Most
of our group went home to the U.S., but I said, ‘This is my home.’ I wrote to
my parents that I wanted to stay, and for some reason, they agreed.
“I was sent to a kibbutz in the center
of the country, which was supposedly safer. All the windows in the kibbutz were
covered with black-out paper, and all the outside lights were off. We practiced
walking to the bomb shelters in pitch darkness. Here, too, the men were gone,
so they sent us to the fields to harvest the cotton. The kibbutz turned out to
be not so safe. It was next to Latrun, the site of a big battle with Jordan. I
heard the sounds of battle and saw the smoke and the fighter jets roaring
across the sky. It was scary but I wasn’t afraid. I was young, and when you’re
young you don’t think anything will happen to you.”
* * *
Rabbi Moshe Juravel, longtime
rebbe at the Torah Institute, was a bachur
at the time, learning at Slobodka yeshiva in Bnei Brak. He says, “The country
was in a state of high alert. The stores were empty. The banks and post office
shut down. There was barely any bus service. The men were all drafted. There
was great fear. Everyone understood that war was coming. My Rosh Yeshiva, Rav Mordechai Schulman, paid for my ticket to leave
Eretz Yisrael.”
* * *
Rebbetzin Kelemer says, “We felt that
nothing would happen to us in Yerushalayim. We thought any bombing would be in
Tel Aviv. But my parents were scared; they wanted us to come back to the
States. But so many Americans were leaving that there were no more American
dollars in the bank to buy tickets and no more tickets. I was able to get a
ticket to England, where I had relatives. My husband was supposed to come in a
week, but he never came because that was the day the war broke out. During war,
he stayed with a friend in an apartment in the foreign ministry building where
there was a miklat. In the Mir, they
learned in the miklat with the Rosh
Hayeshiva, with Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz.
“Meanwhile, in England,” says
Rebbetzin Kelemer, “we saw headlines that a yeshiva was bombed. People were
getting telegrams, and I didn’t get one. I was getting nervous. Finally, I got
a call from a cousin. My husband’s telegram arrived at her house in Manchester.
She said, ‘Should I open it?’ Yes! My cousin read, ‘Hakol beseder (everything is okay), Jordan.’ My cousin couldn’t
understand how everything could be beseder
(okay) in Jordan if we just won the war. I laughed and told her that was my
husband’s English name.”
* * *
Mrs. Chava Grossman grew up in
Atlanta and lived in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Passaic before making aliyah to Yerushalayim. She was six
years old when her father, Rabbi Emanuel Feldman, the longtime rav of
Congregation Beth Jacob of Atlanta, took the family to Bnei Brak for a sabbatical
year. He was teaching English literature at Bar Ilan University.
“It was me and my three older
brothers,” says Mrs. Grossman. “I was in first grade and went to school not
knowing a word of Hebrew. The teachers did not know a word of English. My teacher
was very understanding, though, and by the end of the year, I was talking
Hebrew. I still have the silver siddur with blue stones that she gave me,
inscribed with a bracha and good
wishes. One of my brothers, in fourth grade, was not adjusting well, and he ran
away one day. The oldest brother, Ilan, almost bar mitzva, was very mature. He
was glued to the radio. For him, it was extremely emotional; he was praying
that we win the Kotel.
“To me, the war was absolutely
exciting. We heard the air raid sirens. We slept in our clothing so we could
run down to the miklat (bomb shelter)
in the middle of the night. We had food and water and mattresses in the miklat. It was like camping. All the
neighbors sat together for hours, getting to know each other for the first
time.
“One elderly woman lived alone in a
separate house and had to run to the miklat
from there. The neighbors worried about her. We worried about our aunt and
uncle, my father’s brother, a couple of blocks away. Once the war started,
everyone worried about everyone else. Neighbors knocked on our door: ‘Do you
know what to do? Do you have what you need?’ One man told my father, ‘You’re
crazy. There’s going to be a war. You have four children. Leave!’ He looked at my
father like he was out of his mind. “In general, the people in Bnei Brak did
not know what to make of us. It was very strange to them for an American family
to come for just a year.
“It’s funny,” says Mrs. Grossman.
“In retrospect, now that I am a mother and grandmother, I realize I would
probably be panic stricken in that situation. Yet I don’t remember my parents
being afraid. With most of the men gone, including my father’s students, he
helped wherever he could. Hardly anyone had a car back then; we had a white
Chevy, and my father used it to transport people where they wanted to go and
volunteered to deliver mail for the post office.”
In America
While the Jews in Israel waited in dread for the inevitable, back
in the United States, Jews davened and cried and collected money.
“Chana” was a student at Stern
College. She says, “A friend came to my dorm room very early in the morning,
crying and shaking. She said, ‘War broke out in Israel. We have to say tehilim.’ Rabbi Rafael Weinberg, who
taught Jewish history, called an assembly in the auditorium and told us what
was going on, and we said tehilim.
Then we girls went collecting in Manhattan. We went to office buildings and all
kinds of businesses. I went to Times Square. I had never been there before.
People were standing watching the electronic billboard, and it said that Israel
was winning the war. I was five-feet-two; I don’t know what possessed me, but I
walked up to a very tall man and said, ‘I’m collecting for the war in Israel.’
He pulled himself up to his over-six-foot height and declared, ‘I am an Arab!’
and walked away.”
* * *
Aryeh Gross, who
was born in Israel and lived many years in Baltimore, says, “I was discharged
from my three-year military service in Israel a little over a year before the
war and came back to study in the U.S.A. During the days before the outbreak of
the war, while the country was physically under siege, I got a call from the
Israeli military counsel in New York. They asked if I would be ready to
return to fight. I answered yes. They were looking for armored personnel to be
flown immediately to Israel. I was infantry, and I was told that they would
get back to me within a few days. Well, the war did not last more than a few
days.”
* * *
Rabbi Ivan Lerner
recalls, “During the war, I attended a huge prayer rally in Washington with the
beautiful girl I was engaged to marry, Arleeta. We were heartened and inspired
to see every kind of Jew, from virtually every denomination and affiliation,
young and old, joining with unaffiliated Jews to stand as one k’ish echad b’lev echad (like one person
with one heart) for Israel. I don’t ever remember a time since then that I’ve
experienced that kind of unity among Jews. I truly believe that the feelings of
solidarity and achdus (unity),
combined with the prayers of Jews in Israel and throughout the world,
contributed to G-d’s mercy and the fulfillment of His promise in the Torah
reading from the week preceding the war from Vayikra 26:6-9: ‘I will provide
peace in the land; you will lie down and none will frighten you. I will cause
beasts to withdraw and the sword will not cross your land. You will pursue your
enemies, and they will fall before you by the sword. Five will pursue one
hundred, and one hundred will chase ten thousand, and your enemies will fall
before you by your sword.”
* *
*
“I was a junior in YU in ’67,”
says Rabbi Levene. “It was before finals, and members of Beitar came around
saying, there’s going to be a war in Israel; we need volunteers. Having grown
up knowing the freedom fighters, I said to myself, ‘This is one I’m not going
to miss.’ My passport was expired, and it took a few weeks to get another one. But
the Beitar guys told me that near the Rockefeller Center, there was a place
where you could get one the same day. ‘Just don’t say you’re going to Israel,’ they
advised. ‘Wear a baseball cap and say you’re going to England.’”
Benji did as he was told, but the
guy at the counter was not buying it. “He was suspicious and asked me several
times, ‘Where do you really want to go?’
Finally, I figured he knew already, so I told him I want to go to Israel. So
the man said, ‘Get out of line, and go into that office.” I figured I blew it.
When the man entered the office later, he asked once again, “Where do you really want to go.” When I told him
again, he said, ‘I have cousin in Tel Aviv; can you bring a package for me?’
“I left with a group of other boys
the night before the war. When we got to Orly in Paris they told us the war
broke out. Some of the guys went back. I and a couple of others said, ‘We’re
going no matter what.’ We flew to Greece and spent a day there. Then four
Mirage jets brought us to Israel. The airport was totally blacked out; they gave
us flashlights to find our suitcases. We were taken to an old age home in
Herziliya. The next day, they sent us out to kibbutzim. I had a black kippa, so
they sent me to kibbutz Chofetz Chaim of the Poalei Agudat Yisrael. From there,
I got to my grandfather in Yerushalayim.”
“The Temple Mount
Is in our Hands”!
“The day after the Washington rally,”
Rabbi Lerner says, “news arrived that
Israel had destroyed the combined Arab air forces, and that Israeli tanks and
infantry were advancing south, east, and north. Then the stunning news arrived:
The Old City and the Temple Mount were now in Jewish hands! Grateful Jews
worldwide gathered together offering prayers of thanksgiving. It was clear to
even the most distant Jews that G-d had performed open miracles for His
children. Feelings of ecstasy engulfed the Jewish world. The non-Jews stood in
wonder and disbelief while the UN called for Israel to withdraw and return to
its pre-war borders. Some things never change!”
* * *
Lieba Brown says,
“I heard General Motta Gur on the radio shouting, ‘Har Habayit beyadeinu (The Temple Mount is in our hands).’ I got the shivers. I heard it again
and again as the broadcasters kept replaying it all day.”
* * *
Rabbi Levene says, “On Thursday,
the war was still going on. On Friday, the army came to bring my grandfather to
the Kotel before they opened it up to the public. My grandfather said,
‘Binyamin, du velst cumim mit mere
(you will come with me).’ A car took us through the Mandelbaum gate, and we came
into the Old City onto a little, little street. You couldn’t see the Wall;
there were houses all the way up to it. (A week later, they knocked the houses
down so throngs could come on Shavuos.)
“My grandfather wanted to make a kriah, rend his garment, because he
hadn’t been to the Kotel since 1948, but he couldn’t do it. I had a pocket
knife and made a cut for him. He tore his garment and made a Shehechiyanu. He was crying and started
running down this alleyway. He was 80 years old. I was 20 years old, and I tried
to keep up with him. And at the end of the alley was the Kotel. He started
kissing the stones, his hat fell off, and he fell. Soldiers recognized him and came
running to help him get up.
“What was amazing to me was that
we had two pictures in our living room in Jersey City: one of my grandfather,
the tzadik of Yerushalaym, and one of
the ‘Koisel.’ As a child, when I had a test the next day, I used to talk to the
two pictures. So, here I am running after my grandfather, and the two pictures
are in front of me: my grandfather and the Kotel, only they’re live! It was
like a dream.
“Then we went to Kever Rochel,” Rabbi
Levene continues, “and these soldiers there were crying. My grandfather said, ‘Only
by a real mother can we cry like that.’ What was most amazing to me was that, even
though he was so excited, and everyone was so euphoric and thought Mashiach was
coming, yet my grandfather was closed in on himself. I asked him why. He said, ‘When
Avraham fought the kings to save Lot, after he won, it says that Hashem came to
Avraham in a vision, and Hashem says, “Don’t be afraid, Avraham, I am a shield
for you; your reward is very great.” Isn’t it odd that after the battle, after
the great victory, Hashem said, “I am a shield for you”? What does it mean?’ My
grandfather answered, ‘Even though the victory was very great, the “kings” will
never allow us to keep that victory; they will do everything to take it away. Everyone
is so happy, but I am worried. I don’t think the battle is over. The nations of
the world will not let us keep it.’”
* * *
Shavuos that year fell six days
after the liberation of Yerushalayim, and the army opened the Old City to the
Israeli public. From 4 a.m. in the morning until late at night, 200,000 Jews
streamed through the streets to the Kotel.
“After the war, we drove to
Yerushalayim and made it to the Kotel,” says Mrs. Grossman. “We walked through
the Old City, and I saw the Arabs waving white flags out of their windows. When
we got to the Kotel, I didn’t appreciate what it meant; I was only six years
old. I saw my brother crying against the Wall. I could not understand why he
was crying. We were supposed to be happy.
“My father went to
Kever Rochel. A few of his students had been sent to war, and he worried about
them. All of a sudden he recognized a student among the soldiers at Kever
Rochel. They hugged each other like long lost friends. My father was so happy
he was alive. He had grown from a boy into a man. This student had been failing
my father’s course, but my father told him on the spot: ‘You’re getting an A!’”
*
* *
Rebbetzin Kelemer says, “I
remember the first day that citizens were allowed to go to the Kotel. Masses of
people were walking; it was like a dream. As much as we had davened, did we
ever feel it would come true? But it was a dream come true. After the war,
everyone was in a state of euphoria. Everyone had a miracle. You felt it in the
air, whether frum or not frum. I was walking on Rechov Emek Refaim
to our apartment. Night comes quickly in Yerushalayim. It was dark. All of
sudden, I heard someone behind me; it was a man on a bicycle with a long white
beard – not something you see in Yerushalayim. He stopped us and said, in Yiddish,
‘Do we understand the miracles within the miracles?’ When I turned around
again, and he wasn’t there! I always tell my children it was Eliyahu Hanavi.”
* * *
Rebbetzin Lea Feldman remembers,
“There was a feeling of tremendous achdus,
unity. People forgot about boundaries; everybody felt that your goral (fate) is my goral; your happiness is my happiness. Everyone felt that something
very great had happened, that this was a great miracle, even those who didn’t
believe in G-d! Some of the things didn’t even depend on the army – like how
the Egyptians ran away, leaving their shoes and all their equipment in the
desert sands. It was something like what happened by Yam Suf during yetzias Mitzrayim.
“Lots of people at that time were chozer b’teshuva,” Rebbetzin Feldman
continues. “Everyone felt that the victory was not accomplished through the
normal derech hateva (natural means).
This feeling lasted quite a while. But, as always, people eventually forgot
about the miracles and went back to normal life: fighting with each other, etc.
But for a few weeks, the euphoria was unbelievable. When we went to the Kotel,
we all cried. We were like dreamers, just as it says in Tehilim: ‘Hayinu kecholmim.’ That was the beauty of the Six Day
War. It is chaval (a shame) that it
didn’t continue. If we had all believed that this was yad Hashem, maybe Mashiach could have come.”
* * *
Rabbi Lerner sums it up: “As I
recall the miracles of the Six Day war and the feelings of despondency and
hopelessness that many Jews were then experiencing, I can’t help but think of
the precarious time in which we are now living. The Torah reminds us that
Israel’s trials and tribulations are about the behavior and the merit of the
Jews. It seems to me that we Jews must once again unite in prayer, pride and
solidarity. Ahavas Yisrael (love for
our fellow Jews) must be paramount. If we Jews can possess a “lev echad” (one heart), we can prevail
upon our Father in heaven to remember us for good.”
Thanks to Rabbi Efrem Goldberg’s “Behind
the Bima” for Rabbi Benji Levene quotes.
