Flashpoint

"For The Sake of Jerusalem..."

by Rabbi Yaakov Spivak

The crowd that showed up in front of the Israeli Consulate in Manhattan yesterday did so in inclement weather. Comfort was the last thing on their minds. What truly concerned them was the Obama Administration’s attempt to turn Jerusalem into a partitioned ghetto, something that carries with it horrid memories for Jews.

Let me share with you my words to those people who stood in the rain :

“President Obama, we’re here today to tell you something. In Warsaw, they told Jews where we could build, in Lodz they told Jews where we could build, in Paris they told Jews where we could build. You will never tell us where to build in Jerusalem. We are home and Israel is our country. You are not our landlord and we are neither a vassal state nor a banana republic. Our mandate to be here today is none other than our holy Tanach, our Bible which says, ‘For the sake of Zion I will not be silent and for the sake of Jerusalem I will not be quiet.”