Tag Archives: Jerusalem

Democratic Politicians Readying for Jerusalem’s Jews To Get 20 Years in Prison

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Imagine three American Jews participating in their cultural heritage: one American Jew buys an apartment in Jerusalem’s Old City, and hires an Israeli contractor to repair the roof and renovate the kitchen. Another American contributes to archaeological excavations uncovering ancient Jewish Jerusalem, say in Ir David. A third donates to rebuilding a synagogue destroyed by the Jordanians in 1948.

Rebuilding the Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem, which was destroyed by the Jordanian army when it illegally seized the city in 1949 (photo: First One Through 2023)

Under legislation sponsored by 54 congressional Democrats, each may face federal prosecution, a million-dollar fine or even 20 years in prison.

Congressman Joaquin Castro’s Stop the Settlements Act, H.R. 10642, reaches far beyond stopping new Israeli housing construction in disputed territories. It authorizes sanctions against foreign persons involved in the financing, planning, construction, expansion or maintenance of Israeli settlements or outposts, subject to certain determinations.

This is not legislation targeting building a new neighborhood in the middle of the West Bank. It targets even maintaining what already exists, even in cities with thousands of years of Jewish history and presence. Democrats in Congress have chosen language broad enough to raise questions about the ordinary upkeep of Jewish communities.

The bill repeatedly refers to “settlements” in the “West Bank and Gaza.” It never explicitly states whether eastern Jerusalem including the Old City is included.

Palestinians claim “East Jerusalem,” part of a divided city that existed as a result of the 1948-9 war, which lasted for 18 years until 1967, as part of their future state. Israel considers united Jerusalem its capital, including the Old City.

Congress knows these competing positions. Congress knows that the Jewish Quarter contains homes and synagogues predating Israel’s establishment in 1948. Yet 54 Democrats have attached their names to legislation without clarifying whether these historic Jewish neighborhoods fall within its reach. Deliberately.

Consider the consequences. A future Democratic president may decide to state that “East Jerusalem” actually exists and that it is part of the West Bank. The activities described above become a crime.

An American buys an apartment in the Jewish Quarter, where Jews lived for centuries before Jordan expelled its Jewish residents in 1948. He hires an Israeli company to restore the property. If an American administration classifies the Old City as a settlement (at least, any location where a Jew buys land) and sanctions that company for its broader construction or maintenance activities, paying the contractor could become a federal offense.

Now consider Ir David, the City of David, where archaeological excavations uncover the streets, structures and artifacts of ancient Jerusalem. An American donor might contribute money to uncover archaeological remains. But if the recipient organization were sanctioned, that donation could become prohibited.

Ir David excavations unearthing Jerusalem at the time of the Second Temple. (photo: First One Through July 2024)

The ramification would be to halt Jews from connecting to their past and only enable Arabs to excavate or destroy Jewish history.

Then there is Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue. Built in 1877 in Jerusalem’s Jewish Quarter, the synagogue was destroyed during Jordan’s conquest of the Old City in 1948. Its reconstruction restores a Jewish house of worship that existed generations before Israel recaptured the Old City in 1967.

Could the organization rebuilding it be sanctioned for construction or maintenance in territory an administration considers a settlement? In addition to being obtuse about Jerusalem, the bill contains no express exemption for historic synagogues, religious restoration or Jewish institutions predating 1948.

Domes of the Tiferet Yisrael (top center) and Hurva Synagogues (above right) return to the Old City skyline (photo: First One Through November 2025)

The legislation invokes the International Emergency Economic Powers Act. Willful violations of applicable prohibitions can carry criminal fines of up to $1 million and imprisonment for up to 20 years. Civil penalties may apply even without criminal intent.

If an administration designates locations in Jerusalem’s Old City, an American could potentially be barred from ordering a handmade menorah or other merchandise produced there for shipment to the United States.

Castro says his legislation is intended to stop settlement expansion and Palestinian dispossession. Yet its language raises questions about the Old City of Jerusalem, the maintenance of existing homes, archaeological preservation, religious reconstruction and ordinary commercial activity.

Despite the language, the self-declared “pro-Israel” group J Street has endorsed it.

Fifty-four Democrats have attached their names to legislation that could reach into the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem. And the list of Democratic co-sponsors and anti-Israel alt-left Jewish groups supporting it continues to grow.

The Temple Mount Status Quo Is Being Rewritten

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The Palestinian Authority has declared the Temple Mount — the holiest site in Judaism — the “exclusive right of Muslims.”

That is not the historic status quo. It is an attempt to rewrite it.

After Israel took control of Jerusalem’s Old City in 1967, day-to-day religious administration of the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif remained with the Islamic Waqf, while Israel retained responsibility for security and substantial control over access. The Waqf permitted Muslims to pray on the Mount, while non-Muslims could visit, prayer was restricted.

The arrangement governed administration, access and worship. It did not declare the Temple Mount the exclusive possession or religious entitlement of Muslims.

The Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Governorate crossed that line explicitly on September 6. It condemned Jews conducting “Talmudic rituals and prayers” as attempts to “alter its religious character,” declared the entire 144-dunam compound the “exclusive right of Muslims” and warned against changing its “identity.”

Those words matter.

Waqf administration is one thing. Restrictions on Jewish prayer are another. Declaring the site itself the “exclusive right” of Muslims is something else entirely.

The status quo regulates what Jews may do there. It never determined what the place is.

The First and Second Jewish Temples stood on the Temple Mount. Jewish prayer has faced Jerusalem for millennia. Jewish liturgy, mourning and hopes for redemption are bound to it. Many observant Jews have historically declined to walk upon portions of the Mount precisely because they consider the ground too holy to enter without the required ritual purity.

For some Jews, not ascending is itself an expression of the Mount’s extraordinary Jewish sanctity.

That makes the new language especially provocative. Jews visiting Judaism’s holiest place become “settlers” conducting “incursions.” Jewish prayer becomes threatening “Talmudic rituals.” A restriction accepted to preserve religious peace is transformed into evidence that Jewish religious expression does not belong there at all.

Jewish restraint was supposed to preserve coexistence. It cannot become a permission slip for Jewish erasure.

The international reaction sharpens that dynamic. The United Nations itself has called upon the parties to refrain from “provocative actions, incitement and inflammatory rhetoric,” especially in places of “religious and cultural sensitivity.” In the very next paragraph, it demanded that Jerusalem’s historic status quo be respected “in word and practice” and urged “all sides” to halt provocations and incitement at the holy sites.

By the UN’s own standard, words can threaten the status quo. Yet when an official Palestinian governmental authority declares Judaism’s holiest site the “exclusive right of Muslims,” it is greeted with a silent nod of approval.

And this occurs as the anti-Israel horde discusses so-called “Jewish supremacy.” Zohran Mamdani has attacked privileging one religion over another (meaning Jews over Muslims). Hasan Piker denounces “ethnoreligious supremacist values.” At the Jewish Temple Mount, the principle stripped of abstraction: one religion claiming exclusive entitlement to the holiest site of another.

And that raises a more fundamental question about the status quo itself.

Perhaps placing religious administration of a multi-faith holy site exclusively in the hands of one of the religions claiming it was always structurally unstable.

The Waqf is not a neutral administrator. It is an Islamic religious institution representing one faith at a site sacred to several. That arrangement can function while custodianship means administration. It becomes difficult to justify when the authority entrusted with the site participates in or endorses a doctrine that denies another faith any legitimate claim to it.

The test should be remarkably simple: Can the authorities administering the Temple Mount state unambiguously that it is Judaism’s holiest site?

Acknowledging that fact surrenders nothing about Islam’s attachment to Al-Aqsa. But an administrator that cannot acknowledge the most basic religious identity of the people whose holiest site it administers has a profound conflict with the responsibilities of custodianship.

If the Waqf and Jordan cannot pass that test, their fitness to exercise exclusive administration should be questioned.

The logical alternative is administration by a political authority obligated to protect multiple religions rather than a religious authority representing one of them. Israel already bears responsibility for security at the compound and exercises substantial control over access. Any new arrangement would have to fully protect Muslim worship and Islamic holy places while recognizing rather than suppressing the religious attachments of others.

The status quo was built on the assumption that Islamic administration could coexist with Jewish restraint. The assertion of “Muslim exclusivity” is breaking that bargain.

If the Waqf cannot acknowledge Judaism at Judaism’s holiest site, it should no longer be entrusted to administer it.

Related:

US Embassy In Israel Only Invites Muslims To US To Study (September 2023)

Will This Be the Last Fast of Tisha B’Av?

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For nearly 2,000 years, Jews have fasted on Tisha B’Av to mourn the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the loss of Jewish sovereignty, exile from Jerusalem, and a long chain of national tragedies.

Jewish tradition also teaches that the fast will not last forever. The prophet Zechariah envisioned a day when the fasts commemorating Jerusalem’s destruction would become days of “joy and gladness and cheerful festivals.” Many rabbis have understood that era to arrive with the rebuilding of the Temple.

No one knows when that day will come.

Yet the last century has witnessed changes that generations of Jews scarcely dared imagine.

The Jewish people returned to their ancestral homeland. The State of Israel was reborn (1948). Jerusalem was reunited under Jewish sovereignty (1967). For the first time in nearly two thousand years, Israel is home to the world’s largest Jewish population (2012).

Israel has also become increasingly accepted by its Arab and Muslim neighbors, establishing diplomatic relations with Egypt (1979), Jordan (1994), the United Arab Emirates (2020), Bahrain (2020), Morocco (2020), Sudan (2020, pending implementation), and Kosovo (2021). Meanwhile, the United States (2018), Guatemala (2018), Honduras (2021), Kosovo (2021), Papua New Guinea (2023), Paraguay (2024), and Fiji (2024) have moved their embassies to Jerusalem, while other countries (Slovenia and Nauru) are considering doing the same.

Last year (2025), more than 75,000 Jews ascended the Temple Mount – a modern record that would have been unimaginable only a generation ago.

The Golden Gate in Jerusalem’s Old City exterior wall (photo: First One through)

The Temple remains unbuilt and Tisha B’Av remains a day of mourning.

But it does raise a question that previous generations could scarcely have imagined asking: Will this be the last Tisha B’Av fast?

Perhaps Jews a century from now will still be asking the same question. Or perhaps they will look back and realize that ours was among the last generations to mourn the destruction rather than celebrate the restoration.

For almost two thousand years, that possibility seemed unimaginable. Today, it no longer does.

The Vessels We Carry

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There is something profoundly human about gathering related things into a single vessel.

We do it with photo albums, where a lifetime of moments is gathered into one book. We do it with museums, where centuries of artifacts are brought together under one roof.

The Jewish calendar does the same with time.

Tisha B’Av is not merely the anniversary of the destruction of the First and Second Temples. Over centuries it became the vessel into which Jewish history poured its sorrows – from the destruction of the Temples to the expulsions from England and Spain, to catastrophes that culminated in the Holocaust. Generations found in Tisha B’Av a place large enough to hold them all.

The Nuremberg Chronicle showing the destruction of Jerusalem

The Temple Mount in Jerusalem became another vessel. Of place.

For much of history, Jerusalem was known as the city of the Jewish Temple. But over time it gathered far more meaning. It became the location of the near sacrifice of Isaac, the destination of pilgrimage, the focus of exile, and the direction toward which Jews have prayed for thousands of years.

Other faiths also poured meaning into Jerusalem. Christians revere it as the place of Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. Muslims honor it as the destination of Muhammad’s Night Journey. Layer upon layer, century upon century, Jerusalem became more than a city. It became a vessel carrying humanity’s deepest convictions, hopes, and conflicts.

Temple Mount at dawn (photo: First One Through)

And then there is a unique people.

The Jewish people became a vessel unlike any other. Across thousands of years they carried covenant, exile, learning, persecution, survival, and hope. They preserved ancient language, sacred texts, melodies, customs, and memory across continents and generations. They became the vessel through which memory survived when kingdoms fell, empires vanished, and even the Temple itself lay in ruins.

Every vessel carries something. Some carry water. Some carry treasure. Some carry ashes. The greatest vessels carry what cannot be touched: memory, identity, covenant, and hope.

And that is what the Jewish people, Jerusalem, and Tisha B’Av have become. Three vessels in one elaborate story.

Every generation poured something more into those vessels: not only grief, but hope.

Within them rests the hope captured in the Israeli national anthem, Hatikvah: that the Jewish people will live as a free people in their own land, with Jerusalem at its heart.

And on Tisha B’Av in particular, the vessel holds one additional hope above all others: the rebuilding of the Beit HaMikdash. Not because Jews long merely for stones and walls, but because it represents the restoration of wholeness – between God and humanity, a people and their land, memory and redemption.

Every Tisha B’Av, Jews gather into one day the grief of centuries, turn toward one city, and renew one hope. As they do, they recognize that this is more than a story of three fused vessels. It is that together they carry one enduring promise.

Every Jewish Holiday Leads Back to Jerusalem

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For many people, Jewish holidays are family traditions: apples and honey on Rosh Hashanah, a Passover Seder, Hanukkah candles, or a sukkah in the backyard. Yet beneath these customs lies the deeper reality that every major Jewish holiday is connected in some way to the Temple in Jerusalem.

The Temple was not simply a house of worship. It was the spiritual, national, and legal center of Jewish life. Pilgrimages, sacrifices, priestly service, national assemblies, and the calendar itself revolved around Jerusalem. Even after the Temple’s destruction in 70CE, the holidays preserved its memory and continue to point toward it.

Rosh Hashanah marks the Jewish New Year and the sounding of the shofar. In Temple times, witnesses testified before the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem to establish the new month, and the shofar echoed through the Temple courts. Today, Jews still pray that God’s kingship will once again be recognized from Zion.

Yom Kippur is inseparable from the Temple. The High Priest entered the Holy of Holies only once a year to seek atonement for the nation. Modern synagogue services painstakingly recount the Temple ritual, preserving the memory of the day’s most sacred service.

Sukkot was one of the three pilgrimage festivals when Jews ascended to Jerusalem. The Temple hosted the joyous water-drawing ceremony (Simchat Beit HaShoeva), accompanied by music, dancing, and water libations on the altar. Rabbinic tradition describes it as one of the greatest celebrations ever witnessed.

Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah conclude the festival cycle begun at the Temple with Sukkot. While Simchat Torah developed later, it celebrates the Torah that was publicly taught and read in Jerusalem.

“Ki mitzion tetze torah” (כִּי מִצִּיּוֹן תֵּצֵא תוֹרָה). “For instruction shall come forth from Zion, The word of God from Jerusalem.” – Isaiah (Chapter 2, Verse 3)

Hanukkah commemorates the rededication of the Second Temple after it was reclaimed from the Seleucid Greeks. Every candle recalls the restoration of Jewish worship in Jerusalem.

Tu BiShvat, the New Year for Trees, determined agricultural laws whose tithes and first fruits were ultimately brought to the Temple.

Purim is the only holiday without a direct Temple ritual, yet its story ensured the survival of the Jewish people who would rebuild and worship in the Second Temple. Jerusalem itself celebrates Purim a day later, preserving its ancient status as a walled city.

Passover was the greatest pilgrimage festival. Hundreds of thousands ascended to Jerusalem to offer the Passover sacrifice before gathering in homes throughout the city for the Seder. Even today Jews conclude the Seder with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

Tens of thousands of Jews at the Kotel Plaza in the Old City of Jerusalem during Passover, as they cannot ascend to the Temple Mount today

Shavuot celebrated the first fruits brought to the Temple in elaborate processions from across the Land of Israel. Farmers entered Jerusalem carrying decorated baskets while choirs sang Psalms of thanksgiving.

Tisha B’Av mourns above all the destruction of both the First and Second Temples. It is the day on which Jews sit on the floor, recite Lamentations, and remember the loss of Jerusalem’s spiritual heart.

Even holidays with no formal Temple ceremony ultimately orbit Jerusalem. They celebrate the survival of the Jewish people, the covenant, the Land of Israel, and the hope of restoration.

Jerusalem is not merely Judaism’s holiest city; it is the organizing principle of the Jewish calendar itself. The cycle of holidays begins and ends with memories of Temple worship, pilgrimages, offerings, repentance, thanksgiving, and national gathering in one place.

For centuries Jews prayed facing Jerusalem, broke a glass at weddings to remember its destruction, left part of a home unfinished in mourning, and ended the Passover Seder and Yom Kippur with the same aspiration: “Next year in Jerusalem.”

The Jewish calendar is more than a record of sacred time. It is a map whose destination is Jerusalem, carrying the memory of the Temple from one generation to the next.

Related articles:

The Prayer That Never Left Jerusalem (May 2026)

Stop With the Hanukkah Miracle and Declare the Hanukkah MESSAGE (December 2025)

Eight Attestations On Jerusalem (December 2021)

When Words Erase a People

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The United Nations is right about one thing.

Words matter.

This week, the UN will commemorate the genocide at Srebrenica under the theme “From Words to Violence.“ The lesson is that language is never merely language. The words societies choose shape how they understand people, history, and ultimately what actions become acceptable.

That lesson should not stop with Srebrenica.

Over the past month, another campaign of words has accelerated – not directly aimed at the destruction of lives, but at the erasure of history.

A month ago, I wrote about the battle over Solomon’s Pools. At the time, the concern was that one of Judaism’s great archaeological treasures was being detached from the people who built it.

Today, the campaign has moved far beyond stewardship.

The Palestinian Authority’s official news agency, WAFA, now repeatedly describes Solomon’s Pools as “Palestinian archaeological and heritage sites,” “Palestinian cultural heritage,” and “an integral part of the Palestinian people’s national identity.” It accuses Israel of attempting to erase the site’s Palestinian identity while announcing plans to seek UNESCO protection for that very narrative.

This is historical revisionism.

For more than two thousand years, Solomon’s Pools have been recognized as part of the ancient water system that supplied Jerusalem and the Second Temple. Yet the new narrative increasingly erases that Jewish history while attempting to replace it with a Palestinian Arab one.

That is how historical erasure begins, with words.

It continues with cultural appropriation – taking another civilization’s achievements and presenting them as one’s own. A site built to sustain Jewish Jerusalem is no longer described as part of Jewish civilization, but as an expression of “Palestinian national identity.”

Solomon’s Pools is not an isolated example.

Over the years, Palestinian rhetoric has increasingly described biblical figures and ancient Jewish sites through a Palestinian national lens.

Individually these statements may appear rhetorical. Collectively they reveal a sustained and malicious effort to replace one people’s historical memory with another’s national story.

When a people’s documented history is systematically erased, it reveals a bigotry directed not only against living Jews but against Jewish civilization itself. It reflects national chauvinism, elevating one national identity by absorbing the achievements of another.

And it does this with particular purpose: to strip Jews of their indigeneity in their holy land, to recast them as interlopers and “European settler colonizers” which is deeply infused with a righteous sense of xenophobia.

That is why UNESCO’s role matters.

An organization created to preserve humanity’s cultural heritage should never become an instrument of historical revisionism. If it legitimizes narratives that obscure the well-documented Jewish origins of sites like Solomon’s Pools, it is no longer merely protecting monuments. It is helping redefine what future generations believe those monuments represent.

Turkish media TRT lies to the world that Solomon’s Pools are a 6,000 year-old Canaanite site, as Palestinian Arabs have attempted to recast themselves as ancient Canaanites to pre-date the Jewish forefather Abraham

The danger is larger than a single archaeological site. Words are attempting to erase Jewish history and heritage throughout the Jewish homeland.

The United Nations is correct: words can lead to terrible consequences.

And these words and actions have a particularly dangerous strain of antisemitism. It does not involve attacking Jews physically, which Palestinian Arabs have done repeatedly at scale. It is an insidious attempt to get the world to endorse a narrative that Jews are foreigners in the land to frame a future without the Jewish State. This is the destruction and genocide that emerges from language.

When international institutions lend their authority to that process, they cease to be guardians of history and become participants in its erasure.

A Story At The Jaffa Gate

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An AI Amalgam Story.

Outside the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, the day unfolds with layers of complexity. The stone walls, ancient and storied, bear witness to the lives that pass through.

On this morning, an Arab man stands near the portal entrance, his posture slumped, eyes lowered. His expression speaks of a quiet sorrow—perhaps personal, perhaps born of circumstances beyond his control.

Picture amalgam of four different scenes, presenting a view of the entry portal of the Jaffa Gate in Jerusalem, Israel (by First One Through)

Meanwhile, just feet away, an Orthodox Jewish man, dressed in traditional black attire, moves with purpose. He hurries toward his daily prayers at the Kotel, following a routine as old as the stones beneath his feet. The rhythm of Jerusalem’s life, with its sacred moments, continues without pause.

Standing between them is a medic from Magen David Adom. His presence is a testament to the tension that often simmers beneath the surface of the city. He watches both men—attentive, calm, ready to act if needed. His role is not in the realm of politics or faith but in the safeguarding of human life.

This moment encapsulates the juxtaposition of daily routines—spiritual devotion, personal struggle, and the ever-present readiness to heal. In Jerusalem, where layers of history meet contemporary reality, even the quietest scene can tell a deeper story.

Completing Jerusalem

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In July 1980, the Knesset passed the Basic Law: Jerusalem, Capital of Israel. Its opening declaration remains one of the clearest statements of Zionist purpose ever enacted by the State of Israel:

“Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.”

The law settled a question that had haunted Jewish history for centuries. Jerusalem would never again be divided by barbed wire, minefields, and sniper positions. The city reunited in 1967 would remain the political and spiritual heart of the Jewish state.

Forty-six years later, it is worth asking a simple question:

What does “united” mean?

The answer cannot be limited to municipal boundaries. It cannot be measured solely by roads, tax collection, or police jurisdiction. A united city is ultimately a civic reality. It is a city whose residents share a common framework of governance and belonging.

Image of man walking through Herod’s Gate in Old City of Jerusalem (FirstOneThrough with AI)

When Israel reunited Jerusalem in 1967, the decision to grant permanent residency rather than citizenship to the Arab residents made practical sense. The future of the broader Arab-Israeli conflict remained uncertain, and the status of Jerusalem itself was still contested internationally.

But those residents’ children are no longer children.

An Arab born in eastern Jerusalem in 1981 is now in his mid-forties. He has spent his entire life under Israeli administration. He attended schools in Jerusalem, received healthcare through Israeli institutions, worked in Jerusalem businesses, and raised a family in Jerusalem. For an entire generation born after the Jerusalem Law, the temporary arrangement has become a permanent condition.

An Arab born in Nazareth in 1981 became an Israeli citizen at birth. An Arab born in Jerusalem in 1981 generally remained a permanent resident. Both have lived under Israeli sovereignty their entire lives. One votes in national elections while the other does not.

If Jerusalem is truly united, how should that distinction be understood nearly half a century after the Basic Law was enacted?

The question is no longer theoretical. In recent years, thousands of eastern Jerusalem Arabs have applied for Israeli citizenship, reflecting a significant shift from earlier decades. The demand exists. What many applicants encounter instead is a cumbersome process that can stretch for years.

The issue has taken on added significance since October 7.

Hamas named its attack the “Al-Aqsa Flood” because it sought to seize sovereignty in Jerusalem. For decades, Hamas and other rejectionist movements have portrayed Jerusalem as a city temporarily under Jewish control and awaiting liberation.

A confident nation answers such claims by strengthening the institutions of sovereignty.

The ramifications would extend far beyond voting rights in Israel.

The Palestinian Authority presents “East Jerusalem” as the capital of a future Palestinian state. International organizations continue to describe “East Jerusalem” as occupied territory, while critics accuse Israel of apartheid and permanent disenfranchisement.

Yet what would happen if large numbers of Arabs born in Jerusalem after 1980 chose Israeli citizenship?

Hamas would struggle to explain why residents supposedly awaiting liberation had instead chosen participation in Israeli democracy. The Palestinian Authority would find it difficult to claim as its constituency citizens voting in Israeli elections. International institutions would confront a reality more complicated than diplomatic formulas unchanged since 1967. Critics would have to reconcile accusations of apartheid with a policy that expands citizenship and voting rights.

Jerusalem also offers a practical test for Israel’s broader sovereignty debate. Politicians who advocate annexing parts or all of Judea and Samaria should first explain their position regarding Arabs born after 1980 in Israel’s declared and united capital. If no consensus exists in Jerusalem, it is difficult to imagine one elsewhere.

Every party seeking to govern Israel should therefore answer a simple question: Do you support an expedited path to citizenship for Arabs born in eastern Jerusalem after the passage of the Jerusalem Law?

Such a program could include security screening, an oath of loyalty to the State of Israel and its laws, and a streamlined administrative process. Those who prefer permanent residency could retain it. Those seeking citizenship would no longer spend years navigating bureaucratic obstacles.

Jerusalem was reunited in 1967 and anchored in law in 1980. As the fiftieth anniversary of the Jerusalem Law approaches, Israelis should decide whether the next step is to complete the city’s civic integration.

The question is larger than citizenship. It is about the meaning of a united Jerusalem and the confidence of a sovereign nation in its eternal capital.

Jerusalem Awakens

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Sunrise on the Mount of Olives facing the Temple Mount is one of Jerusalem’s great experiences.

Because the sun rises from behind the mountain, the first light does not strike the Temple Mount itself. Instead, it touches the higher elevations to the west. For a few moments, the city reveals an unexpected truth: despite its name, the Temple Mount sits lower than much of the surrounding Old City.

One by one, Jerusalem awakens.

The first rays illuminate the new tall buildings in the west and slowly reach the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and domes of the Hurva Synagogue and the newly rebuilt Tiferet Israel Synagogue in the Old City. Then the golden Dome of the Rock catches the morning light. Soon after, the ancient walls of Jerusalem glow softly, followed by the gray dome of Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Jerusalem at dawn, June 2026 (photo: First One Through)

The city appears to come alive in stages.

There is something fitting in that. The most famous places in the city do not receive the first light. The sun touches distant rooftops and forgotten hills before reaching the mount that has occupied the prayers of generations. Jerusalem seems to offer a quiet reminder that holiness is often revealed gradually, not all at once.

You might imagine crowds gathering on the stone promenade built for precisely this view. Even on a cool, windy morning, one would expect visitors eager to witness the sunrise over one of the most consequential pieces of land on earth.

Yet there were surprisingly few people.

A single bus of Asian tourists arrived to take photographs. Some stared in awe. Some stretched. Some danced gently to greet the morning.

Jerusalem at dawn, June 2026 (photo: First One Through)

But they were there.

Most had traveled thousands of miles to reach this spot. They all stood facing the same holy sites whether or not they shared any of the three monotheistic faiths, waiting for the same sun. The same moment of inspiration.

The quiet was perhaps the most surprising part. At an hour when millions of people around the world were asleep, one of the holiest and most contested places on earth belonged to a few dozen strangers sharing a sunrise. No speeches. No arguments. No headlines. Just the wind, the light, the sound of roosters, and a city slowly waking beneath them.

Before them stood the Temple Mount, the focus of Jewish longing for nearly two thousand years. Below them stretched the ancient cemetery of the Mount of Olives, where generations of Jews chose to be buried facing Jerusalem, believing they would be among the first to witness redemption. Around them stood a city sacred to billions, where history, faith, conquest, destruction, and renewal are layered one upon another in stone.

Jerusalem at dawn, June 2026 (photo: First One Through)

As the sunlight slowly spread across the city, it became clear why people return here again and again. Jerusalem does not reveal herself all at once. Like the sunrise itself, she emerges gradually – first one dome, then another, one wall, one hilltop, one memory at a time.

As I turned to leave, the city was waking to another day. Yet for a brief hour on the Mount of Olives, surrounded by centuries of Jewish memory and facing the skyline of Jerusalem, the city felt less like a place on a map and more like a conversation between heaven and earth, carried on in stone and sunlight for thousands of years.

The Prayer That Never Left Jerusalem

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In 1979, archaeologists excavating a burial cave at Ketef Hinnom, on a hillside overlooking the Old City walls of Jerusalem, discovered two tiny silver scrolls. When carefully unrolled, they revealed words that Jews still recite today.

Ketef Hinnom scrolls

The scrolls, engraved more than 2,600 years ago, contain the priestly blessing from Parshat Naso:

“May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine upon you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His face upon you and grant you peace.”

They are the oldest known biblical texts ever discovered.

Every year, Jews encounter these verses when Parshat Naso is read in synagogue. Parents recite them over their children on Friday nights. In Israel, kohanim still stand before congregations every day and deliver the same blessing first commanded to Aaron and his descendants in the wilderness.

What makes the Ketef Hinnom discovery extraordinary is not only its age, but its location.

The silver scrolls were found only a short distance from the Temple Mount, where priests once pronounced these words over the people of Israel. Few archaeological discoveries draw such a direct line across three millennia. The oldest surviving biblical text was found almost within sight of the place where it was commanded to be spoken.

The content of the blessing is equally remarkable. The oldest biblical inscription yet discovered is neither a king’s decree nor a military victory. It is a passage from the Bible that culminates in a single aspiration:

Shalom. Peace.

The prayer asks for blessing, protection, grace, and ultimately peace itself. Those hopes remain as familiar today as they were to the Jerusalem resident who carried the silver amulet twenty-six centuries ago.

The scrolls from Ketef Hinnom remind us that Jerusalem, the Bible, and the pursuit of peace have stood at the center of Jewish life for thousands of years.

“May the Lord bless you and keep you.”

The empires of the ancient world survive in ruins. This blessing survives in a people.