Sha’alu shalom Yerushalayim: Pray for the peace of Jerusalem

I have two reactions to President Trump’s announcement concerning Jerusalem this week.

This ancient, beautiful city was the Jewish capital from the time of King David until its destruction by the Romans. Through almost two millennia of exile it stayed the capital of the Jewish heart, and remained the home of a poor, but enduring, Jewish community. Since 1948 it has been de facto the centre of Israeli government, containing the Knesset and the Supreme Court. I remember my father, who recalled with pain the many lives lost in trying to defend the old city in 1948, waking me in the night in June 1967 when I was a boy of ten, to tell me that the old city had been recaptured.

At the same time, I vividly recall sitting with Palestinian families in their homes in East Jerusalem, now on the other side of the wall. I can never forget the hours I spent with the CEO of the Palestinian hospital in East Jerusalem during operation Protective Edge, listening to his pain. These experiences affected me profoundly, bringing home the truth that there can be no solution which does not offer hope, opportunity, safety and dignity for all. I think too of the many friends, Muslim, Christian and Jewish, in various NGOs devoting their lives to the endeavour to create the civic groundwork for co-existence between two peoples and three religions for when a political solution is eventually achieved.

I also know that Judaism, with its many texts attesting to the integrity of its history and to its ancient presence in Jerusalem, preceding Christianity and Islam, also demands equal justice in the treatment of each and every individual person and calls upon us to act faithfully in the name of the God of all humanity.

I fear for what President Trump’s words will do in this complex balance of religion, history, emotion and politics, words for which he will not suffer the immediate consequences.

In the language of the Friday night prayers

May God spread peace over us, over all God’s people and over Jerusalem