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This week’s Torah portion is Parshat Behar-Bechukotai, but in honor of next Thursday’s Yom Yerushalayim celebration, I want to share a reflection on this day, informed by Torah from the Baal Shem Tov and his disciples.
As we celebrate Yom Yerushalayim, we rightfully focus our attention on Jerusalem, this sacred city that stood at the center of Jewish yearning for millennia. We celebrate the stones, the gates, the layered history woven into its ancient walls, and the remnants of the Divine Presence, which tradition teaches never completely abandoned the city (Shemot Rabba 2:2). In the beautiful words of Maimonides (Beit HaBechirah 6:16): למה אני אומר במקדש וירושלים קדושה ראשונה קדשה לעתיד לבוא … לפי שקדושת המקדש וירושלים מפני השכינה ושכינה אינה בטלה … ואמרו חכמים אע”פ ששמומין בקדושתן הן עומדים. For Rambam, the original sanctity of Jerusalem and the Temple is eternal, precisely because the Divine Presence (“the Shechinah”) never truly departs. Even when the city is desolate, its holiness remains intact.
Yet as I reflect on my own Zionism, which finds its deepest expression in the cultural and spiritual rebirth of our people, I find myself contemplating a duality that defines our modern experience. While the land is an essential aspect of our return, for me the deepest source of Israel’s sacredness lies in its people. The land becomes the place in which a sacred people can once again create Torah, culture, language, and religious life.
With this in mind, I propose viewing Tel Aviv not as a secular rival to Jerusalem, but as a complementary capital, a necessary junior partner to Jerusalem’s primary sanctity in the landscape of Jewish holiness. If our spiritual focus includes the creative rebirth of the Jewish people, then Tel Aviv, as a central hub of Israeli culture and innovation, provides a geographic anchor for this dimension of the Jewish soul. Thus, if Jerusalem is our religious capital, anchored in a glorious past, then Tel Aviv is our cultural capital, focused on the creative vitality of Jewish life in the present. Both cities are crucial to the Jewish narrative, but they tell different stories. Tel Aviv became one of the great stages upon which the modern Jewish story unfolded, while Jerusalem remains the theological center of Torat Yisrael. Although the narratives overlap and involve the same people, they present two distinct, yet equally vital, tales.
And perhaps the relationship between the two cities is ultimately one of mutual dependence. Tel Aviv needs Jerusalem so that creativity does not lose its moral and spiritual center. But Jerusalem also needs Tel Aviv, because Torah that is not carried into the fullness of lived human experience risks losing contact with the very human reality it seeks to sanctify.
This notion of parallel capitals is not a modern innovation; it is rooted in our tradition. Throughout our history, various locales have stood as spiritual counterparts to Jerusalem, offering different forms of connection. The Mishna in Tamid (3:8) tells us that the sounds and smells of the Temple service in Jerusalem, the flute, the song, and the incense, were heard and smelled all the way in Yericho. Ravad explains this unique phenomenon by noting that Yehoshua had specifically set Yericho aside as holy. As a “tithe” of the conquered land, Yericho became akin to Jerusalem. Therefore, it was the only place outside the city where the Temple’s spiritual energy could be miraculously felt.
Similarly, Rambam teaches in Hilchot Sanhedrin (14:12) that after the Sanhedrin was exiled to ten locations, it ended in Tiberias, and it is from Tiberias that it will eventually return to the Temple. Sefer Kaftor VaFerach records a tradition that the resurrection of the dead will begin in Tiberias forty years before other places. For nearly a century, the eyes of pilgrims were turned toward Tzfatb ehar pcorrect
, the home of R. Joseph Karo, the Arizal, and many other halakhic and kabbalistic masters.
The significance of these historical “junior capitals,” Yericho, Tiberias, and Tzfat, is that they establish a traditional precedent for complementary sanctity alongside Jerusalem’s primary role. Each served as a unique satellite of holiness, channeling and extending dimensions of Jewish spiritual life beyond Jerusalem itself. Together, they demonstrate how secondary centers of holiness can support and deepen Jerusalem’s religious centrality rather than compete with it.
This duality corresponds beautifully with Rambam’s teaching on the mitzvah of Ahavat HaShem. Maimonides famously offers two distinct, yet seemingly independent, routes to achieving this love: through the devoted study of Torah, as detailed in Sefer HaMitzvot (Mitzvah 3), and through the contemplation of nature and the wisdom of creation, articulated in his Mishneh Torah (Yesodei HaTorah 2:2). Rather than functioning as competing systems, these two paths are complementary. One without the other offers only a partial encounter with the Divine. Together, they reflect the twin modes through which we encounter God: God as Lawgiver, manifested in the discipline of Halakha, and God as Creator, encountered through the expansiveness of creation and human creativity. Jerusalem, as the religious senior capital and anchor of the Law, embodies the former by providing the essential structure of our covenant; Tel Aviv, as the cultural junior capital of modern Jewish expression, embodies the latter by providing the vibrant canvas upon which Jewish national rebirth unfolds.
A prominent trope in Chassidut teaches that true shlemut requires the integration of opposites. To love God with a “whole heart” (בכל לבבך) is to find Him both in the silent contemplation of the Western Wall and in the creative energy of a Tel Aviv gallery. To see these two cities as simply a contradiction is to miss a deeper truth: they are complementary in the profoundest sense, two paths toward the same ultimate end. On this Yom Yerushalayim, let us celebrate the totality of our rebirth, recognizing that our encounter with the Divine is deepened when we embrace both the covenantal memory of the past and the creative vitality of the present.
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