Reader's letter

The history of the Jewish people is closely linked to the Land of Israel, Jerusalem and the Holy Temple. In this edition, Morashá chose a series of themes linked to these subjects. Among them are the events leading up to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Second Temple by the Romans, an irreparable loss that we mourn year after year on Tisha Be'Av. We also bring an article about some of the reasons that make the Kotel a sacred place for all Jews and a point of convergence for supplications and prayers for many.

The fall of Jerusalem and the victory of the Romans over the Jews also meant an interruption in Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel. Forcibly exiled by the Romans, a period of dispersion and exile began for the Jewish people that would last centuries. During the long time in which they were prohibited from returning to their homeland, the Jews continued to develop in other places. Life in the Diaspora has been marked, over the centuries, by periods of persecution, interspersed with others of development and aggrandizement. The Middle Ages, also called the Dark Ages by historians, are considered a “golden age” for the Jews of the Iberian Peninsula and, in Spain in particular, it was a period that even recorded the revival of the Hebrew language. The best literary illustration of this cultural awakening is in the constellation of extraordinary poets, philosophers and scholars of the liturgy that emerged in this country in the XNUMXth and XNUMXth centuries, among whom the figure of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra stands out, the subject of an interesting article in this edition.

The dimension of this period and the characters who wrote this phase of Jewish history can be appreciated in this issue of our Morashá, which also features an article about Tunisia, a country that was home to one of the oldest communities in the diaspora. This country is even mentioned in numerous passages of the Talmud and also in the works of historian Flávio Josefo, who witnessed the transfer of thousands of Jews from the Land of Israel to Tunisia.

Last May, Israel celebrated 55 years of sovereign existence. The struggles and difficulties of the period leading up to the Declaration of Independence, proclaimed by David Ben Gurion on May 14, 1948, as well as the main episodes of the War of Independence, are also reported in this edition.

Morashá could not fail to bring his readers an analysis of the United States' involvement in the Israeli-Palestinian issue. These are times of extreme difficulty on several fronts, but also of great hope, because despite all the obstacles we now face, we cannot give up on our dreams of peace.