What is the significance of this saying?

 

Next Year in Jerusalem.

 

There are four “holy cities” in Israel, a concept dating back to the 1640s, with Tiberius joining Jerusalem, Hebron, and Safed in 1740. Jerusalem has remained the “holiest” of the four since the 10th century BC, when King David chose this to be the site for the Holy Temple.

 

Hebron is designated the second most holy city, as the burial place of ancient Jewish patriarchs; Safed the third, being a center of Jewish Kabbalistic scholarship; and Tiberius, due to the influx of rabbis who established the city as a center for Jewish learning in the 18th and 19th centuries, as the fourth.

 

And so the familiar phrase, “Next year in Jerusalem.” What does it mean? Rabbi David Hartman, in The Leader’s Guide to the Family Participation Haggadah: A Different Night, sees a kind of “radical futurism” reflected in the phrase, carrying with it a feeling of “almost” but “not yet.”

 

Hartman writes, “ Every year Jews drink four cups of wine and then pour a fifth for Elijah. The cup is poured, but not yet drunk. Yet the cup of hope is poured every year. Passover is the night for reckless dreams; for visions about what a human being can be, what society can be, what people can be, what history may become. That is the significance of ‘Le-shanah ha-ba-a b’Yerushalayim or ‘Next year in Jerusalem.’”

 

Michele Alperin (http://www.myjewishlearning.com/author/michele-alperin/), while quoting Hartman writes, “The most straightforward answer is that ‘Jerusalem’ refers to the future city–and its Temple–rebuilt when the Messiah comes.

 

“Most traditional Jews feel quite comfortable expressing this messianic longing at the end of the seder, just as at the end of each Shabbat, Jews recite the hope that the Messiah should come ‘speedily in our day.’ And to clarify for Israelis, some traditional Haggadot (plural for Haggadah, a Jewish text that sets forth the order of the Passover Seder) indicate that those in the Jewish state should replace the phrase with ‘next year in Jerusalem, the rebuilt,’ implying a rebuilt Temple.

 

“But many liberal Jews do not accept the idea of the Messiah and the return to a Temple-based Judaism focused on Jerusalem.”

 

And so, Alperin concludes, “The phrase ‘next year in Jerusalem,’ can be interpreted in many different ways. These words convey a web of meaning from concrete to abstract, and from earthly to holy.”

 

I am often asked, “Are you going again to Israel?” To which I reply, “Have you been dreaming of ‘Next Year in Jerusalem?’” Could 2018 be the year? If you would like to know more about such a sacred journey, email: ward@wardtanneberg.com. Indicate springtime or autumn or both as your preferred time to travel.