The first Shavuot was 3,337 years ago, when the entirety of the Jewish people stood at the foot of Mt. Sinai and received the Torah. When Shavuot arrived in 1948, it was a month after the establishment of the State of Israel, but Jews still could not make the pilgrimage to the Western Wall because the Jordanians, who occupied the eastern half of the city since the 1948 War of Independence, blocked all rights of Jewish passage.
Original photograph shows the crowd filling the newly-cleared plaza at the Kotel on Shavuot in 1967, the first of the Shlosha Regalim after Israel’s liberation of Jerusalem.
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In 1967, Jerusalem was reclaimed for all time by her loyal children who had never forgotten her. For six days after Israel’s liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem in the Six Day War, public access to the Holy City and the Kotel was denied by the Israeli government while the army worked to ensure that there were no landmines or snipers remaining in the Old City. Understanding that every Jew in Israel – if not in the entire world – would take the opportunity to make a historic aliya l’regel journey to the Western Wall, Mayor Teddy Kollek and IDF chief of staff Yitzhak Rabin, with less than a week before the pilgrimage festival of Shavuot, were determined to prepare adequately for the expected onslaught with an emphasis on protecting the safety of all.
Original 1967 photograph shows an Israeli soldier watching the Kotel area as Jews gather to celebrate Shavuot at the Western Wall.
Toward that end, immediately after Shabbat on June 10, 1967, the “Kotel Fraternity,” as the exclusive group of army engineers and contractors nicknamed themselves, created the Western Wall Plaza in a mere matter of days as they bulldozed the Mughrabi Quarter and removed all the debris, although the plaza surface was just crude dirt at that point. They also built an access road from Mount Zion through the Old City to the Wall, which permitted only pedestrian traffic. While the engineers finished the road and removed mines and other debris, patrols were busy cleaning out remaining sniper positions in the Old City from which occasional shootings took place.
Original 1967 photograph shows a long line of smiling Jews walking up from the Kotel after praying there on Shavuot.
At 4:00 a.m. on the morning of Shavuot, June 15, 1967, the Old City and the Kotel were officially opened to the public and, for the first time in two millennia, Jews were able to walk through the streets of the Holy City that they had never forgotten as members of a sovereign Jewish nation, one of most euphoric moments in Jewish history.
From the late hours of the night, thousands of Jerusalem residents had streamed toward the Zion Gate, eagerly awaiting entry into the Old City and, as the sun continued to rise on that historic morning, there was a steady flow of thousands who made their way to the Old City. As the Jerusalem Post described the grand scene:
Every section of the population was represented. Kibbutz members and soldiers rubbing shoulders with Neturei Karta. Mothers came with children in prams, and old men trudged steeply up Mount Zion, supported by youngsters on either side, to see the wall of the Temple before the end of their days.
That Shavuot day was the first massive pilgrimage of Jews to Jewish-controlled Jerusalem on a Jewish festival in 2,000 years since the pilgrimages for the festivals during Temple times. Thousands of Jews embraced as they wept, laughed, fell to their feet, and thanked G-d for the miracle He had performed in front of their eyes. The full gamut of human emotion was on display as more than 200,000 Jews marched forward in perfect order and waited patiently when told to do so at each of six successive barriers set up by the police to regulate the flow – a great miracle by itself; imagine hundreds of thousands of Jews waiting patiently to be told when to proceed! As one participant described the ecstatic moment:
I’ve never known so electric an atmosphere before or since. Wherever we stopped, we began to dance. Holding aloft Torah scrolls we swayed and danced and sang at the tops of our voices. So many of the Psalms and songs are about Jerusalem and Zion, and the words reached into us a new life. As the sky lightened, we reached the Zion Gate. Still singing and dancing, we poured into the narrow alleyways beyond.
As Yosef Harif beautifully wrote in the June 15, 1967 issue of Maariv:
The pilgrimage began already at twilight, when it was still difficult to tell between the colors of azure and white [undoubtedly referring to the Mishna’s description of the time when it is proper to recite the morning Shema, when a Jew is first able to differentiate between the color of the tzitzit’s blue and white threads]. The first who came were the ones who said the Tikkun Leil Shavuot passages all night, both old and young, and when the sunrise began, the flow of worshipers increased.
Erev Shavuot in Jerusalem, a few hours before sunrise from distant hills and from every corner of the city, the deserted streets began to fill with Jews of every kind streaming towards the Kotel; old men, children, chasidim in golden bekeshes, female soldiers in pants, groups of teenage girls, yeshiva students with their rebbes, voices lifted in song and praise. And then, in a single moment at sunrise, the moment at which G-d gave the Jews his eternal Torah, the Jewish people again saw themselves as Israel, “one nation with one heart,” as when Hashem originally gave us His Torah at Mt. Sinai.
How I wish I could have been there! And this year as well – and with G-d’s help, for every year until the end of time – Jews will complete their night of Torah learning; fill the streets of Jerusalem with tens of thousands walking to the Western Wall; and their joy, awe, and faith will be comparable to the passion shared by hundreds of thousands of Jews at the Kotel for Shavuot in 1967.
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On Shabbat, June 3, 1967, the final Shabbat before the Six-Day War, the Lubavitcher Rebbe directed his followers to commence a worldwide campaign dubbed “Operation Tefillin” to encourage Jewish men to put on tefillin, with particular emphasis on soldiers in Tzahal (the Israel Defense Forces). Taking advantage of the incredible spirituality that infused Israel in the wake of Israel’s miraculous victory in the Six-Day War, Chabad representatives stationed themselves at strategic locations at the Kotel on the very morning after Shavuot offering thousands of Jews the opportunity to put on tefillin.
The Boston Globe reported that by the end of November 1967, “more than 400,000 members of the Jewish faith are estimated to have observed the commandment to wear Phylacteries (tefillin) at the city’s Western Wall, formerly known as the ‘Wailing Wall.’” Through Chabad’s well-known campaign, which continues in full force today, countless millions of Jews have put on tefillin who otherwise might not have.
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In this incredible and deeply emotional 1969 correspondence on his personal letterhead, the Rebbe writes:
Greetings and blessings!
I received your correspondence . . . and now that I have come and you have sought my opinion with respect to the “Operation Tefillin,” endeavor to – in all appropriate ways – strengthen the observance of putting on tefillin and disseminating in every place that the hand of man, which includes you, reaches.
And even now there must be a special endeavor in this and with all strength and in all groups, amongst each and every group in accordance with its ways, but in all ways and approaches have their foundation in the Holy Mountains, as common grounds amongst all groups, as in the language of our Rabbis, may their memories be for a blessing, “I am asleep, but my heart is stirred to do them (the mitzvot), etc., and G-d should redeem us (from the exile)” and especially the mitzvah of tefillin (because) the entire Torah is equivalent to tefillin, and one who makes the effort in speaking matters that come from the heart is promised that “all that comes from the heart will enter the heart,” and because all of the limbs/organs are dependent on the heart, his efforts will ultimately be successful..
And my opinion is crystal clear that the stirring and pleading and requests through “Operation Tefillin” which have been discussed for two years or more [i.e., since the 1967 Six Day War) – are still valid. And, as a matter of fact, with even greater vigor and with greater strength, because of the current situation is such that you now need not just that which “all the nations of earth . . . will fear you” – that fear will come through the mitzvah of tefillin – but also – the substance of the well-known religious law – as the Rosh [R. Asher ben Yechiel] (in the laws of tefillin) said:
. . . because of the observance of the mitzvah of tefillin and its adjustments there will be fulfilled for [Jewish] soldiers [the promise of] obliterating the [enemies’] arm and crown of their head [stylistic quoting of Devarim 33:20].
And in accordance with what has been said, the great importance of the mitzvah and the merit to publicize this religious law amongst all soldiers and their relatives and friends and all Bnei Yisrael – may they live a good and long life – wherever they may be, is well understood.
And may it be Hashem’s will that literally very soon we will merit – amongst all our Jewish brothers – to say that this situation took place yesterday [i.e., it has already occurred] when peace will rule the world and particularly in the Holy Land about which it is said: And I will give peace in the land, and will increase Torah and mitzvot for every person amongst the Jewish people in peace, serenity, and safety.
As is his usual custom, the Rebbe follows the text of his letter with detailed cites, sources, and comments.
Finally, what better way to close this article than with Shavuot blessings from the Lubavitcher Rebbe? In this Rosh Chodesh Sivan 1987 correspondence on his personal letterhead, the Rebbe writes:
The Rebbe’s Shavuot greetings
In the greeting of Chag HaShavuot, the time of the giving of our Torah, may it come upon us and all of Israel for the good, I hereby extend my blessings in the nussach (style) of the Rav [the abbreviation reads kevod kedushat moreh chayal adonainu, moreinu, v’rabbeinu, … nishmato beganzei meromim, zechto yagen aleinu, or “with respect of the holiness of our great teacher, our master, teacher, and rebbe, his soul is in chambers, may his merit protect us],
For the receipt of the Torah with joy and penimiyut [“inwardness;” i.e., non-superficial depth]
Wishing a happy and healthy Shavuot, Yom HaBikurim, Chag HaKatzir, and Z’man Matan Toratenu!
