Trump's Shabbat Proclamation and America's Founding Promise
8 min read
8 min read
9 min read
For centuries, Jerusalem was a ghost town. Today it's a city of 1 million, one of the fastest-growing travel destinations on earth. How did this happen?
“What shall I tell you regarding the Land? It is very neglected and desolate... The more sacred the place, the greater its desolation. Jerusalem is the most desolate of all...”
So wrote Rabbi Moshe ben Nachman (Ramban or Nachmanides), one of the towering rabbinical figures of the Middle Ages, in a letter to his son in 1267. Already an elderly man at that point, he arrived in the Land of Israel after fleeing persecution in Spain. The Jerusalem he saw had been devastated by the competing conquests of Crusaders, Mongols and Mamluks.
A very different chronicler arrived in the city around 1491. Martin Kabátník, a member of the Bohemian Christian sect known as the Unity of the Brethren, wrote in his Journey to Jerusalem:
“There are few Christians but there are many Jews, and these the Muslims persecute in various ways. Christians and Jews go about in Jerusalem in clothes considered fit only for wandering beggars. The Muslims know that the Jews think and even say that this is the Holy Land which has been promised to them and that those Jews who dwell there are regarded as holy by Jews elsewhere, because in spite of all the troubles and sorrows inflicted on them by the Muslims, they refuse to leave.”
Nearly 115 years later, a highly influential work titled A Relation of a Journey begun An. Dom. 1610, by George Sandys, was published in London. The book describes Jerusalem as “buried in her own ruins....”
Dutch Orientalist, professor and theologian Adrian Reland wrote in a two-volume work, Palaestina ex monumentis veteribus illustrata (published 1714), that Jerusalem at the start of the 18th century was home to around 5,000 people. Most of them, he noted, were Jews.
A more descriptive and chilling account was provided by the famous French writer and diplomat François-René de Chateaubriand less than 100 years later, in Itinéraire de Paris à Jérusalem et de Jérusalem à Paris (published 1811). Describing the Jews of Jerusalem circa 1806, he wrote:
“One must see these people in Jerusalem; one must see these rightful masters of Judea living as slaves and strangers in their own inheritance; one must see them awaiting, under every form of oppression, a king who is to deliver them.... Crushed by the Cross and the Crescent, they still wander about, seeking for their country and finding only a grave.”
An author later known for a very different reason, Karl Marx, published an article that appeared in the New-York Daily Tribune on April 15, 1854, describing Jerusalem at the time. He noted that the city had a population of about 15,500 people, of whom 8,000 were Jews.
“The Mussulmans,” Marx wrote, “forming about a fourth part of the whole, and consisting of Turks, Arabs and Moors, are, of course, the masters in every respect, as they are in no way affected with the weakness of their Government at Constantinople. Nothing equals the misery and the sufferings of the Jews at Jerusalem, inhabiting the most filthy quarter of the town, called hareth-el-yahoud, the quarter of dirt [sic], between the Zion and the Moriah, where their synagogues are situated the constant objects of Mussulman oppression and intolerance, insulted by the Greeks, persecuted by the Latins, and living only upon the scanty alms transmitted by their European brethren.”
Another famous author, Herman Melville of Moby-Dick fame, visited Jerusalem around 1857. In a private journal, he described the city as a “collection of abandoned stone quarries.” As he put it, “No country will more quickly sicken the fancy than the face of Judea.... The yard-walls look like old tomb-stones... Jerusalem is a city of stones.”
A little over a decade later, Mark Twain wrote in The Innocents Abroad (published in 1869) that “Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live here.”
Jeremiah mourned the destruction of Jerusalem and also provided a bright vision of the city’s future.
Echoing Ramban from nearly 630 years earlier, the famous French novelist and naval officer Pierre Loti wrote in 1894, “Jerusalem, the city of sadness... I have seen the desolation of many ruins in the world, but none so heavy as this. It is a city that has died of its own holiness.”
Jeremiah (Yirmiyahu), who lived between 627 and 587 BCE, saw and mourned the destruction of Jerusalem in his day. He described “the towns of Judah and the streets of Jerusalem” as being “desolate, without inhabitant, human or animal…” (33:10-11)
However, in the same passage he also provided a bright vision of the city’s future, in which “there shall once more be heard the voice of mirth and the voice of gladness, the voice of the bridegroom and the voice of the bride, the voices of those who sing, as they bring thanks offerings to the house of the Lord: ‘Give thanks to the Lord of hosts, for the Lord is good, for his steadfast love endures forever!’ For I will restore the fortunes of the land as at first, says the Lord.”
It was long in coming, but the vision began to take shape in 1949. Shortly after Israel’s War of Independence, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion rejected United Nations efforts to internationalize the city and instead declared Jerusalem to be “an inseparable part of the state of Israel and its eternal capital.”
Yet for the next 19 years, the city remained divided between the Jewish state and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
Then, on June 5, 1967, Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol sent an urgent message to King Hussein saying that “we shall not engage ourselves in any action against Jordan, unless Jordan attacks us.” The king ignored Israel’s appeal and joined neighboring Arab states in their attempt to destroy Israel.
On the 6th of June, the 27th of Iyar in the Jewish calendar, the first Israeli national unity government since 1948 held its initial Ministerial Security Committee meeting. On the agenda was the response to Jordan and the liberation of Jerusalem. In accordance with the decision taken, IDF forces encircled the Old City that very day.
The modern holiday of Yom Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Day) takes place one day later – this year, it starts on Thursday night, the 14th of May – marking the city’s full liberation from Jordan during the Six-Day War.
But none of it might ever have happened had Jordan opted for peace or even hesitated a few days. The rest, as they say, is history.
Since 1967, the unified capital of Israel has more than tripled in population size to become the nation’s largest city. And in 2024, Jerusalem became the first Israeli city to have more than 1 million residents (1,046,300 by May 2025).
Part of that increase is due to new immigrants (olim). Jerusalem is the number one destination for olim, with about 3,000 of them moving to the city every year. According to Pini Glinkevitch, director of the city’s Immigration and Absorption Authority, the largest contingent is from South America, followed by the United Kingdom and the United States.
The world of Torah learning and academia are also flourishing in the capital.
There are more than 500 yeshivas and kollels (advanced study halls for married men) within the Jerusalem municipal boundaries alone. For comparison, there were only approximately 200 major yeshivas across Eastern Europe on the eve of World War II. The largest single yeshiva at the time was the Mir Yeshiva in Belarus, which had about 500 students. The reconstituted and replanted Mir Yeshiva in Jerusalem has around 9,000 students today.
The Hebrew University of Jerusalem is recognized as one of the world’s elite academic institutions, with international ranking higher than Harvard and Oxford in some subjects. This single university has produced 10 Nobel Laureates, one Fields Medal winner, two Turing Award winners, and its technology transfer company, Yissum, is ranked 15th in the world with over 10,000 registered patents.
No wonder the Startup Genome report has been consistently ranking Jerusalem (and Tel Aviv) as among the most vibrant tech hubs in the world in recent years.
In tourism, as well, Jerusalem is no longer “mournful, and dreary, and lifeless,” per Mark Twain. In 2019, the UK-based market research company Euromonitor International declared Jerusalem to be “the fastest-growing travel destination in the world…” out of 600 cities worldwide and “a top global tourism spot.”
On the cultural front, Jerusalem is home to world-class institutions like the Israel Museum (housing the Dead Sea Scrolls and an incredible collection of fine arts and archaeology), Yad Vashem, the Bible Lands Museum, the Tower of David museum and exhibit in the Old City, and the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design (one of the world's most prestigious art schools). In addition, specific events like the Jerusalem Light Festival and the prestigious International Book Forum regularly draw tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of visitors from around the world.
Time Magazine included Jerusalem in its 2023 list of the 50 “World's Greatest Places.” Based on nominations by the magazine’s international network of correspondents and contributors, the city was especially highlighted for its culinary scene and “modern-meets-ancient” vibes.
And to connect all the dots, let’s note that “the sound of mirth and gladness, the voice of bridegroom and bride” is heard at about 19,000 weddings every year in Jerusalem alone.
Despite all the libelous claims to the contrary, Israeli control over Jerusalem has been a continuing boon for its non-Jewish residents as well.
From 1910 until 1946, the non-Jewish population of Jerusalem went from 24,900 to 65,100. That's a total net growth of 40,200 in 35 years, or 161 percent. Not bad at all for a city under British colonial occupation.
Then, in 1948, Jerusalem came under Jordanian occupation – and non-Jewish population growth went down to near-zero. And there was, of course, no Jewish population growth whatsoever since there were no Jews left after Jordan’s thorough ethnic cleansing of the city.
When Jerusalem came under exclusive Israeli sovereignty in 1967, the situation changed dramatically. From 1967-2025 the non-Jewish population of Jerusalem grew from 68,600 people to roughly 400,000 (around 40% of the city).
Jewish people have been saying “Next year in Jerusalem” at the end of every Passover Seder, smashing a glass to remember Jerusalem at every wedding, mentioning Jerusalem at every meal, and turning to face Jerusalem for every prayer for nearly 2,000 years, wherever they were in the Diaspora. It is this living memory that helped make the vision of Jeremiah a reality and the reborn capital of the Jewish state a blessing for its residents and for the world.
Happy Jerusalem Day!
