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In the lead up to the 1967 Six-Day War,
Israelis were terrified. Relatives were
calling from America and Europe begging
them to send their children. The Arab
armies were surrounding this new state
of Israel threatening to finish off what
Hitler did not.
It looked like things were bleak. In Tel
Aviv in Yarkon Park, Jews began digging
mass graves. 25,000 bodies per grave.
That was the expectation. There would
not be time for individual burials.
There would not be time for anything
other than to get as many people into
the ground as fast as possible.
It looked bleak.
Nobody had optimism. Nobody had hope.
And yet as we know,
a miracle occurred.
The Jewish people were saved from
Egyptian, Jordanian,
Syrian,
Lebanese, Iraq, even Saudi Arabia in
attack.
For those that know, there was even a
small attack from the Soviet Union.
And yet,
the Jews miraculously sur- miraculously
survived. In Israel there's a custom
that we do not bury in coffins. Jews are
put into the dirt as almost as if they
as the same way as they came into the
earth. Wrapped in a tallit, they're
placed into the ground.
Only our most special, soldiers that
have fallen in battle, are buried in
coffins in Israel.
June 1967
was the miraculous victory of the
Six-Day War. Two weeks after the
victory, Jews for the first time in 19
years celebrated Shavuot at the Western
Wall praying so close to the most
sanctified of places, the most special
of places and the most sacred of places
in Judaism, the Temple Mount.
After a brutal hot summer where
construction began on what today looks
like the Western Wall Plaza,
the Jews began preparing for Rosh
Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot of
1967.
In Israel, as we know,
wood is incredibly treasured and valued
and very expensive.
Israel is the only country to have more
trees in it in the year 2000 than it had
in 1900.
We value our trees, and anybody with a
JNF charity box of pushka in their home
or has dedicated a $7 tree in JNF forest
knows how valuable our wood is.
Sukkot here are mostly made out of cloth
or built into homes. It is rare to see a
wood-paneled sukkah because they're
simply so expensive and the wood is so
rare.
But in Sukkot of 1967,
the municipality of Jerusalem handed out
free wood slots to whoever would want in
order to build their sukkot.
It was a one-time event, had never
happened before, and has never happened
since. And it quickly escaped the
memories of people.
Where did this wood come from?
It was an Israeli classified secret for
50 years. See, Israeli law classifies
all military secrets for 50 years, and
after 50 years, the information is
released. And 50 years after the Six-Day
War,
this information of the source of the
wood became unclassified, and it shocked
Israelis for an entire week until Israel
decided to reclassify the information.
It is now secret, but I'll tell it to
you.
In 1967,
in the lead-up to the Six-Day War,
Israel built 25,000 wooden coffins.
They were expecting 25,000 soldiers to
die.
Now, every single Jewish soldier is
valuable, and the 700 that we lost in
the Six-Day War
hit home. And those families, some of
them are my friends, still commemorate
the loss of their brothers,
sons, daughters, fathers, mothers from
that war.
But thank God, nowhere near 25,000
coffins were needed.
What to do with all those coffins after
the war?
Well, as I'm sure you figured out, they
broke down the wood, handed it to the
Jerusalem municipality, who secretly
handed it out to people, whoever wanted,
without telling them where that wood
came from.
50 years later when that information was
declassified, people were shocked to
learn that they had sat for decades in
sukkot made out of coffins. And it was
so shocking and so disturbing to people,
Israel reclassified the information. If
you search for it on the internet, you
will not find it.
An incredible turnaround, a miracle
where we thought we would end up in
coffins, and in the end, we ended up in
sukkot, commemorating the miracle of
God's protection. And in that year, boy,
did the Jews of Israel feel God's
protection like we had never felt it
before.
May we continue to feel that protection,
not only every sukkot, but every day as
Jewish history is being written, day
after day, here in the heartland of our
homeland.
Chag sameach.
