Yom Yerushalayim passed unnoticed by most Israelis and mostly unmarked by me. This is no political statement on my part but, given that a good part of the gains of the Six Day War have been whittled away and the rest are unappreciated by most, it's hard to work up much enthusiasm for flag-waving. In addition to which I was too lazy to get up for minyan and Tosfos' opinion (though disputed by the venerable-sounding Sar miKutzi) that hallel shouldn't be said on Rosh Chodesh beyechidus somehow has a tight grip on my halachic consciousness. The bigger kids headed into Yerushalayim but I hung out at home. Truth is My Little Town is in an area which was liberated the very same day as Yerushalayim, so presumably whatever mitzvah is accomplished by going to Yerushalayim today ought to be doable lying in my own hammock.

For some reason, I'm still not in the mood to take on the big issues in this blog -- by "big issues", I mean my contempt for ideological Yiddishkeit -- but this is an opportunity to at least make passing mention. I think any sane Jew with a sense of history and a bit of imagination ought to be exceedingly grateful that we didn't lose the Six Day War. Can you believe there are, or at least there once were, Mirrers who celebrated the failure of a shell to explode on the yeshiva during the war but somehow find the rest of the story irrelevant? Some people's narrowness knows no limits. On the other hand, spare me the historicist ravings of Kooknik ideologues. Were the gains made in that war an irreversible step in the march towards geulah? I hope so, but who knows.

Can't we be happy about not getting killed without working it into some grand concept? And can't we be sad about Jews getting killed without working that into some grand ideology? Lamentably, around here the answer to both questions seems to be "no".