"If I Forget Thee ..."

Year after year, for 1,880 years, wherever their wanderings took them, the Jews of the Diaspora have prayed at Passover time: "Next year--in Jerusalem." This year, they were emphatically in Jerusalem. In the ancient city the Israelis celebrated a triumphant Passover.

Next Year ... Israel's strongly secular government, many of whose officials neglect to keep the Sabbath, went all out for the "Feast of Liberation." In accordance with a Jewish law that all regular cooking utensils must be put away during Passover week, the Israeli army formally sold all its pots & pans to a Gentile, with the tacit agreement that it would buy them back at. week's end. In Jerusalem's New City, the authorities erected a triumphal arch. From atop Mount Zion, Jewish pilgrims peered down into the Arab-held Old City; the Arabs had so far refused them permission to come in for prayers at the wailing wall. The Israelis hoped they would soon fix that. They had changed the traditional Passover prayer to: "Next year--in Jerusalem the capital."

By this, they meant that they will not rest until at least Jerusalem's New City, whose internationalization has been proposed by U.N., is once more the capital of the Jewish state. In recent months, the Israelis have quietly moved government departments into the Jerusalem area. They have also planted the route from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem with strongly fortified settlements.

Mother of Decorum. On Good Friday, as if to reassert Christendom's spiritual claims to the city, a small procession of Christian pilgrims struggled through hail and harsh winds along the Via Dolorosa toward Calvary. In Rome, meanwhile, Pope Pius issued an encyclical appealing for Jerusalem's internationalization and demanding a guarantee of free access for Catholics to Jerusalem's holy places.

The Israelis pointed out that their constitution already guarantees free access to holy places (however, "subject to the requirements of national security, public order and decorum"). As for internationalization, that was flatly out as far as Israel was concerned. It would rather go to war again than relinquish the City of the Temple, its strongest national symbol. "If I forget thee, 0 Jerusalem," Israelis read grimly from the 137th Psalm, "let my right hand forget her cunning . . ." The Jews were not forgetting.

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