For nineteen years, Jerusalem – the real Jerusalem, the Old City – retreated into our prayers and our longings. Israel’s greatest songstress Naomi Shemer composed a haunting song, “Jerusalem of Gold,” that became an anthem of yearning for secular Jews as the Psalmist’s “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem,” was for religious Jews. Then on the 28th day of the Hebrew month of Iyar, on the third day of the Six-Day War in 1967, while the Israeli army was battling the Jordanian army in areas along No Man’s Land, the Israeli command suddenly realized that it might be possible to reclaim the Old City. In the files of the Israeli army were detailed military plans for how to take every hill and field in the land, but there was no plan at all for taking the Old City. Its thick walls and belvederes, built to ward off invaders, had made it invincible in 1948, when dozens of Jewish fighters had lost their lives trying to penetrate its bastions. But, now, when miraculous victories were being scored on every front, was it possible – really possible – to reclaim the Old City of Jerusalem?