I am writing these words in my home, Kiryat Arba-Hebron, Israel. Forty-seven years ago this week, Israel liberated all of Judea and Samaria, Israel’s biblical heartland, in six days. On 28 Iyar (June 7th that year), they liberated the Temple Mount, where the Temple will one day be rebuilt, and the next day they liberated Hebron, where the Patriarchs and Matriarchs of the Jewish People are buried. Ever since that year, many Jews in Israel have commemorated 28 Iyar each year, thanking G-d for the miracles of those times.

As a former Baltimorean, and a 30-year resident of Kiryat Arba-Hebron, I often find myself explaining Israeli history to some of our American eighteen-year-old yeshiva and seminary Shabbos guests, who don’t have a clue about these things. In 1967, I tell them, Israel conquered Judea and Samaria, known in the Western media as the “West Bank.” Judea and Samaria is the section of the Land of Israel that Jordan grabbed and held on to in 1948, which happens to contain the most famous Biblical cities: Hebron, Bethlehem, the City of David and the Temple Mount, Shilo, Bet-El, Shechem, and many