The Tikvah (“hope”) - the grandest dream and the secret of the power of the Jewish people, from
time immemorial. The Jewish nation absorbed this hope from the Book of Books, and it is what
provided it with the bravery and the inner strength to suffer and endure for 2000 years and not despair.
This hope is also what the author chose to name this book, which presents the reader with
the events of the two most dramatic periods of the Jewish war against Rome and the Six-Day War.
The book is written with the format of journalistic articles with headlines and bylines like a newspaper
for all intents and purposes, with deliberate purpose. In the author’s opinion, a newspaper
article with large headlines and bylines has a greater influence over emotion than ordinary prosaic
language. The titles that depict the events of the two periods all but shout to the heavens and
touch the depths of the soul. The drama is intensified by the magnitude of the disaster that struck
us two thousand years ago, and the drama is intensified several times more on account of the
magnitude of the miracle that surprised us during the Six-Day War. Such a war has not occurred
in the entirety of human history. The author guides us from event to event and positions them one
in front of the other, and thus a panoramic picture of tremendous events is unfurled before us, as
we human beings, look upon them with wonder and awe.
Today, 50 years after the Six-Day War, we feel that we are in the midst of an unknown historical
process, one that began atop Mount Sinai - and who can tell what the future has in store? We have
yet to reach the end of our travails and a state of tranquility, and considerable pain, suffering and
sorrow still lie ahead in the days to come. But by observing the remarkable contrast between the
Six-Day War and the war of the Jews against the Romans, there is one thing we cannot ignore: we
rose from the depths and from the bottommost pits to heights and peaks we could not have envisioned,
and we draw considerable encouragement from them. Our hope has materialized after two
thousand years of exile. And if hope can come true after two thousand years, then this realization
holds an important message to the nation and to the individual: never despair! Most of the words
of the prophets have already come to pass, and thus Jerusalem’s days of glory and tranquility will
come in time. Patience for a generation, two generations and perhaps more. Great things lie in
wait for Jerusalem and the Jewish people!
About the Author:
David Semikat, born in Israel in 1940, a lecturer in the field of astrophysics, grew up and was raised in
Kfar Haroeh in the Hefer Valley. At the age of 5, he experienced the first historic event of his life. In
November 1945, he gazed in awe from the porch of his house in the village towards British Army
columns, 10,000 armored soldiers and paratroopers, armored forces and tanks, as they moved towards the
kibbutz of Givat Haim, which they heavily besieged. In the years that followed, while he was still a child
of seven and eight years old, he witnessed four more historic events. He remembers well the night of
November 29, 1947, when his mother woke him up after midnight along with his brothers and told them,
“Children, we are going to have a state.” In June 1948, he saw the gunship Altalena, anchored off the
shores of Kfar Vitkin, through a window in his house, and on July 27, 1948, two and a half months after
the establishment of state, during a respite between the battles of the War of Independence, he was
fortunate to see the first IDF military parade in Tel Aviv with his mother - the first military parade of a
Jewish military after 2000 years. All of these were etched into his memory and his consciousness, and left
quite the impression on him. These events that he experienced in his youth are what brought him to
publish this book, 70 years later, which tells the tale of Je-rusalem’s fall and its revival.