On the morning of the 4th of Nissan, a civilian convoy of doctors and nurses traveling to the Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus (see Today in Jewish History for 20 Iyar) was attacked by Arab forces. Of the ten vehicles in the caravan, five escaped. The other five vehicles, however, which included two buses and an ambulance, were riddled with machine gun fire and later set ablaze. Altogether 77 Jewish civilians were massacred on that day.
Shortly afterwards, the hospital was closed down and moved to the western part of Jerusalem.
The Mt. Scopus hospital only reopened after the eastern part of Jerusalem was liberated by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. Primarily staffed by Israeli doctors, it is the largest and best equipped hospital in the eastern section of Jerusalem.
In today's "Nasi" reading (see "Nasi of the Day" in Nissan 1), we read of the gift bought by the nasi of the tribe of Reuben, Elitzur ben Shedeur, for the inauguration of the Mishkan.
True peace is not a forced truce, not a homogenization of differences, not a common ground that abandons our home territories.
True peace is the oneness that sprouts from diversity, the beauty that emerges from a panorama of colors, strokes and textures, from the harmony of many instruments each playing a unique part, not one overlapping the other’s domain by even the breadth of a hair.
Those who attempt to blur those borders, whatever be their motives—they are unwittingly destroying the world.
Beginning with the crucial border between man and woman. For this is the beginning of all diversity, the place where G‑d’s oneness shines most intensely from within His precious world.