North is Evil, East is Good

and the Lord said to me, out of the north the evil shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of the land ...        Jeremiah 1:13

            While God's message to Jeremiah is not intended as a lesson in the geography of Jerusalem, it is true that topographically, north is the problematic direction, the one direction which offers no natural defense. Therefore, the attacker finds it easier to approach Jerusalem from the north. For this reason, almost without exception, when Jerusalem has been captured (and depending on which historian is doing the counting, it has been captured as many as forty times) it has been captured from the north.

            There are only two times in the five-thousand year history of Jerusalem, that the city has been captured from the east: the Six Day War when our paratroopers liberated the Old City by way of the Lion's Gate; and the only time previously was 3000 years ago, when king David liberated Jerusalem  and made it the eternal capital of Israel. It has been noted that God's message to Jeremiah was "the evil will come from the north". When Jerusalem is captured by non-Jews, it can be seen as 'evil', however when the city is liberated by Jews, by definition it is not evil, and therefore the direction is not north.

            There is tremendous symbolic significance to the fact that Jews liberate the Holy city specifically from the east. Obviously, when one comes from the east, he faces west, and our Sages taught that “the Shechina is in the west.” [Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 25b] Thus when Israel enters its eternal capital, it is with the goal of linking up with the Shechina.