Today is Mother’s Day, and while I am proud to be a mother, I am also missing my mother. Perhaps she would have been proud of me. It was a good week. I was awarded the Betty Brown Racial Justice Award by the YWCA of Elgin. It is very humbling. I don’t do this work in a vacuum. I have lots of partners in Elgin including those at the Y.

My mother and I did lots of rallies for justice together when I was a young child in Evanston. She ran for park commissioner because when she asked why the swings were not up, she was told, “Those people might sit on them.” As a Girl Scout we did lots of “service projects” to make the world a better place. I was a leader of a troop in Grand Rapids “Center City” when I was a junior in High School. I’ll never forget being in a Brownie Ring asking for Christmas traditions and every girl knew that her mamma called “Santa’s Girls” and that’s where the presents came from.

Mother’s Day is a peace holiday. It was not started by Hallmark. There are many claims to the first American Mother’s Day. There were some observances by women whose sons were fighting on opposite sides of the Civil War. They were not prepared to lose another son to war. Ann Jarvis started a Mother’s Friendship Day in 1868 “to reunite families that had been divided during the Civil War.” Julia Ward Howe led a “Mother’s Day for Peace” anti-war demonstration in New York on June 2, 1872 which led to the first Mother’s Day Proclamation.

The first year after my mother died, I stood outside the gates of the White House leading an interfaith service for peace. This year will find me running a race shortly where the charity is Wings, an organization dedicated to preventing domestic violence.

Today is also Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day on the Hebrew Calendar. It is the day in 1967 when Jerusalem was reunited. Jersualem actually means City of Peace. Ir=City. Shalom=Peace.

This past week, as a partner with Gail Borden Public Library, Coalition of Elgin Religious Leaders, Elgin City of Peace, I hosted an event at CKI called Stories of Peace. I knew I wanted to do it this week and I knew exactly what story I wanted to tell.

We all know the story. The legend of the two brothers. Every rabbi I have ever known has told this story. It is the story of how King Solomon chose the spot to build the Holy Temple.

Once upon a time, there was a farmer who left his two sons his land. (It is always sons, never daughters except for the daughters of Zelophehad in Numbers 27, who do inherit their father’s land, but that is another story).

The two brothers each lived on the other side of a hill. One brother was married with several children. The other one lived alone. One night, the married brother lay awake thinking about how blessed he was and his brother had no one to help him with the harvest. He decided he must share his abundance. Which is exactly what he did. Under the dark of night, he climbed up the hill and down the other side with a sheaf of what and left it for his brother to find when he awoke.

Meanwhile, the other brother was also awake thinking about how fortunate he was. “I am just alone and have so much. My brother has so many mouths to feed. He surely needs some of my wheat.” Which is exactly what he did. Under the stars and the light of the moon, he hiked up the hill and down the other side and left a sheaf of wheat for his brother that he would find when he awoke.

In the morning, when each brother awoke, they were both surprised to find that each had the same number of sheaves as the previous day. So the next night, up and down the hill they went, filled with love for their brother and thankfulness for their blessings. Each night this “miracle” of the sheaves was repeated, until one night their paths crossed and they hugged. That is the exact spot that King Solomon chose to build the Temple. And as we were taught, that is the basis of the song, “Hiney Ma Tov” from Psalms. “How good and how pleasant it is for brothers to dwell together.”

That’s the end of the story, right? Maybe not. Where did this story come from? I had always assumed it was from the Talmud or the midrash. Not so fast! Louis Ginzberg has it in The Legends of the Jews, and in his footnotes he references Israel Costa’s Mikveh Yisrael (Livorno, 1851). Alexander Scheiber published a bibliography with various origins and different versions of the story. The first mention is from Alphone de Laartine who recorded it from Palestinian Arabs in 1832. I even found one mention that it was an Indian Muslim story and someone else told me it was a retelling of the Gift of the Magi.

There are at least three children’s versions:

• Brothers: A Hebrew Legend, by Florence Friedman (the version I wound up telling)
• One City, Two Brothers, by Chris Smith
• The Two Brothers, a Legend of Jerusalem, by Neil Waldman

Which ever tale you tell, pray for the peace of Jerusalem. It would be a good thing on Mother’s Day, especially this Mother’s Day. And for you mothers, step-mothers, aunts, mother figures, dad who are mothers, thank you!

Here is a full source list:

Louis Ginzberg, Legends of the Jews. In the old JPS edition the legend can be found on 4:154 and a discussion on 6:293-294.
Bin Gorion I-Micha Joseph Bin Gorion, Mimekor Yisrael, ed. by Emanuel bin Gorion, trans. I.M. Lask, intro. by Dan Ben-Amos, Indiana University Press.
Bin Gorion II-Micha Joseph Bin Gorion, Mimekor Yisrael: Selected Classical Jewish Folktales, abridged and annotated edition, ed. by Emanuel bin Gorion, trans. I.M. Lask, intro. and headnotes by Dan Ben-Amos, Indiana University Press. Although this edition has fewer legends, it has better notes and bibliographical material on each legend. See the bibliographical notes for this legend on p. 272.
Alexander Scheiber, “The Legend about the Temple Location in Jerusalem” in Essays on Jewish Folklore and Comparative Literature, Budapest, 1985, pp. 291-299.
Haim Schwarzbaum, Studies in Jewish and World Folklore, Berlin, 1968, pp. 462-463
Eliezer Segal, “The Founding of Jerusalem: A Palestinian Midrash?”
Zev Vilnay, Legends of Jerusalem, JPS, pp. 77-78.