In the lat 1990s I was one of the first tenants to move into a newly renovated building in North Williamsburg. My apartment literally looked over the BQE. When I used to commute home at night after class, I had at times heard gunshots on the other side of the BQE. Williamsburg had already started the arduous journey of gentrification in the early 1990s and by the time my roommate and I got there we were considered the second wave of people. The first wave was made up of artists and musicians and our wave was primarily students. Nowadays, North Williamsburg is considered an upscale area – close to Manhattan where young families and professionals live a very comfortable life. Today, residents no longer hear the same gun shots I heard more than 20 years ago.

My work at Ateret Cohanim over the years has brought me into some of the most interesting land reclamation work around. While in Brooklyn there were muggings and the occasional gun violence, in Jerusalem there is a threat of terror stemming from Eastern Jerusalem neighborhoods such as Shiloach (aka Silwan), the Muslim Quarter, Shimon HaTzaddik (aka Sheik Jarrah) and others. Our land reclamation work has a direct effect on terror.

While terror from these neighborhoods has gone down over the last few years, it is only because there are more and more Jewish residents returning to them that has caused the bad actors to be dealt with. There is a clear correlation to more Jewish residents means less Arab terror.

Land reclamation in Jerusalem is often times seen as a religious act and rightfully so. However, the secondary effects of it are vital to increased Jewish sovereignty across the entirety of the nation’s ancient capital.

With each house in Eastern Jerusalem that Jewish residents return to, less potential terror emanates from those neighborhoods. True, we may never see posh housing like Williamsburg, but then again thats not our aim. The goal is for the Jewish people to be truly sovereign and safe in their ancient and eternal capital of Jerusalem.