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Jerusalem has no strategic signifigance. It has no commercial or
industrial importance, and it is not a cultural center.
How has this ancient city, unimportant as it appears, crept to the heart of contention between Israel and the Palestinians over the future of the land of Israel? Why should we care what happens to Jerusalem?
We need to begin by understanding the importance of memory. Memory isn't history or dead memorabilia. By defining the past memory creates the present. Repression of memory creates mental disease. Health comes from memory's recovery. Dictators consolidate power by altering memory. Stalin airbrushed Trotsky and Bukharin out of photographs. Revisionists deny the Holocaust ever happened. Why does it matter?
In Hebrew, the word for man is "zachar." The word for memory is "zecher." Man is memory. People who suffer memory loss through illness or accident don't just misplace their keys. They lose their selves. They become lost and adrift in time, because without memory, the current moment has no context, and no meaning.
When the
Jews were first exiled from Jerusalem, the prophet Jeremiah said, "If I
forget you Jerusalem, let my right hand lose its strength. Let my tongue
cling to my palate if I fail to recall you, if I fail to elevate Jerusalem
above my highest joy." The memory of Jerusalem somehow is linked to our
current vigor as a people. But how? What is the memory of Jerusalem, and
what does it contribute to who we are?
London comes from a Celtic word which means "a wild and wooded town." Cairo is an anglicized version of the Arab name for Mars, the Roman god of war. Paris is named for the Paris of Greek myth, who was asked by the gods to choose between love, wisdom, and power. He chose love -- the love of Helen of Troy.
The Talmud says Jerusalem was named by G-d. The name has two parts: Yira, which means "to see," and shalem, which means "peace."
Jerusalem was the place of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, and Abraham said of Jerusalem, "This is the place where G-d is seen."
Elsewhere, G-d is a theory, but in Jerusalem, G-d is seen, and felt, as a tangible presence. In Jerusalem we reach beyond the frailty and vulnerability of our lives, and we sense and strive for transcendence. Elsewhere we grope for insight. In Jerusalem we anticipate clarity. Paris may be for lovers, but Jerusalem is for visionaries.
Jerusalem is a metaphor for a perfected world, and it gives us
perspective on our lives. When Aldous Huxley said, "we have each of us our
Jerusalem," he meant much more than a temporal city of taxi cabs and
traffic jams. He meant a vision of what life might be.
The
vision of life's promise is one we surrender at our peril, because it
gives us the will to live. In exile for two thousand years Jews said "Next
year in Jerusalem," and amidst poverty and oppression they preserved the
dream of a world in which love and justice, not power and self-interest,
would be the currency men live by.
Part of the name Jerusalem is "vision." The other part of the name is peace, but the peace of Jerusalem is not the absence of strife. Jerusalem has rarely known anything but strife. The peace of Jerusalem is the peace at the center of the spokes of a wheel, where opposing forces may be delicately balanced and reconciled.
The Talmud says that creation begain in Jerusalem, and the world radiated outward from this place. Medieval maps show Jerusalem at the epicenter of Asia, Europe, and Africa. The world flows into this spot, and all life's forces resonate here. From this place, the whole world is cast into perspective.
Jerusalem, the center, which gives perspective to the rest of the world. Jerusalem where G-d is seen. Jerusalem the perfected world. Humanity has long understood that he who controls Jerusalem controls the world's memory. He controls the way G-d is seen. He controls the way life's forces are cast into perspective. He controls the way we collectively see our future.
Once the
Temple Mount was the highest point in the city of Jerusalem, but in the
year 135, Roman slaves carried away the dirt of the mountain, and turned
it into the valley we now look down on from the Old City. The Romans
expelled Jews from Jerusalem and barred them from reentering on pain of
death. Jewish life, they proclaimed, has now ended.
The Crusaders rewrote Jerusalem's importance, the center no longer of Jewish national drama, but the site of the passion and death of Jesus. Like the Romans they expelled Jews, and destroyed synagogues.
The Moslems came after, and as those before them rewrote the memory of Jerusalem, expelling Jews and Christian. They systematically built mosques on every Jewish holy site. They airbrushed the past.
In rewriting the history of Jerusalem each of these cultures rewrote our place, the Jewish place, in history. They consigned us, they believed, to the dust bin of history -- a once great people, now abandoned by G-d; bypassed by time.
But Jews
preserved Jerusalem as a memory. When we built our houses we left a square
unplastered, and we broke a glass at weddings in memory of Jerusalem. From
all over the world we turned and prayed toward Jerusalem, and because
memory was kept alive, the Jewish people lived.
When Jerusalem was liberated, time was conflated. The past became present. What we had longed for became ours. What we had dreamed of became real, and soldiers wept because an adolescent Mediterranean country suddenly recovered a memory lost for 2000 years. The past was instantly present, incredibly, transcendently, transforming who we knew ourselves to be.
Who are we? We are not despised and impoverished itinerants, surviving on the fickle goodwill of other nations. We are not a nation of farmers recovering swamps, nor of warriors -- though when we need to be we are all these things.
We are a nation of priests and of prophets, a light unto mankind. We taught the world "to beat their swords into plowshares," "to love your neighbor as yourself," equality before justice, and that admiration belongs not to the rich and powerful, but to the good, the wise, and the kind. Hitler said, "The Jews have inflicted two wounds on humanity: Circumcision on the body and conscience on the soul." How right he was and how much more we have to do. How tragic when we fail ourselves.
Since
the assassination of Prime Minister Rabin, the spectre of sectarian
violence is suddenly before us. Already divided by language, by geography,
and even by religion, our people is bound only by threads of memory and of
hope. These threads are exquisitely fragile. If they sever we will
fragment, and the long and bitter exile of our people -- not yet fully
ended, is consequence, says the Talmud, of the dissensions which sunder us
from one another.
To this threat, Jerusalem provides counterpoint, for Jerusalem embodies our memories and hopes. Jerusalem is a living memory, a vision of G-d in our lives, an image of a perfected world. Jerusalem gives us the strength to achieve what we as a people must do, to unite ourselves, and to sanctify this world.
(7) Lea , August 10, 2008
A Beautiful Article
Thank you for this beautiful article. I was blessed to be able to live in Jerusalem for two years, and it changed me forever. I agree with the person who spoke of the Old City. My first visit to the Western Wall brought me to tears - to see G-d's people praying prayers they had prayed for two thousand years in Jeruslam was wonderful and awe inspiring. You can feel the presence of G-d there.
(6) Ruth Housman , August 7, 2008
Ay Jerusalem!
Yes, Jerusalem in metaphor, Jerusalem the shining city, Jerusalem of Gold! There is something about this name, that is special, that evokes for so many, of disparate religions, a feeling of awe and holiness. We think of peace and we think of Jerusalem and then when we think back, down the years, so much bloodshed, so much pain, so much terror, so much divisiveness, the splitting of thunder and lightning. Wrath and Redemption. What is it about Jerusalem?
You have written a poetic piece about this City. I do believe we all need to heed the words, Wait and Hope, and surely we have been waiting a long, long time for something that seems almost a dream, a promise of roses, of perfume, this dove tale. I am saying it will happen. I do believe it will happen.
The "answer my friend is blowing in the wind".
(5) raye , May 24, 2004
Jerusalem - a city of all things to all people
Jerusalem does have all these centers: cultural industrial, commercial. scientific and countless more centers. It has these centers because it is a city. People live in it, they work in it, they carry on their daily lives in it. To me, it is the Old City that is more than any of these centers. One feels its traditions, its spirit and even during its centuries, its pain; also its strength and spirit through the ages that has been unconquerable despite all attempts to do so.
(4) Bobbie Goldman , May 20, 2004
So beautifully written and so inspiring on Jerusalem Day!
See summary above
(3) Volvi , May 18, 2004
Yira-Shalem
My understanding on the meaning of the name of Jerusalem is Yira-Faith, Shalem-fulfilled. Meaning that Yerushalayim is the place where ones ultimate faith in God is fulfilled. Makes more sense to me than city of peace, being historically the most fought after city in the world where hundreds of thousand perished in.