JERUSALEM
A few quotes to illustrate why the city of Jerusalem means more than any other city. Historian Simon Sebag Montefiore in his remarkable biography of Jerusalem speaking
Jerusalem is the only city to exist twice – in heaven and on earth: the peerless grace of the terrestrial is as nothing to the glories of the celestial
The fact that Jerusalem is both terrestrial and celestial means that the city can exist anywhere. New Jerusalems have been founded all over the world and everyone has their own vision of Jerusalem
Every great king became David, every special people were the new Israelites and every noble civilization a new Jerusalem, the city that belongs to no-one and exists for everyone in their imagination And this is the city’s tragedy as well as her magic
Jerusalem is a city and is also a theme, a fulcrum, a spine even, of the world story
Both the temporal and the celestial Jerusalem are ruled more by faith and emotion than by reason and facts. And Jerusalem remains the centre of the world
Nothing is simple as it might seem. Jerusalem is a city of continuity and coexistence, a hybrid metropolis of hybrid buildings and hybrid people who defy the narrowing categorizations that belong in the separate religious legends and narratives of later times
There are not just two sides in Jerusalem but many interlinked, overlapping cultures and layered loyalties- a multi-faceted, mutating kaleidoscope of Arab Orthodox, Arab Muslins, Sephardic Jews, Ashkenazi Jews, Haredi Jews of legion courts, secular Jews, Armenian Orthodox, Georgian Serbs, Russians, Copts, Protestants, Ethiopians, Latins and so on. A single individual often has several loyalties to different identities, the human equivalent of Jerusalem’s layers of stone and dust
Jerusalem is a two-way mirror revealing her inner life while reflecting the world outside
Jerusalem has a way of disappointing and tormenting both conquerors and visitors. The contrast between the real and heavenly cities so excruciating that a hundred patients a year are committed to the city’s asylum, suffering from the Jerusalem Syndrome, a madness of anticipation, disappointment, and delusion
No other place evokes such a desire for exclusive possession. Yet the jealous zeal is iconic since most of Jerusalem’s shrines, and the stories that go with them, have been borrowed or stolen, belonging formerly to another religion. The city’s past is often imaginary. Virtually every stone once stood in the long-forgotten temple of another faith, the victory archon another empire. Most, but not all, conquerors have not destroyed what came before but reused and added to it. The important sites such as the Temple Mount, the Citadel, the City of David, Mount Zion and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre do not present distinct layers of history but are more like a palimpsest, works of embroidery in which the silk threads are so interwoven it is now impossible to separate them
History of Jerusalem has to be both a history of truth and legend
Jerusalem continues to be both the essence of and the obstacle to a peace deal