What’s your favorite city? New York? Las Vegas? Paris? Within our collective consciousness, Jews have a favorite city: Jerusalem. It’s not the Big Apple. It’s not Sin City. It’s not gay Paris. It is the Holy City and it belongs to the Jewish people.
As I write or say these words, I catch myself. How selfish can I possibly be! By virtue of what do I claim Jerusalem ours to the exclusion of others who may lay claim to it? And, above all, why should Jerusalem matter to me anymore? Good questions. Here are a few good answers.
We ought to recognize the arrogance of those who would have us forget Jerusalem. New York is an international phenomenon, but no one tells New Yorkers to forget New York. Paris is also an international phenomenon, to be sure, but no one tells Parisians to forget Paris. Yet somehow, Jerusalem, an international phenomenon no less than New York or Paris, must be politically shared. Why? Is the world afraid of Israelis making Jerusalem off limits to the international community? That would be bizarre. Jerusalem, the Holy City, the city whose name translated actually means the City of Peace, is open to everyone, Jews, Christians and Moselms. It is not open to terrorists, as I hope no city would be. On the other hand, try, if you will, entry to Mecca, the holiest city in Islam and birthplace of Mohammad. You will find that the entire city is reserved only for the faithful and that, by Islamic definition, would be Moslems.
The world does not owe Jews anything more than the simple respect accorded anyone or any nation ready to contribute to civilization. Jerusalem is part—and a very large part of Jewish history. Denying our historical connection to Jerusalem is an attempt to weaken us as a people and a nation, for a nation must have a collective memory, and those memories include Jerusalem as the center of our religious life, the capital of a former Jewish commonwealth, a place of intense literary creation sacred to so many, namely the Bible, and it is Jerusalem’s destruction that we have mourned for centuries. Those who claim that none of this matters can do so, for Jewish continuity is not their concern.
But more than Jewish history, Jerusalem is the Jewish present as well. It is a symbol of Jewish renewal and rebirth, of Jewish guts, both in the sense of our spiritual lives and the blood we have shed in our efforts to make the Jewish past the Jewish present. The Moslems have Mecca and Medina. The Christians have Bethlehem and Rome. The Jews make no claims to any city in the world, other than Jerusalem. The world that finds this so outrageous is acting unfairly to the Jewish people.
In our Torah portion this week, Shoftim, Moshe teaches us that should a legal case be so complicated that we need a greater authority to resolve it, we should go to the judges who reside in “that place that the Lord chose” (Deuteronomy 17:10). As later history would clarify, that place would be Jerusalem, but I love the way Jerusalem is anonymous in the Torah portion. Why? Because for Jews, there is no other place. That silent understanding of what Jerusalem means to us is in part what keeps us together as a people. Jerusalem is welcome to all people of peace. But remember, Jerusalem is the Jewish people’s. We should say it unself-consciously, and with the humility such a responsibility entails.
Always glad for the opportunity to hear what you are thinking.
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