Jerusalem Syndrome

Hope and Despair for a City I Love

I grew up with this photo in my room. It was one of a few that my parents selected for me, in a home with no screens. I would stare at them for long periods astrally projecting myself to Jerusalem, my birthplace, my destiny. I'd imagine touching those same stones and letting the presence of god rush in through my fingers and lips. I’d imagine being home.

It's the Israeli equivalent of the second most reproduced photograph of all time- the famous shot of American soldiers raising the flag over Iwo Jima- except imagine Iwo Jima was also the Statue of Liberty and Mt. Rushmore and Ground Zero:

It's an impossibly Israeli photograph. The man who took it heard “something huge was about to happen in Jerusalem”, so he hopped on a helicopter to Beersheba, then drove the rest of the way to Jerusalem, picking up a hitchhiking soldier on the way and instructing him to take the wheel, due to his complete exhaustion.

In a war that would eventually become known in Arabic as 'Al-Naksa', or 'The Setback', a coalition of Arab countries surprise attacked, fought, and spectacularly lost its third war with Israel.

As the Israeli counter attack succeeded, huge swaths of territory became available. A call came over the radio:

"The Temple Mount is in our hands!"

I imagine it must have raised the hairs of everyone who heard it. The Holy of Holies had been returned. An army of holocaust survivors and their children walked from the ashes of the crematoriums into the house of the eternal flame. All the prophecies of the Old Testament were materializing in front of them. From four corners of the world, on the wings of eagles, the nation that had turned a desert into a lush fertile land, walked to the site of the temple of the forefathers, to the mosque built on top of it, and raised a symbol of the ancient Jewish warrior-poet-king David, above it.

Rams horns trumpeted in celebration. My childhood hero, Rabbi Aryeh Levine, (whose picture was always beside the above photograph in my childhood bedroom) uttered the Shem Hamephorash, the unspeakable explicit name of god at the sight of it. I have not heard of any other instances of an orthodox rabbi pronouncing the name, not ever. He stood next to his grandson gazing at the miracles before his eyes, and wept. It must've felt like the messiah was a giggle away. 

And then reality set in.
The call came in from the higher-ups; take the flag down, before the entire Arab world falls upon us in rage. Take it down, before the world ends. Take it down. 

Reality set it in and kept setting in.

The messiah, despite clearly being invited, did not show up. Israel was beset by many more wars, and the temple mount remains a contested violent mess, roiling in the heat of the Middle Eastern sun.

Jews pray, read from the Torah, sing, cry, and dance at the outer wall of their destroyed temple, occasionally hit by rocks thrown at them from where their priests used to worship, or sniped by the cloaca-trigger happy doves that nest in its cracks. 

The Jerusalem I was born in and returned to for my bar mitzvah, and then again to live upon leaving yeshiva, is not the Jerusalem of prophecy. It's a weird, limbo state between hellish exile and the heavenly world to come. It's an extremely polarized city divided into quarters with a newer modern city fractally growing out of it. It is a spiritual focal point of humanity, in which all its opposites meet. Druze, Circassian, Arab Christian, and Bedouin border patrol soldiers zig-zag through its streets with billy clubs and assault rifles, keeping the violent peace between the Jews and the Muslims. Radio waves containing pornography pass through its ancient iconic golden natural dolomite limestone and into the phones of horny yeshiva students sneaking WiFi in the corners of coffee shops overcharging tourists for ice coffee that contains no coffee. Young people meet for BDSM kink parties in abandoned military bases, tying each other in sexy knots, then leave early to be on time for sabbath services. Devotes pray for peace as rocks and rockets arc over the sacred ground, catching a glint of the golden sun before finding their targets. 

I have seen the blood spilled for Jerusalem with my own eyes. I have touched the scars, the burns, the destroyed limbs on the bodies of the men who fought for her. I have heard the cries of the people whose souls were wounded by wars waged in her name. She is a city of gold, yes, but also of blood, also of tears. This year in Jerusalem, horrors are wrought in her name.

Nowadays, there's a mental illness named for the city- “Jerusalem Syndrome”. It describes a phenomenon wherein people arrive at the holy city's gates and promptly go psychotic. Something about literally stepping into the bible is just too much. They snap, sometimes forever. Most commonly, they come to believe they are Jesus or Moses or Mohamed and begin to act accordingly. 

But the way I often feel is more like Paris Syndrome- a phenomenon where many tourists arrive in Paris and find it to be not a Disneyland paradise but a city, just a big human city with a large cell tower-looking thing rising up from between the expensive cafes, and so their minds snap in the other direction- complete depression. If Paris isn't really the way they hoped, maybe nothing is. 

Is there a middle path, between Paris and Jerusalem syndrome? I don't know. I hope so. But the ingredients in this bowl- the religious zealotry, the ancient animosity, the burgeoning brutality, the doomed demographics- it's all coming together to make a nasty batch of hummus. It can be painful to hope, and I still do, but after the past few months, parts of me are beyond hoping for permanent peace in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem! I returned to you at age 13, and walked the path down from the new city to the old, walked back through time, past border guards and shopkeepers down to the western wall, and touched the house of God with my own hands, and felt the dwelling of his presence in the stones, retained there much the same way they hold the heat of the day in the cool desert nights.

Jerusalem! I returned as a confused young adult, tossed and turned by an existential crisis, watching my faith crumble before me as the temple had thousands of years ago. I returned in part to see if the city was still holy, and to debate the rabbis that had convinced my parents to become religious upon their pilgrimage to the eye of the world. It felt like my tether to that reality was fading and being there was my last hail Moses. It didn't work, or it did, depending on how you see Jerusalem. My faith crumbled, yes. Touching the stones felt no different than touching a tree, but the City of Opposites worked a different magic on me.

Jerusalem! I still loved you, I still love you. I realized I was never going to be a rabbi, that the bible codes probably weren't real, and that the rabbis who had converted my parents were not nearly as convincing as I had imagined. But you taught me: I needn't just be one thing, I can be its opposite at the same time. So despite feeling less Jewish than I ever had, I stayed there, for years. It was perfect; a liminal space between the secular and religious worlds, a smooth transition from one way of life to another, a middle ground where I could try and sort out the best parts of both. I wasn't going to be a rabbi but I wasn't going to be completely 100% not a rabbi either. I could be Jewish, I could be ‘just a human’;  I could be a hippy, I could be a corporate photographer; I could be sacred, I could be profane.

Jerusalem! Can she pull it off? Can she be all the contradictory things she has to be? Can she hold every version of Abraham’s vision in her arms? Can she be a hill and a valley? Can she maintain the balance necessary for all to whom she is a home?

I hope so. And I am losing hope. But for the City of Opposites, I will try and hold these two together.