Tiyulim Through History

In our Biblical History class Wednesday night our professor asked the following question: "what is so special about Jerusalem?" Jerusalem itself is not mentioned even once in the Five Books of Moses (though one could argue that there are some indirect references). The first mention of Jerusalem in the Bible (the Torah, the Prophets and the Writings) is found in Joshua 10:1, (and then again in Joshua 12, Joshua 15, and then Judges 1:21, II Samuel 5, Kings, and then later on in Chronicles). To go back in time, Jerusalem was founded almost 4000 years ago in the 19th century B.C.E. as a small town. According to the Bible, Jerusalem was made the jewel of the Israeli crown by the revered King David (whose son Solomon built the first Temple, and so on) around the 10th century B.C.E. It doesn't seem as though there was any inherently religious reason for making Jerusalem the capital. Instead, as posited our professor, David could have chosen Jerusalem as a capital of a united Judah as it qualified as a sort of Washington, D.C., or Ottawa, Canada - it was centrally located though not coveted by any particular tribe/state/province.

In any event, whatever the reason for choosing Jerusalem, 3000+ years later it is still special, to all sorts of peoples for all sorts of reasons. By making it special it has become so.

As an extension, what makes Israel itself so special? Does it make a difference whether or not the stories of Abraham, Sarah, Isaac, Rachel, Leah, Jacob, and Moses ever happened? Do these stories explain meaning or create it? I am reminded of a famous quote from the late great former Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir: "Let me tell you something that we Israelis have against Moses. He took us 40 years through the desert in order to bring us to the one spot in the Middle East that has no oil!" This thought tread, that of the relationship between history, Jewish tradition, and geography, will be something that I will continue to address and develop. As a quick preview, in my gut I do not feel that the biblical tales that make up the basis of the Jewish story, particularly the Exodus accounts, need to have actually happened in order to be important and relevant. These parables, many drawn from other traditions, seek to provide a worldview, a hermeneutic, a way of seeing. For example, whether or not we were once actually slaves in Egypt does not matter as much as the message of Passover: by imagining ourselves as having been slaves we are to work to free those still in bondage.

Living here in Jerusalem now, though, I am struck by the fact that whatever meaning we may give it, we are surrounded by history. On Thursday we spent the day tiyuling (traveling) through the excavations of the City of David, the area adjacent to the Old City dating back almost 4000 years, which was made the 'united capital' some 3000 years ago. We also toured excavations at Ramat Rachel just outside of Jerusalem that date back to the First Temple Period.

Earlier in the week, on Monday, I joined colleagues on a bike ride through Mt. Herzl, around Yad Vashem and through the Jerusalem forest, all sites of interest. Throughout the bike ride we were surrounded by Israel's modern history: Mt. Herzl is a national cemetery (Levi Eshkol, Golda Meir and Yitzhak Rabin are all buried there, among others) and Yad Vashem is the nation's Holocaust memorial and museum. The Jerusalem forest itself contains, among other things, a special memorial to President Kennedy.

I feel that I have only begun to explore this city and its histories. Whatever Jerusalem's origins (some 4000 years ago), it has become a city complete and infused with meaning....