30 June 2005:
I arrived in Jerusalem early on a Thursday morning and headed to HUC to pick up my apartment key. Throughout the move-in process, things were pretty much as you'd expect from a move. Except that I was doing all of it IN JERUSALEM for pete's sake. It seemed strange to me, at first, that I was here in this holiest of cities occupied not so much by transcendental religious experiences as by being on hold with the cable internet company. And I had to buy towels and cleaning supplies. And do laundry. And set up vonage. In Jerusalem.
I was confused when I first saw a homeless person on the street here. It was jarring:
"A homeless person, in this city?!? Poverty, here? Impossible." Very possible indeed, and fairly prevalent.
This was my first lesson about Jerusalem: it is a real city, with real people, and replete with real problems. Interesting, then, that the Jewish tradition idealizes (and idolizes?) Jerusalem to such a degree, going so far as to describe it as an earthly Eden. But even while idealizing, it acknowledges.
I think Judaism has an ethos of embracing a vision of the ideal while being immersed in the everyday. Our tradition is very good at creating holiness in unexpected mundane places. "God was in this place and I did not know it...." (See also Leviticus and Numbers for some idea of what I mean....)
But how does this apply to Jerusalem, exactly? For the beginning of an answer, let us turn, as we often do, to the words of Heschel (both AJ and Susannah), from his book (and her introduction to) Israel: An Echo of Eternity (1969):
- The Land itself is not holy ... but is the site for holiness to be created.
- God is not dwelling any more in Israel than anywhere else....
- We do not worship the soil.
- The vision of Israel that emerges from this book is a challenge, not a panacea. Israel is a measure of moral fiber, a demand that "justice prevails over power, that awareness of God penetrates human understanding." The State of Israel is not a gift to the Jews, nor an achievement on their part, but a test of the integrity of the Jewish people and the competence of Judaism.
Of course this isn't God's kingdom on earth. Of course there's poverty here. Of course there are mundane errands to run, and the vagaries of everyday life preoccupy our thoughts. The challenge here -- as everywhere, though perhaps it's more exaggerated in the City of David -- is to see (and, when possible, create) the sacred within the profane.
Now, when I figure out exactly how to do that, I'll be sure to blog about it. For now, I'll just leave you with the suggestion that it involves a combination of prayer, study, and action. I invite you to add your own $0.02 on this topic; please leave a comment below.
...the Holy Land is wholly land...
2 comments:
Wow. Your entry is very thought-provoking, David. So much so that my comments would be lengthy and probably the start of an interpolated conversation. Which I'm somewhat reluctant to start publically since I'm not Jewish and so in one sense can't possibly understand what it means to be a Jew in Jerusalem and could therefore really easily piss off a fairly wide audience inadvertently. (And, as you know, if I'm going to piss people off, I want it to be on purpose ;-] .)
And also since I've discovered there are so few people who enjoy my kind of extended "conversation" on serious subjects. Or, as I was told by a young alum recently, "You take yourself way too seriously." Put somewhat more coarsely by a respondent to a philosophical musing I'd made in a blog on the functions religion serves in the human psyche, "Dude, you need to get laid. Or get a better hobby." ;-)
However, since your comments provoke a great deal of thought, I'll probably get those thoughts to you in one form or another...
I think a much more important quest--and often more difficult, especially in places that are holy to people--is to seek the profane in the holy. In other words, to dissociate the mystical aura from the place and realize that God is in us, not the land, not the building, not the stone, not the ikon.
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