Reflections on United Jerusalem

Last week we marked the fortieth anniversary of the reunification of east and west Jerusalem in the Six Day War, an occasion perhaps more worthy of contemplation than celebration. Interestingly, most of the festive ceremonies planned to commemorate the occasion were cancelled due to an enormous freak downpour that flooded the city's streets and sent everyone scurrying for high ground. It was hard not to wonder if this un-seasonal cloudburst was some sort of signal indicating our hubris level had spiked into a forbidden zone.

United Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people and, with a population of 732,000, it's the largest city in Israel. Yet, most Israelis do not want to live here (78%, according to a recent survey). Do they know something I, a longtime resident of this city, don't?

Perhaps it's the Arabs – all 200,000 of them, over there in the wild West Bank part of the city (funny, I didn’t notice any festivities taking place on their side of town last week). It's true that in the halcyon days of the first Intifada the east Jerusalem Palestinians led their nation in stone throwing, rioting and stabbings on a nationalistic basis. Our nostalgia for those days grew poignant during the second Intifada, when you couldn't walk down Jaffa Road without dodging a suicide bomber or shrapnel from an exploding bus. For years Jerusalem has been stigmatized as a dangerous locale even though similar horrors have taken place in numerous other cities in Israel.

What most people don’t know is that the Arabs of east Jerusalem have become extremely sophisticated. You live with the Jews long enough and you learn to play their games. Case in point A: Omar at the medical clinic, in front of me in line. He claims a woman called his home to confirm his appointment but the secretary has no record of it and tells him he'll have to reschedule. Omar ratchets up the volume a few decibels. "You people are all the same. You think you can lie to me because I'm an Arab. You just want to give my appointment to a Jew." A little Jewish guilt works like a charm. He got shown in straight to the doctor.

Case in point B: Zakaria, a taxi driver who drove me to Tel Aviv the other day. "My son was one of two Arabs in an Israeli-German delegation visiting the Western Wall. The security guard ordered them to stay out while everyone else went in because they were Arabs. Not only did the other members refuse to go in, but I called my friend, a well-known journalist, who published the story in the newspaper the next day. You should have seen the headline!"
Boy, he sure showed us. Any Arab who successfully manipulates the tools of democracy to advance his own interests is welcome in my city any day.

Personally, I think the real reason Israelis shudder at the thought of living in Jerusalem is the dossim, that wonderfully derogatory term for the ultra-orthodox. In bygone days when they represented a fairly negligible slice of the municipal population their communities were considered quaint and picturesque, but in recent years they have morphed into a demographic tidal wave that is threatening to take over the city. Regardless of secular Jerusalemites' intellectual and moral superiority over other Israelis, unavoidably the majority sets the tone and the ultras are rapidly becoming the majority in this city. Even as the temptations of modernity force them kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century, they still cling fiercely to the shtetl mentality. Their values, their aspirations, the way they educate their children and their (anti-)vision of the Jewish state are completely foreign to me. We share nothing in common and they cast an extremely threatening shadow over the future of Jerusalem as a modern, enlightened and efficient city.

Granted, in the eyes of many Jerusalem has always been problematic. Isolated by an unforgiving landscape of treacherous ravines, it always lay out of the limits of visitors and invaders entering from the coast. Pioneers of the early Zionist movement wouldn't touch it with a ten-foot pole for all that it represented, and even those who did choose to settle here seemed, well…different. In A Tale of Love and Darkness Amos Oz says, "In Jerusalem people always walked rather like mourners at a funeral, or latecomers at a concert…But Tel Aviv – wow! The whole city was one big grasshopper. The people leaped by, so did the houses, the streets, the squares, the sea breeze, the sand, the avenues, and even the clouds in the sky."

Tel Aviv has undeniably grown on me recently. What for years seemed like a collection of shapeless buildings with crumbling plaster and stifling humidity lately has revealed its hidden charm to me and reinvented itself as a city of character, with unique architecture and new takes on Judaism. Yet, I still can't see myself living there, although I'm not sure why.

So I turned to some of my fellow secular Jerusalemites for inspiration, asking them to explain, in a few lines, why they still live here. Much to my surprise, only one hemmed and hawed; the others responded unequivocally about their passion for this city. Almost all remarked on its unique beauty; several mentioned the weather. The ethnic, cultural and religious diversity figured prominently: one person noted that Jerusalem offers the most alternatives for non-orthodox Jewish observance, and another remarked that crossing a street here can be like crossing a border between countries. But the strongest sentiment was the sense of connection one feels in Jerusalem between our history and the contemporary reality of life in Israel. Virtually every important issue is played out in some form in Jerusalem, and many of us thrive on that difficult energy. Our location at the pulsing epicenter of Israel heightens our awareness of the fascinating history that unfolds here every day; therefore we think we are smarter, more down-to-earth and more values-oriented than our compatriots from the sweaty, superficial coastal plain.

I can hear the guffaws rising over the Tel Aviv metropolitan area and floating upwards on the Highway 1 current. Seventy eight percent still think we're crazy for staying in Jerusalem, and who knows? Maybe they're right. But then again, here's a typical Jerusalem weekday morning from this week:

In the car on the way to school my girls went over their notes for the final exam on Jewish Thought. They discussed different visions of the world and compared John Lennon's ideal from 'Imagine,' where there are no countries, borders or religions, to Yeshayahu Leibowitz's affirmation of the positive nature of the Tower of Babel story, noting he said it is preferable for everyone to think independently, even it means there will be bloodshed in the world. Listening to them I wished myself back into tenth grade at Tali Bet Hinuch high school, just so I could participate in the discussion.
Wistfully I continued to the gym at the YMCA. As I approached the building I heard a loud noise from the King David hotel across the street. A large crowd was gathered in the entrance and as I grew closer I could see several television cameras and large microphones dangling overhead. A few musicians dressed in classic middle eastern garb were playing darbuka drums and someone was blowing a shofar. Suddenly, a figure appeared from within the knot of people. It was a kid, about thirteen years old, in a fancy suit and a kippa. Noting it was Monday, I realized this cacophonous production was actually a bar mitzvah and they were probably on their way to the Western Wall. A well-to-do Jewish family had come all the way to Jerusalem with an enormous entourage to celebrate their son's first Torah reading at the fanciest hotel in town. A sublime co-mingling of ancient tradition, historical framing and twenty-first century hoo-hah.

Where else, but Jerusalem?