Dreams of Jerusalem

Like most Americans, my first encounter with Jerusalem was reading about it in the Bible. It was the capital city of David’s Israel, the city where the Ark was placed, the place where the Temple was built, and the city where Jesus of Nazareth was crucified. Like most Americans, Jerusalem faded from my imagination in my later teenage years and early twenties. University life was implicitly, if not explicitly, pro-Palestinian and the only consideration of religion was for a supposedly oppressed Islam which had suffered from the hands of Christian crusaders, European imperialist Orientalists, and Jewish Zionists. Islam was treated with sympathy, all other religions, especially Christianity, treated with interrogative scorn and derision. Unlike most Americans, when I had the opportunity to visit Jerusalem in 2017 my life changed—for the better.

While a student at Yale I took the chance to apply for the 2017 Herzl Institute Young Scholars seminar which was part of the larger Bible and Philosophy summer conference hosted in Jerusalem. Having traveled in East Asia and other places as an undergraduate, applying to a seminar and conference in Jerusalem would achieve multiple goals: another trip to a foreign land, academic credential building (which I considered important at the time), and setting foot in the holy land and holy city. After all, this was the land of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, of David, Solomon, and the Prophets. Dreams of Jerusalem could be made a reality.

The debt the West owes to the Jewish religion is immense. Yes, the West owes much to the inheritance of Greece and Rome, and to the Gothic tribes turned kingdom under the Carolingians and Holy Roman Empire. But the moral individualism that has so defined the West, and the moral egalitarianism that has driven advancements in law, are owed to the revelation of God to Moses and the Israelites at Sinai. There are countless works of scholarship, liberal and conservative alike, that testify to the exceptionalism of Judaism and the Hebrew Bible upon Western thought: Thomas Cahill’s The Gift of the Jews; Larry Siedentop’s Inventing the Individual; Joshua Berman’s Created Equal; Eric Nelson’s The Hebrew Republic; and Os Guiness’s The Magna Carta of Humanity, just to name a few. A West without the inheritance of Jerusalem is a West that is blind, crippled, and ultimately self-destructive.

When my plane landed in Tel Aviv, there was a great commotion among the passengers. Some, like me, were obviously first-time travelers in Israel. They seemed to be evangelical Christians by their tone and language, they were comforted by Jewish passengers telling them where to go, what sites to see, what to do. “See the Jordan River.” “Visit the Old City.” “Gaze upon the Temple Mount.” “Look at the Mount of Olives.” “Stand in the streets of Bethlehem.” A joyful air of love surrounded inside the plane as it began its descent.

To many Americans and Europeans, Israel’s predicament awkward and difficult to comprehend – one hard to fathom in our countries of peace and prosperity without the specter of existential war looming over us at any moment. Taking a taxi from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the cab driver, a cheerful old man of about 60, would point out the armed guards as we traveled and approached Jerusalem. Their presence was, even in a time of peace, a reminder of the threat that Israel faces at any moment, a threat the world witnessed roar its vile and ugly, barbaric, head on October 7.

Jerusalem was a beautiful city; it was lively and energetic. The streets were lined with vendors and customers considering what to eat, what to buy, who to talk to. Off in the distance I could see the Abbey of the Dormition. Soon I would be in the Old City, approach the Temple Mount, and see the glistening rays of the setting sun on the Al-Asqa Mosque. Jerusalem was a vibrant multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious city glistening with the hum and hustle of life.

Walking up the streets to the Old City, history suddenly came alive. This was the land that David ascended with the Ark. This was the ground where Sennacherib’s army had been driven back. This was the ground that Alexander the Great had tread according to Josephus. This was the ground where Pompey strode forth before sacking the Temple. This was the city where Jesus entered on a donkey on Palm Sunday. These were the hills and streets of ferocious fighting in 1948 and 1967. The whispers of so many great souls reverberated through my ears. I had read so much about Jerusalem, but to be there in person and to see with my own eyes the city of lore and to hear the songs of life of so many people today surpassed all the ink and pages I had turned over through the years.

Of the many little pilgrimages I made into the Old City, the most memorable was not planned. I was walking through the narrow streets, the back alleyways, essentially just shop-seeing. I had already purchased a few things for family members back home when I turned down another narrow alley. I had no idea where I was going or what I would see. That’s part of the fun. When walking down the street, a door was decorated with a beautiful mosaic – an arch depicting the stories of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament, from the creation of Adam and Eve in Eden to Noah’s Ark to Moses at Sinai and then forward to the Prophets. It was a most soul-stirring and grabbing moment precisely because it was unexpected.

The mosaic that lined the door was not the grand architecture of ancient walls, towers, synagogues, churches, or mosques that dot the landscape of the city. It was just a collection of painted stones arranged in a way to tell the biblical story as one entered the door. Though it lacked the grandiosity of many of the great sites in Jerusalem, the story it told was a hopeful one: Peace, Reconciliation, Life. I took a photo and sent it to my dad, the one person in my life who had instilled in me at a young age the appreciation of the biblical stories.

It has been many years since I took that fateful turn and wandered down the streets of the Old City of Jerusalem—not to mention the streets of the new Jerusalem. That moment, though, is still seared into my memory. Yes, I had done so much more while I was in Jerusalem. But that fateful turn down a darkened alleyway brought to my attention the true dream of Jerusalem, not the dreams that children have or even teenagers have, not the dreams that conquerors and would-be conquerors have, but the dream of a city at peace, filled with love and life; an order of the soul that brings contentment with the self and the Divine, an order that brings true peace and happiness. That was the message of the mosaic.

A summer in Jerusalem is more than most souls can ever ask. The kindness of a husband and wife—the son and daughter-in-law of a family friend from back in Cleveland—the pleasant and smiling conversations with cab drivers, random strangers, graduate students and professors, showered my heart with the beautiful fragrance that has inspired many souls over thousands of years. When I came to Jerusalem, I was but a pilgrim. When I left Jerusalem, I was still a pilgrim but one who experienced the heart of the love, kindness, and compassion that is often lost amid the darkness and turbulence of this world—but the heart which still guides that city today and calls so many souls to it to build a better tomorrow.

That dream endures and will endure despite the fires that rage around it. For three thousand years the city of inspiring love, where heaven and earth meet, has been ensnared by fire but has always come out the other side with the heart of love burning brighter than the destructive smoke attempting to smother it. Peace shall come again and the love that Jerusalem showed me, and many others, will shower many more souls with a love that heals and brings new life.

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