Can we begin to think of Jerusalem in terms of her own identity?

I will focus on the concluding chapter, Zion, to share my final thoughts of “Jerusalem, One City, Three Faiths”.  In my Foundations of Modern Political Thought class we have just finished reading Plato’s “The Republic”. I find Armstrong’s comments in the chapter Zion quite relatable to Plato’s statements in “The Republic”. Plato says a city must have its pieces in a harmonious balance, in order to function; but first the individuals, who live within the society, must harmonize their souls. Without focusing on balancing the soul of the citizens, the city will fail, for the people will act unjustly, even though the institutions are set up for success.

Armstrong strongly asserts that the “deep fissure within Israeli society’ (Page 408) has deeply hurt the Jewish people individually and as a whole. She points to the Holocaust as a major reason why the Jewish people felt so torn. “The Nazi catastrophe had inflicted a wound that was too deep to be healed by more cerebral consolidations.  The old myths- an ancient form of psychology-could reach to a deeper, less rationally articulate level of the soul. The new Jewish passion for the holiness for Jerusalem… was powerful not because it was legal or reasonable but precisely because it was a myth.” (Page 406)

Although the Jews had possession of Israel, they have not found wholeness within themselves. Within a few months of the ‘unification’ of the city, there was a new ‘partition’ at the Western Wall. The southern end was now a historic, ‘secular’ zone; the old praying area was the domain of the religious; and in between was a neutral zone- a new No Man’s Land. On two occasions in the summer of 1969, the worshippers actually charged through the barbed-wire fence in order to liberate this neutral area for god. (Page 409) From the disputes between the Orthodox and Secular Jews on how to build their Zion and treat their sacred places, to how to treat the Palestinians and their sacred places, different sects of Jews where constantly disputing the future. A major a defining blow came to many Israelis when in November 1995; Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin was murdered after speaking at a peace rally in Tel Aviv. “Israelis learned that the assassin was another Jew, who declared that he had acted under God’s direction and that is was permissible to kill anybody who was prepared to give sacred land of Israel to the enemy.” (Page 425) Armstrong makes a moving comment on these travesties by saying, “as soon as the prime duty to respect the divinity enshrined in other human beings is forgotten, ‘God’ can be made to give a divine seal of absolute approval to our own prejudices and desires. (424)

Another moving comment made by Armstrong is when she says, “Sometimes when confronting a shrine Jews, Christians, and Muslims have felt that they have had a startling and moving encounter with themselves. This can make it very difficult for them to see Jerusalem and its problems objectively. Many of the difficulties arise when religion is seen primarily as a quest for identity. One of the functions of faith is to help us build up a sense of self: to explain where we have come from and why our traditions are distinctive and special. But that is not the sole purpose of religion.” (Page 423) I believe this comment parallels nicely with Naomi Chazan’s article, Owning Our Identity. Chazan says the Israeli state of today should be striving for the right of self-determination, not self-definition because introducing a loyalty oath and demanding external recognition of a ‘Jewish State’ is not sufficient way to legitimize the state of Israel.

From the text which has been read thus far in this course, I have become much more knowledgeable of the history of this region. Although I am more knowledgeable, this does not make the question of peace within the region a more attainable answer. On the contrary, it generates more difficultly.  At this point, I believe that re-defining, re-thinking what this territory is and what it means for the many people who call it home is of major importance. Can we begin to think of Jerusalem in terms of her own identity, not defining her by the majority population who possess at the present time?  Jerusalem has a rich religious, cultural, and ethnic heritage which should not be over burdened by manmade entities such as political power and borders.  

Armstrong ends the text with mixed image, that of violence and hope. Violence has been a re-occurring theme in this land since its birth, but if peace can be found, “Zion would indeed become a beacon of hope for the whole world-a light to the nations.” (430)