It has been called mother, sister, daughter. Beloved of youth,
divorcee, and widow. Bereaved mother and violated virgin. Even
prostitute. It has been wrapped in male fantasy, as high as the
hills around it. A woman for all seasons, every possible emotional
need: for softness, security and calm; the need to adorn, to
conquer, to overpower. And most of all the need to be her
master.
Thus the relationship to Jerusalem was built in the image of
patriarchal marriage. Its lovers wanted to be her "husbands," and
according to the sociological pattern they knew, her only husbands,
each and every one in his own turn. The bond with the city adopted
many of the emotions which are part of the institution of
patriarchal wedlock, especially in this part of the world: anxiety
with regard to feminine modesty and honor, which is also the honor
of the male masters; and most of all, sole recourse to "her" beauty
and charms.
It is only natural that each one in his turn was filled with
passion to fon¬dle the roundness of the bulging hills and to
adorn them with pearls of stone and brick, to seal his one and only
covenant with the bride; or to enter the cleavage of winding wadis,
to leave there the signs of their vital¬ity and
virility.
Today the blood relationship between mother and daughters is
employed in the discourse to justify the annexation of areas which
have never before been included in Jerusalem's municipal
boundaries, to make them part of kinship intimacy. Soon all the
country will literally be "Eretz-Zion-vi¬-Yerushalaim" (the
land of Zion and Jerusalem), as it is written in the Israeli
national anthem. These words preserve an association from the
Diaspora, where Jews associated the whole country with the Holy
City.
Women of flesh and blood also deserve to be loved with less
posses¬siveness and more equality. However, Jerusalem is not a
woman. It is a city with a long, long history, in which many
peoples have lived and many cultures have teemed. So developed the
special character of the city. Whoever is in charge of it should
see her/himself as small enough in the perspective of the continuum
of the city's history, instead of projecting his (or rarely, her)
megalomanic dreams striving for eternity.
Jerusalem is my home. I love it and ache for its dead and its
living inhabitants. Neither the love nor the pain excludes the
similar feelings of anybody else. Nothing in me wishes my kind of
relationship to the city to be the only possible emotional option.
There is room here for many loves. There is no room here for
coveting, dispossessing and hatred.
Maybe most important is recognition that the population of
Jerusalem has real, concrete needs to be taken care of: schools,
parking lots, respect¬ful neighbors, freedom to live with all
one's family members, the right to express one's cultural,
religious, ethnic or national identity.
I don't expect poets to stop dreaming of Jerusalem as mother,
sister and beloved. May they never again mourn for "her" as widow
or bereaved mother. But we have today the ability and the
obligation to see through the imaginary veils of male fantasies in
which Jerusalem has been wrapped for ages, to grant to this unique
and beloved city sensibilities of a higher order of
open-mindedness, less blinded by frustrated emotional needs, which
can perhaps be better filled in the company of real men and women:
mothers, sisters, lovers and daughters.
Myself, I pray for the peace of Jerusalem, undivided city, two
capitals for two states of two nations.