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Committment 2007
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The Resonance of Jerusalem
Adin Steinsaltz
28 Iyar/May 16, 2007 Marks The 40th Anniversary Of Reunified Yerushalayim
Everyone who lives in Jerusalem – especially those like me who were born here –
is in love with the city, really in love. For us it is not just a place, not
just a house; it is a home. But it is even more than that -- it is an object of
love. Even visitors are in some way ensnared by Jerusalem. So many of their
hearts are captured, but in different ways, for different reasons. Why is it so?
Jerusalem is many things to many people because it is, and always has been, a
kind of enigma. It is a place that is composed of many parts. They may seem to
clash with one another, but somehow they achieve a kind of harmony that is felt
by anyone who walks her streets or breathes her air or soaks up her sunshine.
Jerusalem is simple, but not naďve. Jerusalem is simple in a most sophisticated
simplicity, because Jerusalem has passed sophistication. It is a very old city.
It is a city that has suffered much and has known so many things that it is now
very simple, like some of those great masterpieces. The simplicity hides so many
things. You look at it, you dream about it and you think, what really is it?
Jerusalem is also, in many ways, a combination of contradictions: it is called,
and its name itself implies, “City of Peace,” yet so many wars took place here.
It is perhaps one of the most quarrelsome and troublesome places in the world,
but it is still a city of peace. There is a saying, especially in Jewish
tradition, that it is “the house of God.” The gate to heaven is understood to
refer to Jerusalem, but Jewish tradition also identifies the valley of Gehinnom
(hell) near the walls of the Old City.
This is Jerusalem. This is what the Psalmist described as a city that was
joined together. It is not just joined together because there is old and new, or
because it is home to religious and non-religious, Muslims and Jews and
Christians. It is a place that combines differences and brings them, somehow,
together in a kind of harmony of contradictions. And there is another
explanation which seems very beautiful to me -- that the name Jerusalem comes
from yir’eh shalem, which may be translated as “a complete view,” another form
of harmony.
It is historically, and perhaps theologically, significant that Jerusalem is
unlikely as the site of a capital. It is not on a road, or on a river or near
the sea. It is somewhere -- in nowhere. Even so, it is a center – the place the
Bible tells us that God chose. But why? In life, as in geology, there is
physical causality, in which things move and are understood according to
physical laws and reasoning. This physical causality, which some might call
“real life”, is one level of existence.
There is also another, higher and very different level of causality – a
spiritual one – in which there are rewards and punishments for good and evil.
Usually, there are no connections between the physical and spiritual strata;
they don’t mix. People may move from one level to the other, but they don’t mix.
But there are in spirituality, as in geology, points at which the levels touch,
where two strata of existence somehow come together in one point, like a corner
formed by two walls. The corner has no substance of its own, but like a lap,
exists because of the relationship of two other planes. This juncture is what
Jacob called the ladder or gate to heaven, a place where influence, power and
insight can move either way, between the spiritual and material worlds.
Such a point is Jerusalem.
No one knows why it should be so, but Jerusalem is a fault-line in the
stratification of the world order. Just as water may spurt forth from a
geological fault, so too Jerusalem is a gushing wellspring of existence, a
source of goodness and benefit. Because this point where the physical and
spiritual worlds meet is the place where they can work together, things happen
in Jerusalem that do not conform to ordinary rules. Here, more than anywhere
else, the smallest events take on a cosmic meaning and enigmatic complexity that
are beyond our understanding.
An event that happens in Jerusalem reverberates all over the world, yet a
similar incident elsewhere passes almost unnoticed. Only here does the causality
of the material world become entangled with the entirely different causality of
the spiritual world. The energy of justice and the energy of power are pulled
toward Jerusalem, as toward a lightning rod, and become entangled, sending shock
waves around the globe.
Jerusalem is a place of power and resonance, waiting perhaps hoping for a voice
that will be heard all over the world, a voice that will renew the message of
peace and wholeness and holiness that has always issued from this holy city.
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