On Jerusalem

by Raeshma Razvi

Like many other cities worldwide, Chicago has been host lately to a number of lectures, films, readings, celebrations and protests dealing with another far more ancient city: Jerusalem.

Karen Armstrong’s Jerusalem

On a beautiful May 21 evening, on a campus blooming with flowers, renowned British author Karen Armstrong spoke at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute to promote her latest book, Jerusalem: One City, Three Faiths. Representatives of all faiths were in attendance, engrossed in her lucid evocation of the city’s many histories and meanings.

She began on a personal note, describing Jerusalem as “particularly important” in her life, especially since her visit there in 1983. That time, at work on a documentary about St. Paul for the BBC, Armstrong, a London resident, went through “considerable shock” over being in the very places that figured so centrally in the prayers and imagination of a devout, cloistered Catholic. Armstrong had been a Roman Catholic nun for seven years, and left the order in 1969. Her Jerusalem trip seemed a defining moment in both her life and her work, and she described it as the first time she became “really aware of the other faiths Judaism and Islam,” and began studying them. “My work has been an attempt to study these religions side by side,” she said.

Armstrong then posed two questions that frame her voluminous inquiry: How can a city be holy? and, Why is Jerusalem important to Muslims and Jews? She sketched the idea of a “sacred geography” as a “place more numinous than others,” and of people’s devotion to such spaces as “one of the earliest expressions of faith.” Sacred spaces “appeal to something deep,” and of these in the world, Jerusalem “draws people like a magnet.”

Neither reading from notecards nor the book, Armstrong interspersed factual nuggets such as “1900 B.C.E. was when the city was first mentioned,” with wider assessments such as, “There have always been predecessors in Jerusalem, and each must come to terms with the fact that the city is holy to others.”

The deep feelings that a people hold for the city often are predicated on certain historical events. “Christians were a rather interesting case in point,” she said. “They thought there was no need to crawl about holy sites and stones, that they could worship wherever. But that changed overnight when Emperor Constantine gave orders for the tomb of Jesus (which was built over a pagan temple) to be dug up, and this stunned the Christian world. Pilgrims came all the way from Bordeaux in France.”

A “more germane” example occurred recently within Judaism when the Jews were “reunited with the Western wall” in 1967, and what had been a secular movement in the religion then shifted. “An enthusiasm for sacred space entered Zionism and has never left it.

“Which,” continued Armstrong with a pregnant pause, “can be a dangerous thing, as Christian history shows.”

Islam’s “enthusiasm” with the city predated its arrival at the gates in 638. Muslims initially prayed facing Jerusalem, and even now highly revere the place as that from which Muhammad journeyed to heaven. Armstrong described this as “the most spiritual moment of his life…and a perfect act of surrender, or ‘Islam.’”

Such sacred stories and myths make Jerusalem a “city of imagination,” where geography is never meant literally and events achieve mythic proportions. Here people have “an experience with God, and perhaps a moving encounter with themselves.”

Jerusalem is a place of haunting primordial images, such as the Wailing Wall, which the Jews saw “as a survivor, like themselves,” Armstrong said. “It mirrors the self as well as the divine, so God is not just something out there but is found in the depths of the self.”

Armstrong balanced a spiritual view of Jerusalem with its place in contemporary history. She said that, precisely because of its holiness, the city carries responsibility and is linked with a quest for social justice. “There can be no peace, no holiness in Jerusalem, without justice.”

Divine encounters, suggested Armstrong with stories about Isaiah and Abraham, occur not just in shrines but in “acts of practical compassion,” kindness and respect for others.

When an audience member asked Armstrong about her ideas for peace in the region, she replied tentatively, “Tall order. No one comes out of Jerusalem smelling of roses…Peace is more than shaking hands on the White House lawn. It takes a long time, a change of heart. A new heart, a new soul is neededit will take a long, long time and will be very difficult to achieve.”

Chicagoans Protest “Jerusalem 3,000 Way”

The difficulty of achieving peace in Jerusalem was underscored just two weeks after Armstrong’s visit when a protest was staged June 6 by Arab Americans and peace activists over the naming of a downtown Chicago street “Jerusalem 3,000 Way.”

The Israeli campaign to “Judaicize” Jerusalem, “Jerusalem 3,000,” was launched last September and continues through the rest of this year. The anniversary celebration supposedly marks the biblical conquest of Jerusalem by King David, the actual date of which is unknown. According to the Jerusalem Action Committee of Chicagothe organizers of the protestthis campaign is “widely perceived as a propaganda effort of the Israeli government to cement international recognition of its annexation of East Jerusalem.”

In a light drizzly rain, protesters gathered during afternoon rush hour at the intersection of Wacker Drive and Wabashthe renamed sectionand waved signs reading “Jerusalem is an Arab City” and “East Jerusalem is an Occupied Territory.”

The city of Chicago had offered public support to the Israeli campaign by renaming part of this major street. In a public ceremony last fall, Mayor Richard Daley, two aldermen, and other officials spoke about the Jewish claim to Jerusalem. The Israeli consul general and other local Jewish organizations were on hand to receive kudos from some of Chicago’s top officials. “It was amazing,” said Stephen Siegel, an organizer of the protest who had witnessed the ceremony. “No mention of the Palestinian claim to the city was made, nor were Arab Americans invited to the ceremony.” Siegel, a professor of mathematics at Northwestern University, called the propaganda effort a “celebration of 29 years of stolen land, collective punishment and house demolition.”

Ghada Talhami, a native of Jerusalem and a professor at Lake Forest College, called this “an insult to immigrants in Chicago,” and reached out to Greeks, Poles and others “because they know what occupation is and this city chose to pay homage to another occupation. No one in Chicago would do so if they knew what happens there every day.” She commented that Britain and others in Europe objected to celebrating “Jerusalem 3,000” and asked, “Why can’t an immigrant city like Chicago do the same?”

The mayor’s office has refused to comment on the statements and has ignored repeated phone calls and letters from the groups organizing the protest.