Jerusalem [antikvár]

I The Mists of Antiquity 2000-1000 BCJewish pilgrims crossing the forecourt to approach the Western Wall shortly after the war in June 1967.Jerusalem, with a recorded history of some four thousand years, has been more familiar to more people for a longer period than any other place on earth. It is a city of enchantment, perched high amid the Judean hills, some forty miles inland from the Mediterranean coast. It stands in the centre of Israel, roughly midway between the country's southern tip, Eilat, gateway to the Red Sea, and Metullah, in the north, on the Lebanese border.This is the city of David, who in the tenth century bc unified the country and proclaimed Jerusalem the capital. This is the city of Solomon's Temple. This is the city where the giant prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah uttered thoughts which influenced the moral and religious attitudes of half the human race. This was the scene of Jesus' last ministry, and here that he was crucified. Moslems, too, consider Jerusalem holy, believing it to be the site from which Mohammed ascended to heaven.The history of Jerusalem from earliest times is the history of man, a history of war and peace, of greatness and misery, of splendour and squalor, of lofty wisdom and of blood flowing in the gutters. But the golden thread, the consistent theme running through that history, is the unshakeable association of the Jewish people with the city.The story of this association is repeatedly interrupted by a succession of conquerors - Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Seleucids, Romans, Moslem Arabs, Seljuks, Crusaders, Saracens, Mamelukes, and Ottomans. Yet throughout the three thousand years since David made it the seat of Israel's authority, the spiritual attachment of the Jews to Jerusalem has remained unbroken. It is a unique attachment.Throughout the centuries of their dispersion, in whatever far corner of the earth they found themselves, the Jews prayed for the return to Zion, the biblical synonym for Jerusalem. Their synagogues, wherever in the world they were built, were oriented towards Jerusalem (and the practice is followed to this day). When a Jew built a house, part of a wall would be left unfinished to symbolise the temporary nature of the dwelling - until the owner could return to Jerusaletn. History has no parallel to this mystic bond. Without it, there would be no State of Israel today.