Jerusalem

I’m not sure if I should go, considering what happened last week, but so I decide to ask the receptionist in my Tel Aviv hotel. “Nowhere in the world is truly safe,” she tells me. “You might go outside and cross the street right now and a bomb might go off.” I can’t decide whether I admire her stoicism or pity her cynicism.

I talk to my friend George and we decide that we should go anyway. and it turns out we’re entirely right. Jerusalem is a strange and wonderful place, and although that might be said about anywhere that you don’t call home, it’s especially true here.It’s a rare combination of many things. The old city, enclosed by ramparts, is barely a kilometer wide, but it contains the holiest places on Earth for the three Abrahamic religions; Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Jerusalem if four thousand years old.

Scarcity breeds wonder. I think I saw it in Jerusalem, but I have no idea what to make of it.

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