The Syndrome

One of the more interesting essays in Grossman's Death As a Way of Life is about Pope John Paul II's pilgrimage to Israel and Palestine in 2000.  As an American on a Christian pilgrimage to the Jewish state I often wondered what I and people like me look like to the natives.  So as I read I imagined Grossman was writing about my pilgrimage.

Turns out the curiosity goes both ways.  There was extraordinary interest in the worship services that the Pope presided over because most Israelis have little if any experience with Christian worship.

This took me aback.  It's easy to think of Israel as something like New Jersey, a place where lots of Jews and Christians live together.  That's because the Christian tour experience in Israel is so skewed.  You hit all the places sacred to Christians, throw in the Wailing Wall for good measure, and stay in hotels where everybody speaks English.  Sure the road signs warning "Camel Crossing Ahead" are exotic, but they're also in English, in addition to Hebrew and Arabic.

But Israel is actually a Jewish state.  Believe it or not, you might miss that if you ever go.

The other thing I wondered about during my pilgrimage was, "What is it like to live every day in the Holy Land?"  I remember one evening in the little Negev Desert town of Mitzpah Ramon.  It sits on the lip of a vast crater, the Grand Canyon of Israel.  We walked from our hotel to the crater to see the stars.  Along the way, you'd hear dogs barking, or catch the blue flicker of a TV set in someone's home.  And I'm thinking, "Here I am, in the Holy Land!  This might be the very spot where Balaam's ass flung the hapless sorcerer to the ground!  And in that house somebody might be watching American Idol."  (Which they get on cable in Israel.) 

Grossman writes that the whole idea of the Jewish state is to give Jews the opportunity to just, you know, live their lives.  Not be "The Jews" as Christ-killers, or "Jerusalem" as the heavenly city, or Israel as a metaphor, but people who live on their own land, farm it, pay taxes, defend themselves, are born, marry, and die.  In one sense you'd have to "get over" all that history.

But there's no getting over it.  About Jerusalem, writes Grossman, everyone is hypersensitive.  It is all that history for all those religions and so much more.  About a hundred or so pilgrims per year lose their minds in Jerusalem.  Some people label this experience a diagnosable mental disorder.  And the permanent residents of the city are a prickly lot, prepared to take umbrage at anyone who fails to give due consideration to Zion's "towers, ramparts and citadels."

I'm not sure if this post has any real point, other than you can visit a place and not really visit it, and meet people but not really get to know them.