Jewish pupils in the Israeli school system know almost nothing about Jesus or Christianity. They study about the Christians, generally, in the context of their persecution of the Jews.
I can testify—with some embarrassment—that I never met a single Christian person before I was ten years old (yes, yes, in little, provincial Jerusalem of the 1960s) and that what I knew about Christians came from scary stories about their cruelty toward Jews.
I’m relating this because the service yesterday at Corazin, the Mount of the Beatitudes, was a unique opportunity for millions of Israelis to shed some of these inborn stereotypes and to see—perhaps for the first time—Christianity’s other face. Jewish Israelis could now discover the humane, socially conscious, peace- and justice-seeking elements in the teachings of the man of Nazareth. Moreover, they could suddenly be close to a Christian religious ceremony without the trepidation and fear that have, for two thousand years, reverberated almost uncontrollably in the hearts of so many Jews, like a survival reflex.
But there is also another aspect, a mirror image of the important change that this visit is generating. It has to do with the way the land of Israel, and the Jew, now appear to believing Catholics.
Another personal story: Some years ago I was travelling in Portugal. One night I arrived in a village in the north and lodged in a small family hotel. I wanted to call home. The hotel proprietress volunteered to connect me with the telephone exchange. She asked me where I wanted to call, and I told her “Jerusalem.” She gave me a strange look and began to laugh. “That can’t be,” she said. “You can’t dial Jerusalem.” When I asked why, she said quite simply, “Because Jerusalem is in heaven.”
But when John Paul II is in Israel, all his millions of believers, in all corners of the world, meet Israel. Not only the Holy Land, but the real, quotidian Israel, in which there are flesh-and-blood Jews, who are in no way just an abstract symbol of anything.
Because that, perhaps, is the Jewish people’s great tragedy—throughout the generations others, the Christians in particular, viewed them as a symbol, as an allegory or metaphor for something else, as an exceptional entity, possessing powers beyond nature, or below it, as the Nazis put it in their definition of the Jew as untermensch.
For thousands of years the Jew was set apart, exiled from reality. From the familiar. His concreteness and humanity were confiscated through the most subtle means of demonization. The wandering Jew, the eternal Jew, Judas Iscariot, the poisoner of wells, the elders of Zion, and hundreds of other Satanic and grotesque images percolated into folklore, religion, language, literature, even science. Perhaps as a result, the Jews took comfort in a no less dangerous faith, that of self-idealization, regarding themselves as a chosen people, a people set apart.
The state of Israel today is an attempt by Jews to live a life that is not ideal, not demonic. To live reality itself. The normal life of a people living in its country, on its land, raising its children, defending itself with its own strength, and trying, at last, to find a way to conduct normal relations with its neighbors.
The Pope now sees this new, very fragile normality, and so do the thousands of pilgrims who came with him, and his billion believers, and all those who watch his journey on television. I say this without forgetting all the difficult problems that Israel has become entangled in during these many decades. Also, without forgetting the injustice that it still inflicts on others. But through the Pope’s private eyes, and through the eyes of the generations that he represents, it seems to me that we can also make out the new and growing desire of the Jewish people to be, finally, part of life, not just part of a story, of a myth, of a heavenly Jerusalem.
Day Five: Mass in Nazareth
The world held its breath for a minute. A man, old and sick, knelt and communed with his God. In the midst of the worldwide media tumult, in the heart of the almost Woodstock-like euphoria that has overcome nearly everyone who has a part in the visit, a single man closed his eyes and was entirely alone. In this journey of his, John Paul II has succeeded in excising layers of spiritual, political, and religious cataract from many things he has touched. Yesterday, and not for the first time, it was possible to appreciate for a moment the secret of this man’s personal charisma, even in his dealings with the media.
Maybe it is his appearance. Anyone can immediately empathize with his stooped back, the tremor in his hands, his slow movements, his physical agonies. Maybe it’s because of the different, so untelegenic tempo of his movements, of his steps, of his reticent gaze, watching the commotion surrounding him like someone gazing at life from elsewhere, from some other dimension. Perhaps it is because of his rare ability to guard his privacy—even his intimacy—in the middle of the hue and cry surrounding him. Either way, he forces the media to cast aside their conventions about how they relate to a subject. When we see his image on the television screen, we intuit simultaneously his symbolic, ceremonial figure, as well as the individual man on whom we can project our sensibilities and deepest wishes, perhaps even better than on that symbol, the official figure. Here is food for thought: It’s precisely those qualities that make the man Karol Wojtyla so untelegenic by the merciless normal criteria that make him so human and moving, a real media megastar.
A similar paradox, deceptive and much more problematic, has to do with the personal qualities of this man, and of the religious establishment he represents.
When he knelt, we forgot for a moment what surrounded him: a huge church building, impressive in its beauty, but grandiose, ostentatious, built at a cost of millions of dollars. To an outsider, a nonreligious one, the church in Nazareth looks like a metaphor for spiritual coagulation, a kind of elephantiasis of the private faith between man and his God. The church seems to be completely foreign to the spirit of simplicity and humility, and to the modesty of Jesus himself.
And for a moment we also forgot that this Pope vehemently opposes birth control, and in so doing prevents progress in the status of women and social development in Third World countries. Still, he knelt in the Church of the Annunciation in Nazareth, in the place where, according to the Catholic faith, Mary received the announcement of her pregnancy. And at that moment I felt how all this exaggerated magnificence, all the flab of this overly wealthy, overly powerful, materialistic, bureaucratic, conservative establishment vanished for a single moment, and withdrew to its real roots, to the sensibility that created it. It harked back to an era when religious faith—and not just Christian faith—was a matter of private dialogue between man and his Creator, without trying to impose itself, generating rivers of blood, on other people. Suddenly there was just one elderly man, his body anguished, and he knew that all the magnificence and grandeur around him did not protect him from pain, and from the most profound human fear. Even the most secular of eyes, eyes which cannot and do not want to find comfort in any religious faith, could then see the kernel of religious emotion, and mourn for what has happened to this authentic sentiment over the course of thousands of years.
Day Six: In Jerusalem
Jerusalem is a hard city. Every one of its inhabitants knows it. History is so dense here that it sometimes seems as if the city turns you, despite yourself, into a player on a huge stage, with a single huge but hidden eye watching you.
Perhaps that’s why everything in it is overstated, larger than life. Every twinge turns immediately into the agonies of the Son of God; every soccer victory augurs the Messiah’s arrival. Every love affair resonates with the love of David and Bathsheba. It’s hardly surprising, then, that each year a hundred or so tourists lose their mind in the city. This strange, unique phenomenon even has an official diagnosis: the Jerusalem Syndrome.
Yes, it is hard to live a normal, inconsequential life here. “Jerusalem, a port on the shores of the eternal,” the Jerusalem poet Yehuda Amichai wrote. And eternity, what can I tell you, is a pain. The people, even the most common people, are full of a strange self-importance, inflated with the glory of the past. They are quick to be in
sulted, always feeling as if they are the representatives of something awesome. There’s too much holiness in the air. I remember, from my childhood, a tiny back yard on one of the city’s side streets where huge graffiti summed up the nature of this city: HOLY SITE—NO PISSING ALLOWED!
Four thousand years of history, of civilization, of the different cultures that were created here and passed through here. The cradle of Jewish and Christian thought, the center of the three great monotheistic religions. So much wisdom, life experience, knowledge of human suffering and weakness have collected here, and what have we all really learned? Have we—Jews, Christians, and Muslims—really succeeded in being better people, more tolerant neighbors of our neighbors?
John Paul II came to this city today. In many ways, the visit here was perhaps the climax of his journey, yet it was the least uplifting day. The streets were nearly empty, and there was tension in the air. Politics brushed aside human warmth.
But this does not detract from the day’s historic events: the visit to the mosques on the Temple Mount, the visit to the Western Wall. Perhaps you need to be Jewish to understand the significance of the moment: The Pope at the Western Wall. Even this phrase sounds like an oxymoron.
Excuse me if I speak for a moment as a resident of Jerusalem (that is, with all that history on my back). The Western Wall stands above all other Jewish national or religious symbols; it is the most important monument to the Jewish people’s continuity. Paradoxically, the fact that it is not a whole, that it is but a remnant of the Temple that was destroyed, has made it into what it is in the consciousness of every Jew in the world. Jews have prayed in its direction three times a day, a depiction of the wall hung in the home of nearly every Jew in the Diaspora, and scraps of paper bearing their most intimate requests of God were interred in the fissures among its huge stones.
The Pope’s visit here today testifies, principally, to Judaism’s enormous life force. This tiny nation, numbering 12 million people—about equal to the number of inhabitants of Cairo or London—has succeeded, over four thousand years, in preserving a culture, language, and identity, despite countless attempts to destroy all these. It also has succeeded in instilling, in the hearts of its most bitter enemies—the Church in the past, the Arab states today—the understanding that it must be reckoned with. Acknowledged not only for its existence, but also for the importance of its contribution to mankind.
But that’s not all. The Pope, in coming here, in his entire visit, taught us that something else is possible. That even religious establishments, those dogmatic institutions, may grow through openness to and curiosity about other religions. It is hardly credible that, in the third millennium, religions will continue to be nurtured by the hatred of the other. On the contrary, they must begin to carry out their moral and humane precepts. The time has come for a revision of relations between religions and nations.
That, I think, is the essence of the Pope’s visit in Israel.
Over the course of six days, John Paul II succeeded in capturing the hearts of Jews, Arabs, and Christians. The most surprising effect he had was on the Jews. It had to do with his personal history from the time of World War II, and with his positions toward the Jewish people, but it was also a result of his unique personality. He captured the hearts of Israelis in a way that few foreign leaders have ever done before. A cabdriver from Tiberias expressed this sentiment best: “What a sweet guy that Pope is. If you ask me, he’s really a Jew!” (And I’m sure that the Pope would appreciate the compliment.)
For six days we followed him into the forge of our identity, Jews, Arabs, and Christians, Israelis and Palestinians. We were with him in places where our wounds are still bleeding. But somehow, in a wonderful way that is new to us, his visit made us consider how different and better our lives here could be if we stopped seeing the Other as an existential threat. If we began, for a change, to take joy in the variety of cultural and human richness that this country, and the entire region, offers.
True, the war over geopolitical issues did not really cease during his visit, yet this heavyset man, whose face is both elderly and childlike, passed through at his slow, meditative gait, and with simple gestures made connections between churches, mosques, and the Western Wall. He connected the suffering of the Palestinians in the refugee camps with the most profound fears of the Israelis. He linked the great miracles of ancient days with the little miracles of our daily lives.
I do not know what of all this will remain in our region after he returns to his own land. It’s reasonable to assume that, in the days to come, if the negotiations between Israel and Syria and the Palestinians resume, the sides will again take more extreme positions, sparking hostility anew.
But for one week a different wind blew here; there was a sense of reconciliation. For a moment we tasted the possibility of a different kind of life, free of hatred and the exhausting need to always be an enemy. For this small miracle I, a nonreligious Jew, say to John Paul II, Thank you.
Despite It All
July 2000
Two weeks of marathon negotiations in Camp David between Barak and Arafat and their teams came to a disappointing finish at the end of July 2000. Despite President Clinton’s continuous efforts to force both sides to make compromises and to reach a much-needed agreement, they blamed each other—as they continue to do to this day—for the failure of this crucial summit. Insider reports claimed that the major disagreements were over the status of Jerusalem and the Palestinian “right of return.” The personalities of the Israeli and Palestinian leaders also seem to have contributed to the difficulties in the negotiations.
I
Yesterday was a heartbreaking day for all those who hoped that the Israeli and Palestinian people had finally comprehended that if they cannot live together, they cannot live at all. The cheers of the extremists of both nations demonstrated, more than anything else, the fearsome perversion that we have become so accustomed to: the prospect of war delights many on both sides much more than does the possibility of peace.
In keeping with his character, Ehud Barak arrived at the summit confident, audacious, and truly wanting to end the conflict forever. Perhaps from the start there was not much likelihood that such an ambitious program would succeed, but on the other hand, after a century of antagonism, all the problems are already known, all the obstacles are familiar, so why not launch a full-scale charge toward peace with the same force and determination we have all used charging on the battlefield?
Indeed, the innovation in these talks—and the source of hope for the future—was that the two sides were able, for the first time, to touch the conflict’s raw nerves—the question of the refugees, the Palestinians’ right of return, the settlements, and the status of Jerusalem.
Touching these nerves led, of course, to the predictable reflex—the body politic instantly jerked and tensed, both peoples’ muscles cramped up, and religious adrenaline flowed into the national bloodstreams.
Numerous Israelis and Palestinians immediately enlisted in the campaign to shore up defenses against the threat of compromise. Both sides promulgated religious rulings, signed by rabbis and Muslim muftis, declaring that there could be no territorial compromise in the land of our forefathers. The Palestinians went even further and announced that any leader who agreed to such a compromise, especially on holy Jerusalem, al-Quds, would be denounced as a traitor—his fate a bullet in the head. The army and the police, in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, were put on alert, and their commanders issued bellicose warnings. Barak’s government was left with almost no ministers who supported his strange eagerness to make peace; and Arafat’s ministers tried to outdo each other with warnings against making any concession. And the result?
The two peoples proved once again that they are still not capable of living together, yet neither are they able to disconnect from each other. They did not have the fortitude to take the final step, the one that would have led to a real metamorphosis in their relations. Even after the extraordinar
y American effort at mediation they remained in a clench, strangling each other in a double nelson, victims of the cowardly and fanatic way of thinking that so many years of hatred have created. The maps that tried to trace new borders, convoluted and peppered with enclaves, demonstrated to all the impossible snarl of the current situation, resembling a divorce agreement between a husband and wife who must continue to live out their lives in the same apartment, and sometimes even in the same bed.
II
We do not know yet what actually happened in the negotiating rooms, who conceded and who refused to concede. We have the exceptional testimony of President Clinton himself, according to which Barak was more flexible and more daring. But the Palestinians will, of course, claim the opposite.
Despite the reservations the Israeli left has about Ehud Barak’s somewhat military vision of peace, and about his attitude toward the Palestinians during the negotiations, it should be stated unequivocally that no previous Israeli leader has been so determined and decisive in seeking to make peace, and so bold in the concessions he was offering to achieve it. But did Barak really go the whole possible distance? Did he really, as he claimed, “turn over every stone” in his efforts to compromise? On the other hand, had he dared turn over even one more “holy” stone—for example, by ceding the Palestinians sovereignty over a significant part of East Jerusalem—would he have been able to win the Israeli people’s approval of the agreement in the referendum he has promised? Is Israeli society ready for such a move?
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