"..next year in Jerusalem"

"Hope to see you next year in Jerusalem": This small but powerful phrase, said instinctively by religious Jews when saying farewell to each other whilst parting for yet another distant land, can be devoid of any actual meaning for secular Jews like me. Only now  I’ve begun to actually understand the deep meaning behind these words and the powerful binding aspect of them, wherever they are said. This is especially true when an actual face-to-face encounter takes place within the boundaries of this holy city.  

 A few months ago, I thought words such as "Eretz Israel" and "Jerusalem" were important in the context of religious Judaism only within the framework of a diasporic setting. From what I could tell, there seemed to be a spiritual connotation and symbolic power to the word "Jerusalem", but that was about it. For me, the word was always religious. Not that there’s anything wrong with it, it just wasn’t meant to be taken literally as a reference to a particular time and space. 

I used to think that, when used in a diasporic setting, the word "Jerusalem" did not have any connection to any geographical space. It was more of a binding term, a way to reinforce your identity as Jews when you met with others as a stranger in a strange land. Since Jews were scattered all over the world, they needed to feel connected to something distant and eerie but at the same time real and tangible in order to keep whatever identity they had left. Thus, "Jerusalem" became a binding term, a way of recognizing fellow Jews when traveling through strange places. And that’s it.

Now that I’ve been coming to Israel on a yearly basis, it has become increasingly clear to me that these words express a deeply rooted truth that’s not always recognized from the outside by secular people who have never set foot in this "holly place". This is only due to the fact that, in every single corner of its streets, this city shouts aloud it’s particular millennial history.

It’s now clear to me that Jerusalem’s role in world history has always been to be   a "meeting place", and that the wordss "next year in Jerusalem" can express the particular feeling one gets when traveling through here.

 In Jerusalem, one’s always a visitor.  Each and every empire in the world has tossed the city, and, in response to this kind of treatment, the city has opened its legs to let everyone in. This hard fact has infused Jerusalem with a sacred cosmopolitanism before Rome or New York even existed,  and this is a  characteristic that has actually paved Jerusalem’s personality and made it possible for it to be what it is to day.

I hope to see you  next year in the same place.