Resurrecting Jerusalem

Jerusalem is the greatest site of physical destruction and renewal known to history. For some 4,000 years it suffered wars, earthquakes, and fires, not to mention twenty sieges, two periods of total desolation, eighteen reconstructions, and at least eleven transitions from one religious faith to another. This cycle of trauma has resulted in a variety of outcomes; among them are demolition without reconstruction, repeated renewal, no destruction at all, and the conscious maintenance of ruins. This chapter explores how these divergent responses to disaster are linked to the most important buildings of the three great monotheistic religions, for which Jerusalem remains a place of special significance. In the stories and laws embedded in the documents of these religions there are clues as to how they propose to help their followers respond to losses, including the loss of life, property, territory, religious artifacts, and psychological well-being. In the loss and restitution of the major temples, churches, mosques, and synagogues, there is a similar tie between religious propositions and building form. In the story of the earliest city in the Bible, there is a tussle between God’s punishment of man and man’s restitution. First, God is angry and Adam is sent from Eden. Then Adam’s son Cain commits murder and is also banished, but he builds the first city and names it Enoch after his son. The first city is thus created by a criminal, but the city later becomes the place of God. There is a parallel ambiguity about Jerusalem in the texts. God is angry and he destroys, but he also loves and rehabilitates: “Here [in Jerusalem] was born the rumor of a single invisible God, a father figure, authoritarian—at once petulant and magnanimous, vindictive and merciful. . . . the sadomasochism of ‘in my wrath I smote thee, but in my favour I had mercy’ was first articulated in religious terms.” For the twentieth-century theologian Jacques Ellul, Jerusalem is God’s singular creation, “his own city” to be both destroyed and restored as a model for all cities. In many of the destructions of Jerusalem, brutal violence was accompanied by regret or piety.