"Jerusalem was the place of Abraham's sacrifice of Isaac, and Abraham said of Jerusalem, 'This is the place where God is seen.'
"Elsewhere, God is a theory, but in Jerusalem, God is seen, and felt, as a tangible presence. In Jerusalem we reach beyond the frailty and vulnerability of our lives, and we sense and strive for transcendence. Elsewhere we grope for insight. In Jerusalem we anticipate clarity. Paris may be for lovers, but Jerusalem is for visionaries.
"Jerusalem is a metaphor for a perfected world, and it gives us perspective on our lives. When Aldous Huxley said, 'we have each of us our Jerusalem,' he meant much more than a temporal city of taxi cabs and traffic jams. He meant a vision of what life might be.
"The vision of life's promise is one we surrender at our peril, because it gives us the will to live. In exile for two thousand years Jews said 'Next year in Jerusalem,' and amidst poverty and oppression they preserved the dream of a world in which love and justice, not power and self-interest, would be the currency men live by.
"Part of the name Jerusalem is 'vision.' The other part of the name is peace, but the peace of Jerusalem is not the absence of strife. Jerusalem has rarely known anything but strife. The peace of Jerusalem is the peace at the center of the spokes of a wheel, where opposing forces may be delicately balanced and reconciled.
"The Talmud says that creation began in Jerusalem, and the world radiated outward from this place. Medieval maps show Jerusalem at the epicenter of Asia, Europe, and Africa. The world flows into this spot, and all life's forces resonate here. From this place, the whole world is cast into perspective.
"Jerusalem, the center, which gives perspective to the rest of the world. Jerusalem where God is seen. Jerusalem the perfected world. Humanity has long understood that he who controls Jerusalem controls the world's memory. He controls the way God is seen. He controls the way life's forces are cast into perspective. He controls the way we collectively see our future.
"...In rewriting the history of Jerusalem each of these cultures [Roman, Crusader, Muslim] rewrote our place, the Jewish place, in history. They consigned us, they believed, to the dust bin of history ― a once great people, now abandoned by God; bypassed by time.
"But Jews preserved Jerusalem as a memory. When we built our houses we left a square unplastered, and we broke a glass at weddings in memory of Jerusalem. From all over the world we turned and prayed toward Jerusalem, and because memory was kept alive, the Jewish people lived.
"When Jerusalem was liberated, time was conflated. The past became present. What we had longed for became ours. What we had dreamed of became real, and soldiers wept because an adolescent Mediterranean country suddenly recovered a memory lost for 2000 years. The past was instantly present, incredibly, transcendentally, transforming who we knew ourselves to be..."
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Another Aish video, this on an ancient water channel discovered in Jerusalem that links Jewish past and present:
http://www.aish.com/jw/j/Jerusalems_2000-Year-Old_Channel.html
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If you have never visited Jerusalem, please come. You will have the time of your life, and be changed forever. If you have been here before, please, come again.
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