Friday, November 21, 2014

Oxford Has Nothing on Jerusalem

Bill Bryson, in his Notes from a Small Island, wrote.

I am constantly filled with admiration at this – at the way you can wander through a town like Oxford and in the space of a few hundred yards pass the home of Christopher Wren, the buildings where Halley found his comet and Boyle his first law, the track where Roger Banister ran the first sub-four minute mile, the meadow where Lewis Carroll strolled; or how you can stand on Snow's Hill at Windsor and see, in a single sweep, Windsor Castle, the playing fields of Eton, the churchyard where Gray wrote his 'Elegy,' the site The Merry Wives of Windsor was first performed. Can there anywhere on earth be, in such a modest span, a landscape more packed with centuries of busy, productive attainment?

My response - Jerusalem.

God.
Patriarchs and Matriarchs.
Kings. Queens. Princes.
Prophets.  Isaiah. Jeremiah.
Priests.
Freedom fighters and liberators.
Two temples.
The Western Wall.
Torah. Talmud.
Churches.
Mosques.
The Knesset.
Shmuel Yosef Agnon.
Uri Tzvi Greenberg.
Hebrew University.
Mir Yeshiva.  Porat Yosef Yeshiva.
Israel Museum.
Meah Shearim.  Rechavia.

And on, and on, and on.

^

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

In the past, I've given money to the Bnei-Menashe-immigration; to the Birthright program; and to other "normal", conventional-wisdom zionist causes.

Then I realized: dollar per dollar - the fastest way to deliver a new community into IDF service is: give money to Father Gabriel Nadaf.

That's what I do now.