Read Online A Long Way to Shiloh by Lionel Davidson - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Lionel Davidson
Ads: Link
thousand feet up in its Judean hills -but still balmy after England. I turned left and wandered, and presently found myself by the wall and the mount, Zion, with the moon coming up behind me, and the old magic beginning to work.
It’s not much of a town, Israeli Jerusalem, when everything’s said: a strung-out untidy place not half the size of Wandsworth , and built on a series of bald red hills so that cars and lorries are forever chugging up in low gear. It’s hard to think of it, when you’re in it, as particularly holy, or as particularly anything else. Most of it, the Israeli part, has been built since 1860.
Its whole purpose, of course, is the mount, and with that split, the place is curiously blind and without a centre. Around the demarcation line, small boys kick balls and run and shout in a rubble-strewn slum; and in the town itself small shops line somewhat purposeless avenues and streets. A provincial place, and it nearly always has been; poor agriculturally; pointless commercially; on the road to practically nowhere. A fortress; a geographical location; an idea.
The remnants of all the people who have tried to destroy the idea are still around, of course, a factor of considerable attraction from my own business point of view. And, too, it’s a nice place to live: pleasant suburbs, dotted cypresses, a decent university, good air. Also, the Israelis have done their bit with a few stately buildings and byelaws forbidding new construction unless in the beige Jerusalem marble; so that a certain stony homogeneity is present. All the same, and for the visitor expecting something special, a let-down.
And yet – it’s Jerusalem, an affair of the heart, an old affair of mankind’s. And every now and again the magic will work – as now, in moonlight, by the wall; not a provincial town any more; all geographical location and all idea. Here, built upon Zion indeed, the wall of the city of the great king, and there his tomb; and above it the room where his descendant, a thousand years later, ate his Last Supper. An old place; Genesis old; the rock of our Western ethos, for what it is.
It was quiet here, just a few mournful howls coming from the dogs’ home on the hill. The place has developed higgledy-piggledy over the centuries; churches, animal shelters, hospices, elbowing each other for their bits of holy land. All about, the round hills were outlined with lights; one had the feeling of being enclosed in a circle, a rather special circle, very elevated. And all of a sudden I started thinking again of what Agrot had told me, of the gold, and of what had happened here all the years before. I was still thinking about it in Fink’s Bar and Restaurant, where I drank and restaurated, and all the way back up the Jaffa Road; treading history, as they say, every foot of the way.
2
The war of 66 that threw the Jews out of their land and on to the world grew, as its historian Flavius Josephus notes, out of a background of troubles. It was an apocalyptical period. The End of Days was thought to be at hand. The Messiah was expected . In the past few decades a number of candidates had duly presented themselves – and had been dealt with as rapidly as possible by the civil and religious authorities.
The basis of the apocalyptical position was that it was perfectly proper for even the smallest force of the godly to oppose even the largest of the ungodly since God would redress the balance. This was not a point of view shared by the authorities, whose day-to-day dealings with the occupying power had given them a rather better insight into the kind of forces available to him. Their position had been perfectly expressed by one of the messianic candidates: ‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.’
Skilful political work had already annexed to God a rather larger number of things than were available to any other non-Roman body in the empire. His True Faith, Judaism,
It’s not much of a town, Israeli Jerusalem, when everything’s said: a strung-out untidy place not half the size of Wandsworth , and built on a series of bald red hills so that cars and lorries are forever chugging up in low gear. It’s hard to think of it, when you’re in it, as particularly holy, or as particularly anything else. Most of it, the Israeli part, has been built since 1860.
Its whole purpose, of course, is the mount, and with that split, the place is curiously blind and without a centre. Around the demarcation line, small boys kick balls and run and shout in a rubble-strewn slum; and in the town itself small shops line somewhat purposeless avenues and streets. A provincial place, and it nearly always has been; poor agriculturally; pointless commercially; on the road to practically nowhere. A fortress; a geographical location; an idea.
The remnants of all the people who have tried to destroy the idea are still around, of course, a factor of considerable attraction from my own business point of view. And, too, it’s a nice place to live: pleasant suburbs, dotted cypresses, a decent university, good air. Also, the Israelis have done their bit with a few stately buildings and byelaws forbidding new construction unless in the beige Jerusalem marble; so that a certain stony homogeneity is present. All the same, and for the visitor expecting something special, a let-down.
And yet – it’s Jerusalem, an affair of the heart, an old affair of mankind’s. And every now and again the magic will work – as now, in moonlight, by the wall; not a provincial town any more; all geographical location and all idea. Here, built upon Zion indeed, the wall of the city of the great king, and there his tomb; and above it the room where his descendant, a thousand years later, ate his Last Supper. An old place; Genesis old; the rock of our Western ethos, for what it is.
It was quiet here, just a few mournful howls coming from the dogs’ home on the hill. The place has developed higgledy-piggledy over the centuries; churches, animal shelters, hospices, elbowing each other for their bits of holy land. All about, the round hills were outlined with lights; one had the feeling of being enclosed in a circle, a rather special circle, very elevated. And all of a sudden I started thinking again of what Agrot had told me, of the gold, and of what had happened here all the years before. I was still thinking about it in Fink’s Bar and Restaurant, where I drank and restaurated, and all the way back up the Jaffa Road; treading history, as they say, every foot of the way.
2
The war of 66 that threw the Jews out of their land and on to the world grew, as its historian Flavius Josephus notes, out of a background of troubles. It was an apocalyptical period. The End of Days was thought to be at hand. The Messiah was expected . In the past few decades a number of candidates had duly presented themselves – and had been dealt with as rapidly as possible by the civil and religious authorities.
The basis of the apocalyptical position was that it was perfectly proper for even the smallest force of the godly to oppose even the largest of the ungodly since God would redress the balance. This was not a point of view shared by the authorities, whose day-to-day dealings with the occupying power had given them a rather better insight into the kind of forces available to him. Their position had been perfectly expressed by one of the messianic candidates: ‘Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.’
Skilful political work had already annexed to God a rather larger number of things than were available to any other non-Roman body in the empire. His True Faith, Judaism,
Similar Books
