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Jerusalem I recently returned from a trip to Jerusalem. It made more of an impression on me than any other journey I've taken. This came as a surprise. The Jerusalem I first encountered in my guidebook didn't look particularly grand or memorable. In fact, as I packed my bag, I suspected that-compared to the world's other great cities, like Paris, Rome or Vienna-it might turn out to be a letdown. Why? Unlike almost every other city to which tourists flock, Jerusalem has few imposing buildings, no monuments, no triumphal arches. Its Old City is a maze of narrow streets and teeming markets. In one sense, Jerusalem looks like what it was for most of history-a backwater on the outskirts of empires, far from centers of learning, art and military power. What accounts, then, for this city's hold on the startled visitor's imagination? What did I breathe from the dust there, behind the tragic political conflict that dominates world news? "Jerusalem the Golden," in the Hebrew phrase, is the taproot of the world's three great monotheistic religions-Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Within its walls, as a visitor quickly perceives, these faiths are stacked, layered, indissolubly interwoven. Jerusalem needs no monuments for its fame does not rest on human accomplishments. Where God has most appeared, it seems, the terrain is simple. What moves an American visitor in Jerusalem, I think, is an almost subconscious shock of recognition. In a sense, whether we are religious believers or not, we in the West carry the city's legacy with us everywhere. Today, busy with our computers and cell phones, we rarely think about the genesis of our free and prosperous society. The fact is, Western civilization sprang from the axis of the two great civilizations represented by Athens and Jerusalem. As contemporary Americans, we can more easily grasp the debt we owe to Athens than Jerusalem. After all, the Greeks were great artists, scientists and political theorists, whose ruins dot the map of the ancient world. The Jews-boasting little art and less science-had only their religious vision to offer. How could this make an equal contribution to our common life? Today, it is fashionable to dismiss religion as old-fashioned-a system of confining rules, or a crutch for those given to wishful thinking. In fact, however, the ethical monotheism of Judeo-Christianity was one of the most "progressive" and liberating forces in history. Its influence is secular as well as religious, for a culture's idea of God profoundly shapes its idea of man and his possibilities. In this sense, Athens, for all its genius, was crucially limited. The gods of Greek mythology resembled squabbling, overgrown children, while the god of Greek philosophy was a cold and distant "unmoved mover." As a result, the Greeks tended toward fatalism. They saw man either as a plaything of the gods-a victim of "fortune"-or a lonely sage contemplating an abstract ideal. Judaism introduced a radically new idea: one God, who was simultaneously man's creator and his righteous judge. This God cherished man, taking the extraordinary step of making him in his own image. In an act unimaginable to the Greeks, he entered into a solemn covenant with his chosen people, establishing a code-the Ten Commandments-that still grounds our moral life today. The notion that man is made in God's image was epochal. It meant that man possessed a unique and immortal soul. It meant that he was capable of choosing between good and evil -that he was a participant in his own salvation and, by implication, an active shaper of history. In this way, it transformed man from a plaything of fickle forces to the crown of creation. We are accustomed to thinking of Greece as the cradle of democracy. But Greek democracy was limited by the conviction that only a small elite can grasp what is good. The Jewish prophets, and later the Christian evangelists, believed the truth was accessible to all; for this reason, they spoke to the multitudes. Their world view gave rise to the principles of freedom and equality that form the touchstone of modern democracy. The people who founded our nation believed in a God who walked the same dusty, crowded streets that I recently did. They believed that this God chose to be born not in a palace, but in a stable. They believed that he was despised and rejected, scourged by the powerful, and that he died to set men free. This God, they believed, had instructed his followers, "Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do to me." It seems no accident that, more than 200 years later, we Americans have a system of government that guarantees the destitute and unemployed the same rights, as citizens, as it does to an Ivy League Ph.D. -- Katherine Kersten is a director of Center of the American Experiment in Minneapolis and a commentator for National Public Radio's "All Things Considered." |