City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem |
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City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem
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by Meron Benvenisti
Sales Rank: 1041121
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List Price: $15.25
$15.25
At Amazon
on 6-18-2008.
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Features
Cover Type: Paperback with 283 pages
Published by: University of California Press October 22, 1998
Written in: English
ISBN 10 Number: 0520207688
ISBN 13 Number: 978-0520207684
Book Dimensions:
8.9 x 6 x 0.9 inches
Weighs: 1.2 pounds
Product Review
In City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti assumes and achieves a seemingly impossible task--telling the political, architectural, social, cultural, and religious history of the holy city of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, seems to know every rock, every person, and every conflict that has any significant place in the city's history. He describes them all with the objectivity of a scholar and the passion of a lover, qualities that make City of Stone equally useful for armchair historians and curious travelers. For example, Benvenisti's vivid and circumspect histories of the Temple Mount (where the Jews' first temple stood and where Mohammed began his famous Night Journey) and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (built on the purported site of Jesus' crucifixion) expertly convey not only the complicated political and religious battles for national and clerical control of these sites, but also give a solid of sense of what it's actually like to be there. Benvenisti's powers of analysis and observation are best synthesized in his final chapter, which explores, among other topics, the abiding desire of Christians, Jews, and Muslims to be buried in Jerusalem and therefore to become more holy by resting in its holy soil. "They all sought a safe haven, a new land, a new life--they all strove to build the celestial Zion," he writes. "Perhaps this accumulation of hopes and desires buried in the graveyards of Jerusalem may nuture faith that peace and reconciliation can prevail, even in this world." --Michael Joseph Gross
From Publishers Weekly
"The chronicles of Jerusalem are a gigantic quarry from which each side has mined stones for the construction of its myths?and for throwing at each other." Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem and author of Intimate Enemies: Jews and Arabs in a Shared Land, describes the importance of Jerusalem to Jews, Muslims and Christians and the ancient acrimony that has arisen from their competing interests. Benvenisti outlines the follies of all claimants, while stressing the wrongs of the Jews and the U.S. government as well, which he accuses of using "verbal gymnastics" to appear neutral while in fact siding with the Jewish population. Most readers will already agree with Benvenisti about the importance of finding an answer to "the Jerusalem problem," so he could have done without the overblown pronouncements: "A bomb is waiting to go off in the heart of Jerusalem, its fuse burning with the fire of the religious fanaticism of Jew, Muslim, and Christian." After long analysis of various solutions, he has little to add of his own, save to say that there is no solution. What is needed, he says is a "'process-oriented' approach," one that is "solidly planted in the 'mud' of reality; there is no previously determined final and definitive goal. On the contrary, the assumption is that the two parties have conflicting final goals, and that it is pointless to exert oneself in the pursuit of a common goal, except for the purpose of conducting the dialogue."
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Reader Reviews
Some interesting facts on this storied city. Each chapter is pretty good, but not rivetting reading.
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City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem
Available from Amazon
Price: $15.25
Updated on 6-18-2008.
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