I am blessed to have come of age in some magical places. Grinzing, for instance, its vineyards verging on the Vienna Woods – “only you will always be the city of my dreams,” as the Rudolf Sieczyński song “Wien, du Stadt meiner Träume” has it. My family used to say, only half jokingly, that the best thing about living in Austria was Italy, so I will mention Venice and Hotel Gorizia a la Valigia, tucked obscurely among narrow alleyways and tight canals not far from the Ponte de Rialto. At a nearby corner, two signs, posted one right above the other, displayed arrows pointing in exactly opposite directions, and, with absolute confidence in the arguable, as characteristic of Venetians giving directions in their labyrinth of a city, they proclaimed in unison: “Per San Marco.” And Jerusalem, number one ‘Windmill Street’ at the top of the 1892 Jewish foothold of Yemin Moshe, to be precise – from the balcony, you could see out over the Ben Hinnom valley, past the Old City walls, across the Judean Hills, and, on a clear day, into Jordan.
Magical places, haunted places. The Talmud I love was put to mass bonfires in Venice – and Rome, Bologna, Ravenna, Ferrera, Mantua, Urbino, Florence – in the late 16th century. Merely to speak the name of Vienna is to summon countless and restless Jewish ghosts. My doctoral advisor, who survived Auschwitz, once told me that, in the camps, when one wanted to warn that a particular guard was among the most savage sadists, one referred to him as an Österreicher, whatever his nationality. And all of those almost still audible shrieks and cries echo the wails of Jerusalem’s ancient devastation.
Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. That is not merely a three thousand year old claim and liturgy, it is a manifest reality. It is a fact denied only by those who wish to deny and end the fact of Israel’s existence.
So why is there not universal and unmitigated jubilation among all lovers of Zion at the current U.S. President’s having explicitly and officially affirmed a reality twelve previous U.S. Presidents did not? After all, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks, for example, is exactly right in what he says in his blog post this week: "This recognition is an essential element in any lasting peace in the region."
At the deepest level, I do not believe the answer to the question of concern and trepidation has all that much to do with altered prospects of peace – because I do not believe they are all that much altered. We will see how events play out, and the contrapositive never will be provable; but whatever happens next is likely to have happened anyhow, no matter the location of embassies to Israel. Too, although many will perseverate about the U.S. having isolated itself or having rendered itself irrelevant or untrustworthy as a broker of negotiation, this country – which, under past-President Obama, signed the largest commitment of military support to Israel in history – cannot credibly be said to have shifted its fundamental position this past week.
No, the misgivings have to do with dreams – and that is what all of this has to do with Torah, and particularly with our scriptural readings of this week.
“Can two walk together without having met?” asks the prophet Amos, rhetorically, in this week’s Haftarah, presuming an obvious negative response (Amos 3:3). The real world answer, however, actually is yes – and I know it not least from having served in the Hadassah hospitals of Ein Kerem and Mount Scopus alongside Arab- as well as Jewish-Israeli medical personnel in the time just after the first Gulf War. As a people of dreams, we tend to tell ourselves that coexistence can ensue only from having come together in formal and all-embracing agreements, but that is not the only way it happens.
“You alone have I singled out from all the families of the earth,” we are told by the Divine as channeled by the prophet, “therefore will I hold you to account for all your iniquities” (Amos 3:2). We like to dream that one as well; but in the real life of this world we not only let slide where others are concerned, but are just about as apt to discover that much water has passed under the bridge where we are concerned as well. Say lehavdil, as we do in Hebrew – ‘with due respect for the enormous difference’ – and one must, but consider that Vienna today, eighty years after the Anschluss (which should not be a long time in our people’s memory) abounds with expat Israelis, and the same Leonard Bernstein who loved to conduct the Israel Philharmonic was resident with Vienna’s. Jerusalem is an even more compelling place for living beautifully in spite of historical grievances.
“Indeed my Lord the Eternal One does nothing without having revealed his purpose to his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). Wouldn’t that be nice? However, in this world of ours, all kinds of, well, let’s just say stuff happens that boggles the wisest seers and theologians, not to mention the truest hearts. Only in our dreams is a sensible story line so clear as the prophet envisions.
So we dream of a Jerusalem “built up as a city that has been knit together” (Psalm 122:3). We side with the Talmud’s Rabbi Yochanan in imagining that our capital has a heavenly counterpart, separated from the earthly version only by a distance determined by our failings. We say that divine love and compassion will not permeate either Jerusalem completely until the Eternal One is invited fully into both (Babylonian Talmud, Taanit 5a). Somewhere deep inside, we tell ourselves we cannot be worthy of Jerusalem until we have solved and resolved all her deepest problems.
But what our ancient siblings say is very much like Joseph’s brothers in our reading from the Torah this week: “His brothers answered, ‘Do you mean to reign over us? Do you mean to rule over us?’ And they hated him even more for his talk about his dreams” (Genesis 37:8).