Crossing the Yarden

By Yarden Frankl

Oh, Jerusalem

Yes, this week I could write about rocket attacks, terrorism, and nuclear threats, but let's take a little break from the constant predictions of our demise. Let's skip another snide remark about Ehud Olmert, the successful unifier of the nation. (O.K., so one snide remark) or the latest sad statistics from Sderot. While, any of us could write volumes about how unfair the world can be when it comes to Israel, we must not let that become our obsession. We have to constantly remind everyone, especially ourselves, how incredible it is to live here. Just look at the city of Jerusalem.

In Maryland, every week on Shabbat, I used to sing about Jerusalem. Now, I work here. The anniversary of Jerusalem's unification just passed by and I joined a late night hike around the city. For most of Jerusalem's history, going back thousands of years, Jews lived in fear of being driven out. It doesn't matter if it was the Romans, burning down the city, or the British, hanging members of the Hagana, the great empires of the world have always had a problem with a Jewish Jerusalem. Today, just forty years after the city's re-unification, I can walk freely around the streets late at night on the hunt for good falafel. I do so not in ignorance of the sacrifices that have been made for our capital city, but rather in gratitude for them.

I have to pay another visit to the mysterious CLAL building again to obtain an important document that is part of the scavenger hunt of getting an Israeli mortgage. The CLAL building is a monstrous office building next to the much more pleasant shuk. Now, I know the office is on the twelfth floor. What is unusual, is that in some parts of the building, the twelfth floor doesn't exist! That's right, at some point, some architect thought it would be really neat to leave a hole in the building that otherwise would have been the rest of the twelfth floor. While you can reach the official office of Important Pieces of Paper (IPP), only one elevator in the whole building will take you there. Just go there some time when you don't need a mortgage and spend a few minutes watching exasperated Olim run from elevator to elevator, trying to find the right one before the 19 minutes that the office is actually open go by.

Yet no matter how much fun the bureaucratic process of getting a mortgage is, no one (or hardly anyone) will shoot at you as you do it. Many buildings around Jerusalem still have bullet holes from 1948. The very fact that Jerusalem today is the capital of a Jewish country is an unbelievable miracle. The very fact that people will lend you money to build a house in Jerusalem (or even better, in the deadly West Bank) is astonishing. Yet here we are.

I don't mean to say that Jerusalem is perfect. There are many problems that need to be addressed. (Thankfully, lack of quality falafel is not one of them.) But that's just the point. We Jews have a chance to shape the city on our own. There is no Roman, Turkish, or British officials who will decide where the streets should go. On our own we can create a first-rate light rail system. We can make high quality Jewish education accessible to all. How about nonflammable garbage dumpsters? There is certainly a need.

Jerusalem and the rest of Israel, including the "West Bank" both inside and outside the "fence" have enormous potential. Olim who come here know that sometimes things can be difficult, but we don't have enough time to worry all day about whether the sky is falling. If we were not optimistic, we would never have come.

Shabbat Shalom from our blessed nation.

© 2007 Yarden Frankl