Jerusalem, our city of in-between

These are the words of Isaiah 52: “Uri, uri … Yerushalayim Ir Ha-kodesh, Awake, awake, O Zion! Clothe yourself in splendor. Put on your robes of majesty, Jerusalem, holy city!”

For too long, Jerusalem was asleep and out of reach, then 49 years ago, she had a reawakening and miraculously, unexpectedly, was again in Jewish. “Yerushalayim be-Yadeinu.” These emotionally charged words have been seared into our hearts.

Yerushalayim, a city of contrasts, timeliness, and gold. The Jerusalem of Yehuda Amichai, of the “I want to live in Jerusalem of in-between.”

There is that collage of split off Biblical and poetic phrases that have woven themselves into an evocative and visceral verbal tapestry of Jerusalem’s essence over the years. Yehuda HaLevi’s “Tsion, Halo Tishali (Zion, do you not seek the peace of your prisoners),” the Book of Psalms’ “Im Eshkachech Yerushalayim (If I forget Thee, O Jerusalem),” “U-lema’an Yerushalayim (For the sake of Jerusalem),” “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav (Jerusalem of Gold)” and “Jerusalem of in-between.”

As Amichai says, Jerusalem of in-between earth and its Heavenly counterpart, in-between her laments and consolation, in-between her whispers and wailing, in-between … that has been Jerusalem’s lingering story.

In-between it all, Jerusalem holds and harbors a heartbeat of the world; it is a nucleus, pivoting between time and timeliness.

If it is anywhere in the world, it is there, Jerusalem, where it truly does feel as close as it gets to time standing still, where Heaven actually seems to touch earth, where a sense of the eternal is almost something you can reach out and grasp.

Shabbat in Yerushalayim, that’s what those Friday dimmdumei chamah reddening sunset twilights bring: In-between-ness.

From afar, steeped in an invisible cloak of longing, her view is breathtaking. The Montefiore windmill on the horizon, in the foreground of her strong, encompassing walls that weave between memory and hope, between the seven gates to Jerusalem.