Gustave Dore - New Jerusalem
The people of Israel had re-established their state in Land of Israel after two thousand years of exile and the Holocaust. One of the lessons of the Holocaust is that a strong Israel is a moral obligation of the free world.
But the Promised Land borders are not defined precisely in the Bible. The Bible says that God, the people of Israel, and Land of Israel, are a consolidated entity. This definition has already decided the fate of the Jewish people. But unlike the people's clear concrete rules, the boundaries were vague and undefined.
Research has determined that there are different border settings of Greater Israel. These territorial definitions were created at different times by different people, and caused absolute misunderstanding. There are also those who claim that the country's borders expand and contract as needed.
Lack of clear map has always been an obstacle for the Zionist idea. Jerusalem became abstract term, one that reflects value and is intangible, in the eyes of the Jews themselves in the Diaspora, from the destruction of the first temple and later.
In modern times, the lack of a map defining the boundaries of Greater Israel influenced crucial political decisions. For example, Sinai Peninsula was given to Egypt casually, because it was not considered by the government of Menachem Begin as part of Greater Israel.
The Catholic Church announced a few years ago, based on an Israeli scholar's research, that Mount Sinai is in the Negev plateau.
In contrast to its mental cancellation as a tangible object, the Land of Israel has always evoked the deepest feelings in all Western and Monotheistic cultures. Longings to Israel, the Holy land, find their expression as a strong physical and emotional experience in prayers, hymns, and works of religious art throughout history.
Gospel songs expressing longing to the Holy Land are major assets of Western Culture. They are earthy level of religious poetry. In them, religious and folk poetry is combined in an inseparable connection.
An American Gospel song:
I'm a Pilgrim
I am a pilgrim and a stranger,
Travelling through this wearisome land,
got a home in that yonder city, oh Lord,
and it's not, not made by hands.
I got a mother, sister and a brother,
who have gone to that sweet land.
I am determined to go and see them
oh Lord,
all over on that distant shore.
As I go down to that river of Jordan,
just to bathe my weary soul.
If I could touch but the hem of his garment,
oh Lord, well, I believe it would make me whole.
A philosophy that deals with human beings must adjust to the images of poems and continue their flow. Philosophy must learn poems honestly, because poetry is the peak of contemplation and expression, the climax of thought and dream.
The connection in this poem between the physical Jordan River and the abstract celestial city is too clear and strong then required for a simple metaphor.
It arouses questions regarding the intimacy between religious and material experiences.
The consistant relationship between the personal religious experience and the physical Holy Land calls for examining its sources.
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