THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 24, 1995 TAG: 9512280391
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JEREMIAH J.A. CRONIN
LENGTH: Medium: 95 lines
JERUSALEM
The Endless Crusade
ANDREW SINCLAIR
Crown. 295 pp. $24.
Jerusalem is a place of long memories, with each stone telling a story that stretches from centuries to millennia.
Jerusalem: The Endless Crusade, by Andrew Sinclair, attempts to tell the story of Jerusalem from the placing of its first stones, almost three millennia ago, to the modern peace negotiations between the state of Israel and the Palestinians. He speaks of several Jerusalems, the physical places of Muslim, Jew and Christian, and the Jerusalem that resides in the souls of these peoples of the Book.
Sinclair, a novelist, historian, critic and filmmaker, has written biographies of writer Jack London, financier J.P. Morgan and filmmaker John Ford. He is a founding fellow of Churchill College at Cambridge, England, where he taught and lectured. Jerusalem shows his talent for research and ordering of information. While he does not present new source material, he does weave the known into an intriguing tapestry.
Jerusalem was founded by the Israelite King David to unite the warring northern and southern tribes of Israel. Located in a dry, arid region occupied by the gentile Jebusites, it was created as a place of reconciliation and peace. In a fashion uncharacteristic of the Hebrews, who under the direction of their god annihilated and subjugated the original inhabitants of Canaan, David did not massacre the Jebusites but incorporated them into his holy city. Although Sinclair's history recounts similar acts of grace and tolerance, it also depicts slaughters that remain in the mind of Muslim, Christian and Jew to this day.
King Solomon later constructed the famous temple, which housed the Ark of the Covenant and became the symbol of a wise and righteous Jewish empire. With the eventual destruction of the temple by the Romans, and the diaspora of the Jews, Jerusalem in the Jewish mind became an abstract concept.
In fact, certain sects within the faith came to believe that the re-creation of a Jewish state and the restoration of the temple would only occur with the coming of the Messiah. To think or act otherwise would be blasphemous. Jerusalem regained its physical significance with the advent of Zionism and the desire for a Jewish state.
To the Muslim, Jerusalem is holy ground, ranking behind Mecca and Medina in its importance. According to Islamic belief, the prophet Mohammed ascended from the temple mound to the seventh heaven. A stone located within the Dome of the Rock mosque bears the imprint of his foot.
With the exception of a few massacres associated with retaking the city from the Frankish crusaders, Sinclair depicts Muslim rule over the city as one of tolerance toward both Christians and Jews.
Although Sinclair portrays Western involvement in the affairs of this land unfavorably, the history makes fascinating reading. From serving as an outlet for the territorial ambitions of underemployed knights in the Middle Ages, to assuaging European guilt over the holocaust through the creation of the modern state of Israel, Palestine has influenced the psyche of the West since the early part of this millennium. Key to this is the concept of the ``crusade'' to take back the holy places from the infidel.
Sinclair details the idea of crusade as a major transformer of European culture. What started out as a campaign by force to reclaim a distant physical place became a geopolitical tool to be applied at home to acquire territory or to rein in heresy. This change led to the formation of the Masons from the remnants of the Knights Templar, the Protestant Reformation and the growth of the powerful nation-state.
Although the information here is presented in a fashion that makes for a wonderful flow and understanding of complex history, Sinclair's writing style is cumbersome. Sentences occasionally ramble to the point that they become disjointed. The meter of the history is interrupted when the reader stops to decipher what the author is trying to say. The effect is that of a brilliant rambling professor.
We in the United States have trouble understanding peoples who think in terms of centuries and millennia. Without such knowledge, we are doomed to our own progression of failed crusades. Sinclair's Jerusalem goes a long way toward helping us understand a city that is about to begin its third millennium.
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EDITOR'S NOTE: For further reading about Jerusalem, which is commemorating its trimillennium from Rosh Hashanah 1995 (late September) through December 1996, consider Jerusalem: An Archaeological Biography (Random House), by Hershel Shanks, and Next Year in Jerusalem: 3,000 Years of Jewish Stories, to be published by Viking in February. MEMO: Jeremiah J.A. Cronin is an environmental consultant who lives in
Norfolk. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
The Dome of the Rock is sacred to many in Jerusalem.
by CNB