City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem - Hardcover

Benvenisti, Meron

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0520205219 ISBN 13: 9780520205215

Publisher: University of California Press, 1996

Synopsis

Jerusalem is more than a holy city built of stone. Domain of Muslims, Jews, and Christians, Jerusalem is a perpetual contest, and its shrines, housing projects, and bulldozers compete in a scramble for possession. Now one of Jerusalem's most respected authorities presents a history of the city that does not fall prey to any one version of its past.

Meron Benvenisti begins with a reflection on the 1996 celebration of Jerusalem's 3000-year anniversary as the capital of the Kingdom of Israel. He then juxtaposes eras, dynasties, and rulers in ways that provide grand comparative insights. But unlike recent politically motivated histories written to justify the claims of Jews and Arabs now living in Jerusalem, Benvenisti has no such agenda. His history is a polyphonic story that lacks victors as well as vanquished. He describes the triumphs and defeats of all the city's residents, from those who walk its streets today to the meddlesome ghosts who linger in its shadows.

Benvenisti focuses primarily on the twentieth century, but ancient hatreds are constantly discovered just below the surface. These hostilities have created intense social, cultural, and political interactions that Benvenisti weaves into a compelling human story. For him, any claim to the city means recognizing its historical diversity and multiple populations.

A native son of Jerusalem, Benvenisti knows the city well, and his integrated history makes clear that all of Jerusalem's citizens have enriched the Holy City in the past. It is his belief that they can also do so in the future.

About this title

Review

In 1996 Jerusalem celebrated 3000 years since the biblical conquest by King David. Even that celebration, marking the city as historically Jewish, is a political statement. The city cannot escape fiercely argued claims to primacy argued in religious, political or historical terms, not only between Israeli-Jew and Palestinian-Arab, but between Islamic, Christian and Jewish traditions, and between secular and orthodox Jews. Meron Benvenisti, an Israeli Jew, is a former deputy mayor of the city he was born in, and knows the physical city as well as it can be known. He takes us on a tour of Jerusalem, and attempts to evenhandedly lay out the problems that beset it, and to convey the history and value of the city he loves.

From the Inside Flap

"Jerusalem has had many chroniclers, but Benvenisti is the city's leading living author. This is the one book that provides a history of the city at once knowing, unsentimental, yet evocative of the grace of that city. A book of great quality, a book of rare integrity."—Fouad Ajami, author of The Arab Predicament

Edition details

• Publisher: University of California Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0520205219
• ISBN 13: 9780520205215
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 283