Spotlight on neighborly sentiments

Would you buy an apartment in a place where you're not wanted? Where your neighbors hate you and would like to see nothing better than the day when you will be forced out? Why on earth would you do that? Because the apartment is larger and cheaper than where you lived before? Because your great great grandfather is buried nearby? Because you've been brought up on the belief that this is your place, not theirs? Because it is a "very holy place"? All of the above?  You mistrust your neighbors; they don't love you and you don't love them. -- This, as reported by Jodi Rudoren in today's New York Times, is the state of affairs in Ma'alot David, in Beit Orot, in Kidmat Zion, and many other small apartment complexes that have sprung up across the eastern perimeter of the "holy basin," the area around the Old City that includes the most important sacred sites of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, the Temple Mount/Haram ash-Sharif, with the Dome of the Rock, the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the ancient cemeteries outside the Ottoman walls, the City of David/Village of Silwan, the Garden of Gethsemane, and Mount Olives. -- Whatever happened to the command to "love thy neighbor" (Leviticus 19:18)? Perhaps Francis I can put in a good word. He seems to have the right idea.

J'lem in the Great War-a talk at BU

What was it like in Jerusalem during the First World War? How was it to live in the transition from Ottoman rule to British military occupation? And how do we know? On Wednesday, January 30, at 5pm, Dr. Abigail Jacobson, author of From Empire to Empire and visiting research fellow in Israel Studies at the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, will introduce the diary of Ihsan Tourjman as a source of study for the holy city in transition. (For more on Dr. Jacobson, see http://www.bu.edu/judaicstudies/faculty/visiting-faculty/) Join me at 147 Bay State Road, Room 201.