HOW TRUE TO LIFE IS BIOGRAPHY?
29
You knew your grandfather, the pious Hassid. He wanted his grave
to
be directly facing the Gate of Mercy. Because when the Messiah
will come he will enter Jerusalem through the Gate of Mercy. At
that moment there will be so much havoc around, with all these
people coming out of their graves. Your grandfather doesn't want
to
be bothered with any of that. He just wants
to
stand up and
walk directly
to
the Gate of Mercy. And as the mountain was turn–
ing here a little, I argued with the Chevra Kadisha that they dig the
grave in a diagonal.
The plot of my great-grand father's biography was continuing after his
death, and with a clear direction, so concrete that immediate arrange–
ments could not be postponed.
The Gate of Mercy at the eastern side of the Temple Mount (Haram
AI-Sharif), facing the Mount of Olives, has been blocked since the
twelfth century, and for very similar reasons. The Muslims knew about
the belief that the Messiah will enter Jerusalem through the Gate of
Mercy. They took it very seriously, because legends, myths, projected
biographies are the name of the game in Jerusalem.
If
there is a plot that
the Messiah will enter through the Gate of Mercy, he is certainly going
to
do so, and very soon. It's not a "Messianic" dream, it's an imminent
reality. He can come any moment. One can already hear his footfalls
coming down from the Mount of Olives. So the gate should be blocked
with stones immediately. And for extra safety a Muslim graveyard was
installed in front of it, because graveyards are considered impure by
Jewish law, and therefore forbidden for priests.
Are these stories debated on the lawn of the White House? I'm afraid
not. And what about the Christian, the Catholic, the Protestant, the
American, the European biographies of Jerusalem? When will they be
seen seriously as interested parties in the conflict, articulating the future
of Jerusalem not only according
to
"objective," "democratic," "ethical"
terminology, but through their own deeply rooted biographies of
Jerusalem, with their own desired plots?
And what a bout the sti II-u n heard fema Ie voice, the voice of
Jerusalem?
[n
writing about Jerusalem 1 wanted to destabilize the tradi–
tional male voices, and their image of Jerusalem as the desired bride, the
holy harlot, an image that has its root in the Bible and which is so
embedded in Western culture up to nineteenth-century melodrama and
literature.
[n
my recent book
The Name,
in a subversive rewriting of a
harsh accusation of Jerusalem delivered by Ezekiel (reclaiming this rab–
binical gesture), I tried to give voice to Jerusalem, the tortured woman,
