City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem

In City of Stone: The Hidden History of Jerusalem, Meron Benvenisti assumes and achieves a seemingly impossible task--telling the political, architectural, social, cultural, and religious history of the holy city of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity. Benvenisti, a former deputy mayor of Jerusalem, seems to know every rock, every person, and every conflict that has any significant place in the city's history. He describes them all with the objectivity of a scholar and the passion of a lover, qualities that make City of Stone equally useful for armchair historians and curious travelers. For example, Benvenisti's vivid and circumspect histories of the Temple Mount (where the Jews' first temple stood and where Mohammed began his famous Night Journey) and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre (built on the purported site of Jesus' crucifixion) expertly convey not only the complicated political and religious battles for national and clerical control of these sites, but also give a solid of sense of what it's actually like to be there. Benvenisti's powers of analysis and observation are best synthesized in his final chapter, which explores, among other topics, the abiding desire of Christians, Jews, and Muslims to be buried in Jerusalem and therefore to become more holy by resting in its holy soil. "They all sought a safe haven, a new land, a new life--they all strove to build the celestial Zion," he writes. "Perhaps this accumulation of hopes and desires buried in the graveyards of Jerusalem may nuture faith that peace and reconciliation can prevail, even in this world." --Michael Joseph Gross