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Travel Piece  by Ida Nasatir

Letter from Israel,  by Ida Nasatir,  June 8, 1951

June 8 1951—Ida Nasatir, "A Letter from Israel," Southwestern Jewish Press, pages 6:  Dear Julia and Mac: I write this letter from the Eternal City , two thousand six hundred feet above sea-level. I know that hundreds of books, millions of words have been written about this city of all cities. But you cannot really write about this or that aspect which appeals to you. You can write about her from the historical, the religious, the artistic, the political or the purely sentimental point of view. And when you have written long and carefully, you may think you have pinned her down and thoroughly explained her but you have only touched the fringe of her garment. Jerusalem herself, her indescribable charm, her mystery, can never be set down in words. She remains remote, solitary, secret, unconquerable.  The story of the Eternal City is written in paradox.  She is the smallest of the world's cities, but some of the world's most urgent problems are centered in her. She has little commercial importance, she is a struggling, often a distracted city; but she attracts irresistibly the hearts of men in a most commercial and greedy age.  Men called her the City of Peace, but because of her more blood has been shed than for any other city in the world. Yet she remains the center of faith to the three great creeds in the world; she draws to her both East and West. Time and eternity, nature and art, death and hope are blended in her. Heathen and Jew, Crusader and Roman, Christian and non-Christian, here in this beautiful, soft, yet terribly strong city is the meeting point for all the world and for all ages.  Perhaps the greatest gift of all this unique city has to offer is her people—a polyglot assembly from all corners of the globe, a people who are of perennial interest, a people who are pitched into the roaring rapids of life twisted and tossed here and there by obligations and needs, yet, on the smallest excuse, they escape into the world of philosophy, of remarkable music and poetry. How does one even begin to describe their vividness and courage, their achievement of the impossible. These people on the cobble-stoned streets of new Jerusalem—the ordinary men and women—are the ones who made the greatness of the city, the ones who bore on their shoulders the burdens and glories of events, and the prophets and priests and kings. Theirs was not a sudden  flash that lights the skies and dies. It was rather a gigantic illumination that sanctified a task well done and forecasts a greater glory to come.  The people, the new buildings springing up right and left to house the Government institutions, the banks, shops and residential suburbs—the stones and hills, the tomb of David high on Mt. Zion, the new Hadassah hospitals and Aliyah camps, the strong Kibbutzim and tiny new little trees, the Mizrachi schools and the great Yeshivoth—in fact, the whole face of Jerusalem is wonderful to behold. This treasured city in the mountains, overlooking the plains and the wilderness of Judea, is as beautiful and as frightening as the soul of man.  Fondly, Ida Nasatir.