Ida Nasatir writings List of honorees Louis Rose Society Jewishsightseeing home
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.