My Jerusalem: Secular Adventures in the Holy City

David Kimmel is a Ph.D. candidate in history at York University.

Twain, Melville, Flaubert, et al.—the pantheon of “dyspeptic
writers” who have shared their impressions of Jerusalem is a crowded
place. In there any room for a Canadian to squeeze in? Of course there
is. But reader beware: if you seek a travelogue of the city’s
delights, look elsewhere. Little in this book, based on Drainie’s
two-year sojourn, indicates any enjoyment of life in one of the
world’s most enchanting locales. No mere tourist, Drainie actually
lived there and struggled with the daily hassles and hostilities of life
in the world’s most contested terrain.

Jerusalem is also the nexus of the world’s most widely covered news
story, the Arab-Israeli conflict. There are more foreign correspondents
in the Holy City than anywhere else except Washington. Hence our
inundation with reportage from the region. But far too rare is the
opportunity to read about the ordinary people for whom Middle East
antagonisms are a way of life. Drainie introduces us to many of them:
Jew and Arab, Christian and Muslim, religious and secular, native-born
and immigrant, liberal and hard-liner. Jerusalem is a complex site where
nearly every facet of existence is fraught with politics. Such
complexity can, for the journalist, be either a nightmare or a
dream-come-true. In this case, in choosing to get involved, it seems the
writer simply got fed up with the whole mess.

Drainie writes that she was “trying to observe the situation
dispassionately and report upon it honestly.” I don’t doubt her
honesty. But it seems impossible at once to live in a political hotbed
and to remain objective. At best, this context gives the reader a chance
to sense the passions of Jerusalem life. At worst, it means the author
must ultimately take sides. Drainie’s pro-Arab bias is clear. She
knows it, too, and wonders why at one point: “Was it just because the
Palestinians were victims of the Israelis and therefore entitled to our
unquestioning sympathy no matter how incompetently they might behave?”
Her depictions of certain Israeli Jews suggest the influence of a more
deeply seated distaste. But this was, after all, her Jerusalem.