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Article: The quest for Jerusalem.
- Article from:
- Judaism
- Article date:
- March 22, 1997
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1997 American Jewish Congress. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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During all of their many exiles, Jews have longed to travel to the holy city of Jerusalem. This is not only a journey to the heart of the Holy Land, but also a quest for the Shekhinah, who is so closely linked to the Kotel, the Wailing Wall, all that remains of the Temple in Jerusalem that was once said to have been the Shekhinah's home. This kind of intense longing informs Jewish literature, from the Bible to the folk tales collected orally in Eastern Europe and Israel in this century.
In these writings, Jerusalem focuses Jewish longing as the city in which God's presence and that of the Shekhinahis manifest. Thus in tale after tale, the city itself turned into an ...