Insights into Israel

In penance for straying another two weeks before posting, I have another post within two short days of another by good sir Nate.

In a request for a guest literature program, I had Ben Feehan write me a blog article. He did so. The topic of this post reflects his writings:

Ruins have always intrigued people. Like the collective gravestone of an entire era, the weathered remains of ancient cities and fortresses have a certain unconquerable mystery about them. Spend any amount of time amount of time around an archeologist and his dig and you will find just how deep this intrigue goes. Not unlike your cliche'd miser or mad scientist, these dedicated souls will go to nearly insane lengths and spend years of their lives reconstructing shattered crockery, collecting the tiny scattered rings that were once armor, or meticulously combing battlefields for a stray button. The non-obsessed shake their heads and ask the inevitable question: why?

I recently had an opportunity to travel to the thoroughly ancient land of Israel. Apart from being interrogated at the airports, getting caught in the cross-fire of a violent street battle perpetrated by seven year old Arabs with be-be guns, and discovering that Israelis drive like scarcely suppressed maniacs, we visited ruins. Lots and lots and lots of ruins. Some were Roman, with your typically romantic, forsaken looking pillar, raising its carved cornice in defiance to the march of time. Others were merely dusty piles of weathered stone in tiny squares, indicating the foundation of a long since vacated house. Still others were impressive tunnel systems or the toppled remains of once towering battlements, the crowning achievements of legendary kings. Yet one thing they all had in common: they were all desolate and all but useless. By about the eleventh such site in half as many days, you seriously begin to doubt the sanity of archeologists and practical historians in general. What on earth made these places so exciting?

A clue to this mystery can be found in a look at the land of Israel itself. All across the country are some of the most important sites of three of the five major world religions. Sites so important that Christians, Jews, and Muslims have, rightfully or not, pulverized each other them for the past centuries since the inception of each their respective religions. I think it can safely be said that if the Balkans are the powder keg of Europe, then Israel, and Jerusalem in particular, is the nuclear warhead of the world. Like many secular peacemakers throughout time, we ask yet again: why? Why does some rock under a golden dome make such a difference or an ancient wall matter so much?

The answer to this question is the answer to all the others, and is apparently yet to be discovered.

-Ben Feehan