San Antonio College Library

This work traces the evolution of the belief that Jerusalem is the center of the Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious worlds and argues that this fixation is a main cause of the modern-day Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It uncovers the ways in which the city became a transcendent fantasy that ignites religious fervour unlike anywhere else on Earth. He shows how the conflicts within this holiest of cities underscore an important point of history:...

Jerusalem is more than a holy city built of stone: it is a battle cry, a magic spell, an act of defiance, a claim of sovereignty. The scramble for the soul of Jerusalem began three millennia ago. Only in the past century did the battle between distant empires and warring sects of believers evolve into today's deadly struggle between the peoples for whom Jerusalem is now home: Jews and Arabs. To justify their rival claims, each faction has written...

Sacred to three traditions, the Old City of Jerusalem is the Gordian knot at the center of the Middle East conflict. This book explores how religious and political interests compete for control of this sacred space, and how that competition affects the Middle East peace process. Dumper analyzes the religious dynamics in the Old City in political terms, investigating rivalries and tensions at three interrelated levels: among regional and international...

Most books dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict see events through the eyes of policy-makers, generals or diplomats. Menachem Klein offers an illuminating alternative by telling the intertwined histories, from street level upwards, of three cities-Jerusalem, Jaffa, and Hebron-and their intermingled Jewish, Muslim and Christian inhabitants, from the nineteenth century to the present. Each of them was and still is a mixed city. Jerusalem and...

Jerusalem is the site of some famous religious monuments in the world, from the Dome of the Rock to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre to the Western Wall of the Temple. This work takes you on a tour through the history of this image-filled and ideology-laden city--from the bedrock of the Old City to the towering roofs of the Holy Sepulchre.