Second in a series of sketches exploring Zionism: Tracing lines from the Pale of Settlement in Ukraine to Palestine, where the celestial metaphor of nationalism meets the grounded reality of conflict.
Beautiful, poetic summing up of the raw and heartbreaking reality on the ground for Jewish and Palestine peoples, leading to the first Nakbha. With so much blood spilled, can it still be considered Holy ground? It seems unfathomable.
Time will tell, the next few centuries will clarify how and when the peoples can live in Peace. I sure hope so. Because globally, bloodshed must end for all of us, to maintain our sacred connection, and the future of humanity. Detailed and poignantly written essay Kevin, keep up the hard work!
It may seem paradoxical, but blood does not desecrate the sacred; it constitutes it. In antiquity, holiness was inseparable from sacrifice, from the altar upon which animals—or at times humans—were slain. The Hebrew Bible, the Christian Eucharist, and the Islamic rites of Eid al-Adha all testify to this same logic: sanctification comes only through blood. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Holy Land, the greatest altar in world history, where violence, beginning with the jousting empires of the Bronze Age and intensifying over millennia, has been precisely what made it holy. Sacrifice is what makes the sacred.
This is not like other borderlands of conflict; Jerusalem and its surroundings are unique because they were the birthplace of monotheism itself. Pagan religions, with their polytheistic pantheons, generally tolerated multiplicity: your god could live beside mine, shrines could coexist, and conquest could mean incorporation rather than annihilation.
Monotheism, by contrast—emerging out of Egypt, radicalized in the Hebrew exodus, and crystallized in the first commandments—introduced exclusivity into the sacred. One God meant all rival gods were false, and thus every loss of the land became a cosmic defeat, every defense of it an ultimate necessity. In this sense, the Holy Land is not just desperate ground in the military sense, but metaphysical desperate ground, where retreat is impossible because existential legitimacy itself is at stake.
Monotheism of Abraham birthed Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Abraham’s offsprings. And not surprisingly, the children are always fighting amongst themselves.
A polytheistic world probably makes sense. No God can be all knowing as well as present: omnipotent. Even gods need a division of labor!
Beautiful, poetic summing up of the raw and heartbreaking reality on the ground for Jewish and Palestine peoples, leading to the first Nakbha. With so much blood spilled, can it still be considered Holy ground? It seems unfathomable.
Time will tell, the next few centuries will clarify how and when the peoples can live in Peace. I sure hope so. Because globally, bloodshed must end for all of us, to maintain our sacred connection, and the future of humanity. Detailed and poignantly written essay Kevin, keep up the hard work!
Thank you so much Kaatje!
It may seem paradoxical, but blood does not desecrate the sacred; it constitutes it. In antiquity, holiness was inseparable from sacrifice, from the altar upon which animals—or at times humans—were slain. The Hebrew Bible, the Christian Eucharist, and the Islamic rites of Eid al-Adha all testify to this same logic: sanctification comes only through blood. Nowhere is this clearer than in the Holy Land, the greatest altar in world history, where violence, beginning with the jousting empires of the Bronze Age and intensifying over millennia, has been precisely what made it holy. Sacrifice is what makes the sacred.
This is not like other borderlands of conflict; Jerusalem and its surroundings are unique because they were the birthplace of monotheism itself. Pagan religions, with their polytheistic pantheons, generally tolerated multiplicity: your god could live beside mine, shrines could coexist, and conquest could mean incorporation rather than annihilation.
Monotheism, by contrast—emerging out of Egypt, radicalized in the Hebrew exodus, and crystallized in the first commandments—introduced exclusivity into the sacred. One God meant all rival gods were false, and thus every loss of the land became a cosmic defeat, every defense of it an ultimate necessity. In this sense, the Holy Land is not just desperate ground in the military sense, but metaphysical desperate ground, where retreat is impossible because existential legitimacy itself is at stake.
Monotheism of Abraham birthed Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Abraham’s offsprings. And not surprisingly, the children are always fighting amongst themselves.
A polytheistic world probably makes sense. No God can be all knowing as well as present: omnipotent. Even gods need a division of labor!