The navel of the world?

In Jewish tradition, Jerusalem is @Taburo shel Olam@, the navel of the world.
And here I am, contemplating my navel.

Actually it is a schizophrenic city, composed of two distinct personalities that hate each other while inhabiting the same body.

The western half is mostly Jewish and Israeli and contains the major institutions of Israel's national capital: the President, Parliament, Supreme Court, etc.

The eastern half is Palestinian Arab, mostly Moslem, partly Christian, and contains places deemed Holy by Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The western half is modern, European, with hi-tech, museums, concerts, galleries, bookshops and traffic jams.

The eastern half is ancient, oriental, low-tech, crowded, noisy, and in many parts inaccessible
to cars.

I live in the western part. I only go to the eastern part when I am escorting visitors from overseas who want to see the exotic, biblical Jerusalem, or so they think.

Both parts of Jerusalem are run by the same municipality which is elected by the Jews but boycotted by the Arabs.

A Jerusalemite (in Hebrew Yerushalmi, in Arabic Qudsi) is usually religious, whether Jewish,Moslem or Christian.

I happen to be secular.

I do not think God has been helpful to this city or to my people, and we can do without Him.

In fact too much blood has been shed in the name of God, or Jesus or Allah or whatever His followers call Him.

I hope that one day Jerusalem will be the Capital of Secular Humanism and will be freed of all this religious twaddle.

But that will not be in my lifetime.

Comments are welcome.


YERUSHALMI