Jerusalem and Tel Aviv

There are no opposites as perfect as Jerusalem and Tel Aviv. Together they form a bifurcated unity, like a yin and yang, or a black-and-white cookie. 

One city is holy and the other profane. One city is gold and the other is silver. One beautiful and one ugly. One high in the mountains and the other at sea level. One at the center of the universe; the other left-aligned, clinging to the coast. One with a past and one with a future. One filled with ghosts, the other unhaunted.

Like all opposites, Jerusalem and Tel Aviv belong to one another. One makes little sense without the other.

A midrash about Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: God lamented that He could not create the two cities at the same time, but alas, it had to be so. God created Jerusalem and then waited — not altogether patiently — until the day arose that he could lay the foundations for Tel Aviv upon the dunes. 

All so that one could be ancient and one could be new and the two cities would be opposite in this respect as well. 

But even in the days before it was built, Tel Aviv was there — contained in Jerusalem in the same way that light, according to the Zohar, was hidden in darkness before the creation of the world.

The secret of Jerusalem is that it is actually a profane city — a place where holy men are forced to dirty the hem of their cassocks in the filth of the streets, where saints squeeze tomatoes in the market, where gods and ghosts crowd onto rush hour buses. 

And the secret of Tel Aviv is that it is actually a holy city — a city where the sycamore trees on Allenby street reveal themselves in the dawn light as transports to some divine realm, where a sidewalk madman proves to be a prophet and holy men ponder scripture in tin hovels.

The twoness of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is none other than the twoness of the Jewish people. It doesn’t matter where you look, you will see this twoness replicated at every level of our existence, from our divided souls to our divided nation to our divided faith to our divided history. 

The twoness of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv is none other than the twoness of the Jewish people. It doesn’t matter where you look, you will see this twoness replicated at every level of our existence, from our divided souls to our divided nation to our divided faith to our divided history. 

Isolate Tel Aviv from Jerusalem and you will see that it, too, divides into two cities: One Tel Aviv is white and the other is the color of a dirty sheep. One Tel Aviv is genteel and the other is chaotic. One Tel Aviv is rich and the other is poor. One Tel Aviv is subdued and the other is untamed. 

Jerusalem is also two. One Jerusalem is conquered, the other is a frontier. One Jerusalem has secrets, the other is a secret. One Jerusalem yearns to forget and the other yearns to be remembered. 

Or, split it vertically and you get earthly Jerusalem and heavenly Jerusalem. 

Or, split it in time and you get the old city and the new. 

Or, split the country itself into Israel and Palestine, Israel and the settlements, or however you would put it. 

No matter where you cut, you will find this polarity, for this is the destiny of the land. 

So it was in ancient times when King David — himself a bifurcated soul, torn always between his love of God and his love of flesh, his exaltation and his despair, his swordcraft and his song — managed to unite the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah only for a limited time. Like the primal waters which rebelled against God for splitting their essential unity into two, the land rebelled against David for uniting its essential twoness into one. 

As the land is two, so the people are two, born of striving brothers, of Cain and Abel, of Isaac and Ishmael, of Jacob and Esau, of Rachel and Leah, of Peretz and Zerach, of Ephraim and Menashe. 

And if the errant split-end is cut loose from the spool — as was the case with Abel, with Ishmael, with Esau — the remaining One will replicate the pattern in the next generation, inseminating his wife with warring twins, for this is the way of things. 

Hasid and Misnaged, Reform and Orthodox, Religious and Secular, Right and Left.

As it says in the holy Zohar, from the good came the bad, from the mercy came the judgment, from the dark came light, from the hidden came the revealed—and all opposites are bound up in one another, and all are dependent upon one another. 

And in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, people protest in the streets, and our national prophets are calling for unity, and the earthquakes in Syria and Turkey shook us too in our sleep, and now we are wondering if our rage at our neighbors will indeed split the ground beneath our feet.

And when we say that our ancient homeland will never be divided, we are lying to ourselves. It already is. 

The secret of oneness is that it conceals twoness. And when we say on Shabbat afternoons “who is like your people Israel, a people of Oneness, One upon the land” we are lying to God, for while God is one, the people are two.

And when we say that our ancient homeland will never be divided, we are lying to ourselves. It already is.

Matthew Schultz is the author of the essay collection “What Came Before” (2020).