Books About Jerusalem

Review by: Maha Salah Born in Jerusalem on February 25, 1929, during the British Mandate of Palestine, the author, Issa Boullata, a prominent Palestinian scholar, writer and translator of Arabic literature living in Montreal, shares with us a memoir of his childhood living in Jerusalem in the years before the Nakba in 1948. According to Boullata: “No year is burnt into the memory of the Palestinians as deeply and as painfully as 1948.” However, despite all the tension that preceded the Nakba, Boullata paints a vivid, beautiful, and unique image of what it was like to be a boy in…

Review by: Jessica Purkiss The Storyteller of Jerusalem is a remarkable and unique memoir of the life and times of Wasif Jawhariyyeh, a talented composer, oud player, poet and chronicler from the Old City of Jerusalem. The memoir is a collection of observations, notes on his personal life and recordings of historical moments in Jerusalem’s history. Spanning over four decades, they cover the city’s most turbulent changes. His account takes us from the Ottoman period into the era of British control, and the lead up to the establishment of Israel, covering the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians, known as the…

acob J Nammar’s new memoir is an account of growing up in Jerusalem before, during, and after the Nakba. It addresses the lives of the Palestinians who remained in the Israeli-occupied part of West Jerusalem after the Nakba, remarkably free of bitterness. His account describes what it is like to be marginalised in your own country, and to lose everything you have. Source: http://www.palestinebookawards.com/

Throughout its history, Jerusalem has been not only the religious center for the three monotheistic faiths, but also an important political and cultural focal point for its inhabitants. Having withstood numerous wars and battles over the years, the city still remains the heart of Palestine and at the core of the unresolved Arab-Israeli conflict. Since the occupation in 1967, consecutive Israeli governments have zealously pursued a policy aimed at changing the city’s Arab character and ‘Judaizing’ East Jerusalem to create a new geopolitical reality that guarantees Israel’s territorial, demographic, and religious control over the entire city. Over many years and…

Edited by Dr. Mahdi Abdul Hadi “Jerusalem is Arab nationalism’s bride”; so wrote the Iraqi poet Muthaffer Al-Nawwab. Indeed, the city holds a lofty place in the concept of Arab identity, yet it is also a place that has seen more than its share of strife and contention. Yet as Arab Jerusalemites are increasingly persecuted, and as the attempts to pull Jerusalem further away from the Arab World continue, the city’s iconic status only grows in the eyes of all Arabs – be they Christian, Muslim, or secular. This bond is as intangible as it is incontrovertible, making it difficult…

Jerusalem is never far away in Sweden.In fact, it is just next door for many Swedes. Our long country is dotted from north to south with villages, hills, moorlands, mills, meadows, and mountains that have borrowed their names from the faraway Holy City. In all, thirty-eight “Jerusalems” are registered in the Swedish Place-name Register. There is even a “Joy of Jerusalem”. And then we have one city, the fifth largest, Jönkoping, which is known as “the Jerusalem of Sweden”, because of its many free churches and reputation as a place largely inhabited by religious people. The Jerusalems of Sweden are…