Teddy

I almost missed it. My focus had been on the deaths of Saddam Hussein and Gerald Ford, and on keeping my hostility in check over being forced to confront their two stories side by side on the same newspaper pages. Mr. Ford deserved better. Then, on my way from first page highlights to back pages commentaries, I came across another story whose significance should not be lost on any of us.

On January 2, Teddy Kolleck died in Jerusalem, at the ripe old age of 95. He has been off our radar long enough to be remembered by many only vaguely, and by many more not at all. And that itself is a great loss, to Israelis, Americans, Muslims, and to everyone everywhere who still believes that religious faith can be a source of peace and not enmity on the planet. For almost three decades as its mayor, Teddy --- he wanted everybody to call him that --- lifted up nobly as well as feistily a vision of the city of Jerusalem as a sacred space for three religions, and not just one, and worked tirelessly with Jewish, Christian, and Muslim leaders to make his vision a reality for all the time to come. He was intolerant of religious intolerance, aggressive against religious zealotry, hilarious in the presence of religious hyper-solemnity, and ever the pragmatist in his efforts to convince members of warring religious traditions that suffering one another peaceably is the most practical way of avoiding assured mutual destruction.

I first met Teddy in Jerusalem just after the signing by Menachim Begin and Anwar Sadat of the now forgotten Camp David peace accords. Optimism was running high in the city over the prospects of stabilizing Arab-Jewish relations for generations to come. Old fears and paranoia would soon rear their ugly heads across the country again, but for the moment at least, Teddy was at his speechifying best, mesmerizing audiences with a grand vision of "his" city's respecting and affirming its place not only in the history of Judaism, but in the lives of Christians and Muslims as well. Places in the city special to each of the three faiths, he insisted, must be held sacred, along with believers' right of access to them.

As I waited to thank him for one particularly rousing speech, Teddy caught my eye and motioned me over to him. He told about recent encounters with some "Bible Belt" American Christians that worried him greatly, revolving around what was for both of us the very strange notion that when all the world's Jews finally returned to their homeland, the Messiah would return to usher in God's long promised Kingdom. The problem for Teddy was that to these Christians --- who were (and still are) making up a lot of the Christian tourist trade to the Holy Land --- it will be Jesus Christ who shows up, and that only followers of him will be ushered in to the new order. Jews and Muslims need not apply. He seemed much relieved when I told him that I regarded this view to be as whacked-out as he did. But I also had to say to him that the brand of Zionism with which some of his own colleagues had been assaulting me posed just as much a threat to his three-faiths-one-homeland vision as the truncated forms of millennialism many of my fellow Christians were serving up in the very next room. I continue to cherish his reply: "I gotta go straighten my guys out! Can you take care of yours?"

In the twelfth century, Bernard of Cluny articulated a magnificent vision of Jerusalem as a city glowing with radiant, golden light, jubilant with song, a home to angels, martyrs, and all of God's elect, whose pastures, decked in a glorious sheen, promise a kind of rest that will take them beyond all earthly toil and struggle. Tucked neatly into the middle of his great poem were these words: "Strive, man to win that glory; Toil, man to gain that light." Before Teddy and I concluded our chat that morning, I shared with him this Christian hymn and wondered whether he might think of it, as I did, as capable of reaching out to Christians, Jews, and Muslims alike. He thought for a moment, both of us fully aware that the context for this hymn was the Christian Crusades against the infidels in the Holy Land and Holy City. Then he uttered a Hebrew phrase which he quickly translated for me: "If only..."

One way to grieve Teddy Kolleck's passing is to keep holding that "if only" close to our own hearts for as long as there is any strength left in us.