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The Tikvah Podcast

Edward Rothstein on Jerusalem Syndrome at the Met

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, Politics, Religion & Spirituality, News

4.6620 Ratings

🗓️ 9 March 2017

⏱️ 46 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art opened Jerusalem 1000-1400: Every People Under Heaven, the exhibit was greeted with tremendous fanfare. It dazzled the eyes and summoned a seductive image of medieval Jerusalem as an exciting hub of diverse cultures and religions. But is this picture of the Holy City true to history? Or was the Met trafficking in myths that anchor multicultural hopes for Jerusalem’s future in a fictitious past? Did the Met help its visitors see Jerusalem as it was, or as the exhibit’s architects wish it to be?

In “Jerusalem Syndrome at the Met,” published in Mosaic soon after the close of the exhibit, Wall Street Journal Critic at Large Edward Rothstein debunks Jerusalem 1000-1400’s fictions. He shows that the exhibit’s sumptuous beauty was actually founded on historically tendentious apologetics.

In this podcast, Rothstein joins Tikvah Executive Director Eric Cohen to discuss his piece. Rothstein discusses how the exhibit distorts Jerusalem’s complex history, whitewashes the violence and intolerance of the city’s Muslim conquerors, and downplays the Jewish connection to Judaism’s holiest city. In doing so, he illustrates how the Met exemplifies the some of the most troubling trends afflicting museums in the West.

Courtesy of Pro Musica Hebraica, musical selections in this podcast are drawn from the Quintet for Clarinet and Strings, op. 31a, composed by Paul Ben-Haim, and performed by the ARC Ensemble.

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the Tikva podcast on Great Jewish Essays and Ideas.

0:11.0

I'm your host, Eric Cohen.

0:13.0

It's my great privilege today to be joined by Edward Rothstein, one of America's most serious and most prolific cultural critics.

0:20.0

He was for many years a cultural

0:21.6

critic of the New York Times and now is a critic at large of the Wall Street Journal.

0:25.7

Incredible range on arts, culture, music, literature. Ed, it's great to have you here.

0:31.0

Great to be here. So our subject today is a recent essay that you published in Mosaic called

0:36.4

Jerusalem Syndrome at the Met. And it's really a

0:39.6

very in-depth look at this exhibit that just ended on Jerusalem, specifically Jerusalem 1,000 to

0:46.1

1400, every people under heaven. So I thought we could just start with the title itself. What's the

0:52.5

Jerusalem syndrome? And how did it take shape

0:55.1

at this exhibit at the Met? Well, the Jerusalem syndrome typically has been recognized as a phenomenon

1:02.8

where a tourist who is perfectly normal in all respects goes to Jerusalem and suddenly starts

1:10.5

having a urge to prophesy and predict

1:15.5

and deal with utopian ideas and apocalyptic condemnations and it sometimes institutionalized

1:25.1

for these illnesses.

1:34.0

And I think it was given its name in the last couple of decades,

1:39.7

and it is an unusual phenomenon because you take the person out of Jerusalem and generally this syndrome dissolves.

1:42.7

Well, I was sort of playfully using it in this case to indicate the fact that the intoxication,

1:50.0

that this apocalyptic intoxication where reality is sort of distorted and strange ideas take root

1:59.0

and prophecies are given that have no real ground in reality.

2:04.6

It would be an interesting metaphor for describing the Jerusalem exhibition at the Met,

...

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