Ear­li­er this week, Chanan Tigay shared his 5 favorite books to re-read. With the release of The Lost Book of Moses: The Search for the World’s Old­est Bible, Chanan is guest blog­ging here all week as part of the Vis­it­ing Scribe series on The ProsenPeo­ple.


I am an Amer­i­can, Jerusalem-born.

Which is to say that, while my par­ents — born in Buf­fa­lo and Detroit, respec­tive­ly — spent a Sab­bat­i­cal in the Holy City a few decades back, I hap­pened. Ever since, Jerusalem has main­tained a pow­er­ful grip on my imag­i­na­tion. I love the mix of old and new, east and west, Arab and Jew. I love the hid­den alley­ways. I love the hid­den his­to­ry. And I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by the his­to­ry that’s not so hid­den — the ancient walls, the bul­let-scarred build­ings. And the hum­mus — I’d move to Jerusalem just to eat lunch each Fri­day at Pinati.

I can get around Jerusalem with­out a GPS, know where to have copies of my keys made, and still refer to the Inbal Hotel as it was pre­vi­ous­ly called: the Laromme.

I thought I knew a lot about the city. But in writ­ing my new book, which is set in part in Jerusalem of the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, I real­ized there was much I did not know. Accord­ing to the archae­ol­o­gist Eric H. Cline, the much-con­test­ed City of Peace has been destroyed twice, besieged 23 times, attacked 52 times, and cap­tured and recap­tured 44 times. Squeez­ing onto the Num­ber 4 bus at 9:00 on a Sun­day morn­ing, it can some­times feel like every day in Jerusalem is a micro­cosm of the city’s tumul­tuous his­to­ry — a series of small bat­tles to be faced down and over­come. But strolling the street s of Rehavia on Shab­bat, it’s hard to imag­ine a more peace­ful spot on earth.

Jerusalem has always been, and remains, dynam­ic — it is a sym­bol, yes, but also a strate­gic asset. A bea­con on the hill, and also a bunker. And no mat­ter how much I think I know about the city of my birth, there is always more to learn. 

In that vein, here are three of my favorite books about Jerusalem:

A Tale of Love and Dark­ness: Although Amos Oz’s clas­sic mem­oir is not strict­ly about Jerusalem (as a young man, Oz leaves Jerusalem for a kib­butz), the City of Peace is the stage upon which the unfor­get­table dra­ma of the author’s dif­fi­cult child­hood plays out, com­plete with cameos by lit­er­ary lumi­nar­ies like S. Y. Agnon and Shaul Tch­er­ni­chovsky. This isn’t an easy book, but it’s a beau­ti­ful one — train­ing its unpar­al­leled lens on Jerusalem as the British Man­date came to its end and the State of Israel emerged in its place.

The Book of Kings: Although archae­o­log­i­cal remains of Jerusalem’s past are a con­stant fea­ture of its present — walk through Jerusalem for an hour and try not to stum­ble over some rel­ic or site of his­tor­i­cal val­ue — there’s one impor­tant spot where that’s not the case: Beit HaMik­dash, the Holy Tem­ple. We’ve got its west­ern retain­ing wall, of course, but that’s about it. If you’re inter­est­ed in con­jur­ing a vision of what the Tem­ple looked like way back when, though, the best place to start is the Bible’s Book of Kings. The writing’s not quite Amos Oz (The porch in front of the nave of the house was twen­ty cubits in length, cor­re­spond­ing to the width of the house, and its depth along the front of the house was ten cubits…) but it’s full of specifics.

KeCheres HaN­ish­bar: Shu­lamit Lapid’s won­der­ful fic­tion­al treat­ment of Moses Wil­helm Shapi­ra, the Jerusalem antiq­ui­ties deal­er at the heart of my own non­fic­tion book. Shapi­ra was a high­ly com­plex man — at once obse­quious and pompous, hon­est and deceit­ful, lov­ing and self-cen­tered, bril­liant and naïve, Jew­ish and Chris­t­ian, Euro­pean and Mid­dle East­ern — and Lapid cap­tures him with style and sophistication.

Chanan Tigay is an award-win­ning jour­nal­ist who has cov­ered the Mid­dle East, 9/11, and the Unit­ed Nations for numer­ous mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers, and wires. He is a pro­fes­sor of Cre­ative Writ­ing at San Fran­cis­co State University.

Relat­ed Content:

Chanan Tigay is an award-win­ning jour­nal­ist who has cov­ered the Mid­dle East, 9/11, and the Unit­ed Nations for numer­ous mag­a­zines, news­pa­pers, and wires. Born in Jerusalem, Tigay holds degrees from Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty and the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia and was a recent Inves­tiga­tive Report­ing Fel­low at UC Berke­ley. He is a pro­fes­sor of Cre­ative Writ­ing at San Fran­cis­co State University.