Concluding Thoughts

     In Armstrong's final chapters, she continues to focus on the spiritual connection with places - and the effect that places have on one' s spirituality.

• "Thus they were moved to see Theodor Herzl, who had become the spokesman of Zionism, ascend the podium.  He looked like 'a man of the House of David, risen all of a sudden from his grave in all his legendary glory,' recalled Mordechai Ben-Ami, the delegate from Odessa.  'It seemed as if the dream cherished by our people for two thousand years had come true at last and Messiah the Son of David was standing before us.'" (365)  From this quote, it would seem that Jews are so connected to their spirituality through location that they would believe that the person who leads the movement to restore the location of their 'homeland' to them, is their Messiah.  Is the connection that great or was this one man just very excited?
• "Jerusalem remained a religious and strategic prize." (371)  The pursuit of control over Jerusalem was/is never simply for land, but for control of sacred land.
• "A religious spirit had emerged in Israel which fostered not compassion but murderous hatred." (415)  Though Jerusalem was supposed to connect the people to the divine, the fight for Jerusalem was disconnecting them from the divine ideals and teachings.
• "Yet from the first, Zion was never merely a physical entity.  It was also an ideal." (420)  Each religious group saw Jerusalem as a place which embodied the essence of their spirituality.
• "One of the inescapable messages of the history of Jerusalem is that, despite romantic myths to the contrary, suffering does not necessarily make us better, nobler people." (423)  All groups, who have at one time claimed rights to Jerusalem, have suffered from war, have been socially ostracized, have had to leave the city, and have seen their sacred sites trampled and destroyed.  Yet, instead of unifying them or causing each group to become more willing to cooperate, it has hardened them, leaving each to fight brutally for his own group.