When I first heard “Here I Come” many years ago, I felt as though someone had set my own life to music. It is far more than a song about two cities. It tells of the tension that many Jerusalemites carry within themselves, between the weight of Jerusalem and the lightness of Tel Aviv, between the sacred and the everyday, history and the present, faith and freedom. Those who know Jerusalem only as tourists will barely understand this tension. Those who live here carry it with them every day. Perhaps that is why this song tells not only my story, but also something about the soul of Israel. Jerusalem demands. Tel Aviv seduces.
Anyone who grew up in Jerusalem knows this tension. Jerusalem is not simply a holy city. Jerusalem challenges you, the city often exhausts us. Almost nothing here is neutral. Religion, politics, history, identity — everything lies out in the open on the street. Jews and Arabs, the religious and the secular, locals and new immigrants, East and West meet in the tightest of spaces. Jerusalem...
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