Rishon Rishon

Jerusalem Syndrome

I lived in Jerusalem for about five years, one year in the Old City. (I still live not far from Jerusalem.) It is an exciting city, for reasons that I’ve written about before, but magnified. One additional factor – all kinds of interesting and colorful people are attracted, from all over the world. Living in the Old City, of course, means living in the center of the maelstrom. My bedroom window looked directly, across a small alley, into the dining room of Gutman Locks. A few doors down, I was neighbors with Chaim David. It’s certainly fun, if you can stand having tourists poking their heads in your windows, thinking that your home is a museum, and you one of the props. The street that I lived on looked a lot like this picture (more here). Here’s a panoramic view of the Zion gate, a two minute walk from my house at the time, which I used to drive through every day (more here, for a view of the center of the New City go here).

At the extreme end of the colorful characters attracted to Jerusalem (so colorful, that for me they are not interesting), are those afflicted with Jerusalem Syndrome (more here and here):

The malady called Jerusalem Syndrome is no joke. Afflicted tourists have been found wandering in the Judean desert wrapped in hotel bed sheets or crouched at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, waiting to birth the infant Jesus.

Amritas appears to have discovered one of them, a talented comics artist: Michael Netzer (“original Hebrew” here).

And God spoke unto me and said: Stand up Michael. And I stood up unto my feet and I said: Here I am. And he said unto me: From the time that I spread the heavens and the earth I have named you Michael Netzer a sprout of the root of David the son of Abraham the father of Israel my first born and in you I shall raise my messenger and my faithful for the time of the end of days.

Some questions Amritas brings up:

I've learned that Netzer first discovered American comics (in Arabic translation!) as a child in Lebanon, moved to the US at age 11, broke into the industry at 19, and ultimately moved to Israel, changing his name from Nasser to Netzer (its Hebrew equivalent?).

Yes, at least phonologically (I don’t know what it means in Arabic). “Netzer” reflects current Hebrew pronunciation, in the orthography I use on this site it would be: Neser. You can see it in Arabic here (third word, transliterated: ’ln’sr, the first three are: gm’l `bd ’ln’sr – Gama’l `Abd ’alNa’ser). In Hebrew the word means “sprout” (noun), and it is sometimes used to refer to the Messiah, who is to be a “sprout” from the house of King David. I’m sure this played into Michael Netzer’s pathology. One wonders what influence it had on the original, who came from the city of Nazareth, in Hebrew Naseret, from the same root. In Hebrew, the word for Christian is Nosri – Nazarene, which could also be interpreted as an adjective from the word neser.

How often is Hebrew handwritten in print (rather than cursive)?

Never. This is the first time I’ve seen a text (as opposed to a sign) written using the print form of the letters. Unless you count Torah scrolls and the like, but that looks quite different (Hebrew column on left. This is an example of a tiqun, used to learn to read the Torah. The left column is how it appears in a Torah scroll, which is hand written, the right column is fully pointed).

Posted by David Boxenhorn at August 3, 2004 02:58 PM