Reflections on how Jerusalem disrupts, overwhelms, and sometimes awakens the people who come here

I’ve spent enough time sitting in cafés in the Old City, watching tourists from all religions and nationalities wander through the labyrinth of these ancient alleyways, to realize that Jerusalem affects people differently than probably any other place on earth.

This city compresses religion, nationalism, history, longing, violence, memory, and holiness into an impossibly small amount of space. For some people, especially those already struggling with pre-existing mental health conditions, the intensity can become overwhelming.

That phenomenon has a name: Jerusalem Syndrome.

We usually talk about the extreme cases, the classic Jerusalem Syndrome stories. The accountant from Ohio who suddenly decides he’s the Prophet Isaiah, wraps himself in a bedsheet he lifted from the Sheraton, and starts preaching near Jaffa Gate. The tourists who become convinced they’ve been chosen to announce the apocalypse. The guy who tried to pry stones out of the Western Wall because he believed he was Samson (true story). Oh, and my personal favorite, the woman who showed up at a Jerusalem hospital insisting she was about to give birth to the savior, despite not actually being pregnant.

These stories are all real, and psychiatrists at Jerusalem hospitals have been dealing with this for decades. Every year, a certain number of tourists arrive in the city and completely lose touch with reality. Some become convinced they’re biblical figures. Others begin delivering sermons or speaking in tongues outside cafés or in hotel lobbies. Some even start wandering the desert barefoot, sporting a loincloth, or worse, the modern-day........

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