This week’s travel dream: The ‘unholy’ side of Jerusalem

I’ve been traveling to Jerusalem for decades, but never with the tourist’s eye I bring to other cities, said Daphne Merkin in Travel + Leisure. My mother emigrated from that ancient, contested city, and my trips there have always focused on its historical and religious significance. But I returned recently determined, for once, to explore Jerusalem’s secular, or “unholy,” side—to see it as a home to museums, restaurants, and everyday pleasures. “Could it hold its own as a cultural destination if you took God out of the equation?”

No matter one’s reason for visiting, Jerusalem “seizes the imagination when you first come upon it.” It appears “without fanfare” as you approach it by car from an arid valley, and as you climb the Judean Hills, the scene becomes all “green hills, red-tiled roofs, and open skies.” A place of “singularly Spartan beauty,” Jerusalem is built entirely from native stone, and it’s dotted by pines, firs, and olive trees that seem to speak to the city’s “survivalist ethos.” Steering clear of the Old City this time, I instead headed to the emblem of Jerusalem’s self-conception as a “renaissance city.” The world-class Israel Museum is the country’s largest cultural institution, with a “far-ranging” collection of objects “dating from the 12th-century B.C. to Damien Hirst.” Despite its 4,000 years, Jerusalem “is enamored of the new.”

From there, I ventured to Emek Refaim, the main thoroughfare in the German Colony. Known for its blend of Ottoman and British art deco architecture, this chic neighborhood full of cafes and creative types is one of Jerusalem’s “most charming.” Still, for a real taste of everyday life, I knew I should lose myself in Jerusalem’s “labyrinthine open-air market,” Mahane Yehuda. Established in the 1920s, the multiethnic market is “fast-paced, colorful, noisy, invigorating, and enervating all at once,” with vendors selling everything from olive oil to Judaica. As I stood there amid the wedges of halvah and pyramids of couscous, I realized that the market, like the city itself, has a “layered quality” that’s irresistible. One would “need a lifetime to discover what’s underneath.”

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Contact: Gojerusalem.com