Jerusalem on Earth: People, Passions, and Politics in the Holy City

Jerusalem, in this fast-paced, kaleidoscopic, surprising portrait, is a welter of religions, sects and ethnic communities, all conscious of each other's claims on the city. Rabinovich, a writer for the Jerusalem Post , sketches Jews and Arabs who develop ties of mutual cooperation and trust as they mingle on the police force, in schoolrooms and in the underworld; but this rapport is for the most part short-lived, he ruefully notes. In a series of vignettes, he paints a city rife with tension and internal contradictions. We meet liberal, avuncular Mayor Teddy Kolleck, dubbed ``defender of Islam'' by his enemies; Sister Abraham, a Danish-born nun embraced by the city's Ethiopian community; Leib Weisfish, a maverick Hasidic anti-Zionist who quotes Nietzsche and Stevie Wonder. We also meet unsung heroes like Art Kutcher, a transplanted American architect who prevented the construction of a ring of hotels and apartment towers, and Asher Kaufman, a Hebrew University physicist whose much-maligned hunches led to the unearthing of the Second Temple. (Nov.)