Place and History

As many of you may already know, Israel is celebrating its 60th Anniversary of statehood. The nation has had a turbulent existence to say the least, and it seems as though everyday we read about deadly skirmishes between Israelis and Palestinians. Clearly, the lands encompassed by Israel have a long and deeply revered history, for Israelis and Palestinians alike, and resolving the ongoing dispute in that part of the world is a challenge that might never be sufficiently met. We have touched on the point on occasion in class, but it seems worth reiterating that the history surrounding a given place often influences how we regard this respective location. The religious significance of Israel in particular has long made Israelis and Palestinians regard the land as sacred. Of course, place can be made sacred for other reasons not related to religion. To build off of Jared’s point in the previous post, the long time success of the New York Yankees has made many baseball fans regard Yankee Stadium as sacred. Even certain elements of Hamilton exude a kind of “holiness”—not in the religious sense, though. For instance, few if any students dare venture onto the college’s human-size compass. At the start of our college careers, we were told that to do so would incur bad luck—i.e. we would not graduate—and most everyone of us has heeded that warning. We treat the compass as a kind of sacred location within the college that, at least until after graduation, is off limits. Perhaps it’s superstition at work, or perhaps it’s simply a fundamental respect we have for tradition.