Sabine Sterk – Jerusalem, You Never Really Let Me Leave
A love letter to the city that somehow became part of me
Dear Jerusalem,
There are places we visit and leave behind.
We take photographs, buy something to remember them by, board a plane and eventually return to normal life.
But you have never worked that way for me.
Every time I leave you, something stays unfinished. I return to the Netherlands, unpack my suitcase, continue working, writing and living my ordinary life, but somehow a small part of me remains with you.
And maybe an even bigger part of you comes home with me.
People talk about Jerusalem Syndrome, that rare psychiatric phenomenon in which visitors become so overwhelmed by the religious significance of Jerusalem that some develop delusions, intense religious preoccupations or unusual behavior. It is a genuine condition and certainly nothing to make light of.
But sometimes I wonder whether there is another Jerusalem syndrome, one that has nothing to do with illness.
The inability to forget you.
The strange longing to return.
The feeling in your stomach when you see those familiar Jerusalem stones again.
The emotion that appears unexpectedly when you hear Hebrew around you and realize where you are.
Maybe millions of people have their own harmless version of Jerusalem Syndrome.
I certainly do.
My relationship with Israel started long before I understood politics, advocacy, antisemitism or the endless international debate surrounding this tiny country.
Israel entered my life when I was young.
Because of my father’s work with UNTSO, this region became part of my childhood. I lived in Damascus and experienced Israel when I was young, returning again when I was thirteen. At that age I could never have understood what those experiences would eventually mean to me.
But something was planted.
Years passed.
Life happened.
I became a mother. I built a career. I experienced happiness, disappointment, loss and everything else that comes with living.
But Israel never completely disappeared.
Eventually I started returning.
Again.
And again.
And again.
And somewhere during all those journeys, something changed.
Israel was no longer somewhere I visited.
It became somewhere I missed.
And you, Jerusalem, became the place where that feeling was strongest.
I can explain your history.
I can write about the Jewish kingdoms, King David, the First Temple, the Second Temple, Roman destruction, exile, archaeology and the extraordinary survival of Jewish identity.
I can explain that Jews prayed toward Jerusalem for generation after generation.
I can explain the meaning of Jerusalem in Jewish weddings and Passover.
I can produce historical arguments, documents, dates and evidence.
I have spent years doing exactly that.
But none of those things fully explain what happens inside me when I return to you.
Because love is not a footnote.
Love is not an archaeological report.
And belonging cannot always be explained with evidence.
Sometimes you simply feel it.
When I walk through Jerusalem, I think about people who walked those streets thousands of years before me.
I touch stones and wonder how many hands touched them before mine.
I hear Hebrew and think about the extraordinary fact that a language carried through generations of exile is once again the everyday language of children arguing with their parents, shopkeepers talking to customers and friends laughing over coffee.
That gets me every single time.
Because you are not a museum.
You are alive.
That may be what I love most about you.
You carry thousands of years of history without becoming trapped inside history.
Ancient stones surround modern lives.
People pray and people party.
Soldiers walk beside tourists.
Children rush to school.
Families prepare for Shabbat.
People fall in love.
People get their hearts broken.
People complain about traffic.
Someone is always in a hurry.
Someone is always arguing.
Someone is always laughing.
And somehow, Jerusalem, even your chaos feels beautiful to me.
I know you are not an easy city.
Neither is Israel.
Maybe that is another reason I love you.
You don’t pretend.
You contain contradictions everywhere.
Sacred and ordinary.
Ancient and modern.
Joy and grief.
Conflict and coexistence.
Memory and ambition.
You carry scars and continue living.
So does Israel.
And perhaps so do I.
There is another reason my connection with you became so personal.
I grew up knowing that history sometimes demands something from ordinary people.
My grandparents were involved in the resistance during the Second World War. My parents later contributed to Israel in their own way.
That taught me something I have carried throughout my life.
There are moments when simply having an opinion is not enough.
Sometimes you have to stand up.
That is eventually what I did.
Time To Stand Up For Israel grew from that conviction.
For years I have written, researched, argued, corrected misinformation, created campaigns and defended Israel, often late into the night, because remaining silent never felt like an option.
And after October 7, that feeling became even stronger.
I watched Israelis murdered, kidnapped and traumatized.
I watched families waiting for loved ones who had been dragged into Gaza.
I watched soldiers leave their families to defend their country.
And then I watched parts of the world move astonishingly quickly from sympathy to accusation.
Sometimes it felt as though Jewish grief had been given an expiration date.
In those moments, Jerusalem, I thought about you.
Because you are proof that Jewish memory has survived much worse than social media hatred.
Empires tried to erase Jewish sovereignty.
Persecution scattered Jewish communities across continents.
Pogroms murdered them.
The Holocaust attempted something unimaginable.
Still, they remembered you.
For centuries they said your name while living thousands of kilometers away.
They prayed toward you.
They dreamed about you.
And eventually their descendants came home.
That is why seeing the Israeli flag flying in Jerusalem affects me.
It is not simply a flag on a building.
It represents survival.
I know Israel is not perfect.
I don’t need Israel to be perfect to love her.
We don’t demand perfection from the people we love either.
We see their flaws, their stubbornness, their mistakes and their difficult sides, and sometimes we probably want to shake them.
Israel certainly has that effect on me too.
But love does not mean blindness.
It means that when something precious is attacked, lied about or threatened, you don’t walk away because defending it became inconvenient.
You stand closer.
And Jerusalem, somehow you always remind me of that.
Eventually every visit ends.
There comes that moment when the suitcase has to be packed again.
Another journey to the airport.
Another flight north toward Europe.
And I hate that part.
Because leaving Israel never feels completely like going home.
It feels strangely like leaving one home for another.
Maybe that sounds irrational.
Perhaps that is my Jerusalem Syndrome.
Because I can leave Jerusalem.
But Jerusalem apparently refuses to leave me.
I carry your stones in my memory.
Your light.
Your noise.
Your history.
Your stubbornness.
Your beauty.
Your pain.
And that extraordinary feeling when I return and see you again.
I don’t know how many more times life will allow me to walk your streets.
I hope many.
But I do know this.
As long as I can write, I will write.
As long as I have a voice, I will use it.
As long as people try to erase Jewish history, I will remind them.
And as long as Israel needs people outside her borders willing to stand beside her, I intend to be one of them.
Because somewhere along the way, Jerusalem, you stopped being merely a city I loved visiting.
You became part of the story of who I am.
And perhaps that is your greatest secret.
People think they come to Jerusalem to discover Jerusalem.
Sometimes they discover something about themselves instead.
So this is not goodbye.
It never really is with you.
It is simply:
Until I come home again.
With love,
Sabine
