Word: jerusalem
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...door of the reception office at Jerusalem's Kfar Shaul psychiatric Hospital, someone has posted a bumper sticker, popular among one faction of Orthodox Jews, that reads, PREPARE FOR THE COMING OF THE MESSIAH. To hear a number of the patients tell it, he's already on the premises...
Kfar Shaul is a kind of holding pen for victims of the so-called Jerusalem Syndrome, an affliction of tourists who, overwhelmed by the city's intense spiritual evocations, have become convinced that they are the Saviour, or some other biblical figure, or that they have been given a special message or mandate by God. There was the bearded Italian whom police found wandering in the hills around Bethlehem, dressed in a sack, with cloth bags for shoes and New Testament in hand, completely unaware that it was snowing, confident that he was Jesus Christ. And the angry German...
...powerful are Jerusalem's psychic ethers that Kfar Shaul sees 50 such patients a year. About half are from North America-usually the U.S.-and the rest come mainly from Western Europe; cases are equally split between Christians and Jews (the city's few Muslim tourists have so far managed to keep their wits intact). According to Moshe Kalian, a psychiatrist at Kfar Shaul, Jerusalem Syndrome may be set off by the thrill of visiting a place previously known only as a sublime dream-"like a movie-star fan who suddenly gets to kiss his idol." Or sufferers may fall...
...folks who live nearby are generally aware of the hospital's function-at times perhaps overly so. Recently locals brought in an elderly woman who, hysterical and speaking nothing but Greek, was assumed to be stricken with Jerusalem Syndrome. In fact, she was a tourist who had simply taken the wrong bus and wound up in an unfamiliar neighborhood-upset, yes, but in no immediate danger of assuming divinity...
...intense. Pseudo-stained glass and paintings cover the walls and ceiling. There are even bathrooms (really!), papered with pages of Euclid (gentlemen) or minarets, masks and medieval maidens (ladies). Bookshelves in a corner are filled with an array of titles, including A Room of One's Own, The Jerusalem Bible, Son of Dune, Dante's Inferno, and a Magazine called "Shark Week." A sign on the scary-looking detector at the door reads, "This is not a metal detector or anything scary like that. It's a bookguard system that will beep if people run off with our books...