Jerusalem Always Virtual

This article argues that Jerusalem has always been virtual. In contrast to studies that associate virtual religion with modern technology, I construct a model of virtual Jerusalem that begins with biblical sources and takes new directions in the modern period, beginning with Moses Hess’s Rome and Jerusalem (1862). The article presents a model of virtual Jerusalem in dialogue with scholarship on the city and grounded in the work of Walter Benjamin. This account of virtual Jerusalem emerges through discussions of biblical texts, Hess, and the modern geographic and photographic histories of the city.