Tower of David Show: Where Are the Jews?

As many as six thousand visitors to Jerusalem a week from around the world get their first or only briefing on the history of the city from a dramatic outdoor light-and-sound show called the Night Spectacular.

Under a starry Old City sky, the walls of the historic Tower of David citadel burst into life with hi-tech trompe l’oeil computer projections set to rousing music. It is indeed spectacular.

The walls miraculously crumble and reconfigure themselves; King David appears in silhouette playing his harp at sunrise on ancient rooftops; conquerors sweep in like waves of fire; peoples and eras bloom and die through the grand cinema of centuries. The scenes are thrilling, the sounds seductive, and even the Jerusalem breeze passing through the amphitheater seems specially summoned to intensify the experience.

Conditions are perfect for the suppression of rational thought. After all, as museum director Shoshi Yaniv told The Washington Post, “This is not a history lesson.”[i] Clearly not, unless history ended when the British left—right before the founding of the modern State of Israel, long before the Six Day War and the reunification of Jerusalem.

Yet it feels like a history lesson, albeit one much more entertaining than most of us remember from our school days. And therein lies the problem.

The creators of the program say they meant well. As Jean-Michel Quesne of Skertzò explained to the Associated Press, his company “wanted to create something that was evocative, to let the public fantasize about the history of the place. We wanted to do something more poetic than educational.”[ii]

“Poetic” here seems to mean non-factual, as in “poetic license.” So when after about forty minutes the penultimate scene morphs from the British Mandate period (charming early twentieth century people bustling along the street in quaint hats and dresses) to the grand finale (adorable multiethnic children singing in perfect harmony beneath a flock of white doves), one barely notices the missing years between the departure of the High Commissioner and the coming of the Messiah.

Just as one barely noticed the missing Jews and whitewashed history from all the years prior.

For all its supposed neutrality, the show seems calculated to demonstrate that Jerusalem is primarily an international, not a Jewish, city, and that no violence was ever done here by Muslims.

While other peoples are portrayed making bloody military entrances into the city, Muslims are never shown using force. There is no allusion to the Muslim siege of Jerusalem in 637 or its later reconquest by Saladin. Rather, the Muslim period is ushered in with an animated Islamic painting of Muhammad amid the angels, elegantly ascending to heaven on his steed.

Despite this mystical vision, there is no scene depicting even one out of the abundance of Jewish traditions attesting to the unique spiritual pedigree of Jerusalem.

No image of the two brothers sharing their wheat, no hint of the binding of Isaac or other Torah events traditionally located on the Temple Mount.

But then, there’s barely a Temple at all except when it’s burning.

No singing Levites, no sacrifices, no joyous pilgrims making their way to the holiest site in Judaism on any of the three (also seemingly nonexistent) festivals. Apparently no one showed up at any of Solomon’s houses except the Queen of Sheba and her entourage.

But hey, why just ban the ancient Jews? Christian monks may have paced meditatively through narrow alleyways, but no Jewish man or woman from any time period ever reached out to touch the Western Wall in fervent prayer.

Actually, that old stone thing not too far from the audience is not alluded to even as the platform for the famous flying horse mentioned above. The only Temple object depicted is the looted Menorah being carried out in a triumphant procession of despoilers.

That image from art history is a handy one to reinforce the show’s implicit message: that the ancient pagans were the only bad guys ever to show up in the World’s Holy City and they’re long gone. Oh, and while they were here they knocked down some kind of building.

There are no photo-quality representations of anyone identifiable as a Jew.

After that Christians prayed and Muslims made pretty pictures.

Well, there were Crusaders—can’t leave them out—but they seem unrelated to the other Christians. They appear some time after the handsome philosophers in togas and some time before the exotically bedecked harem.

And the Turks, being Muslim, don’t look violent either. They enter the city not as one of those faceless stampeding armies of the past, but in a rather stately way, like the hunky elves from Lord of the Rings. There are also everyday Arabs through the ages.

All of these nice groups are portrayed by realistically filmed and costumed live actors. But there are no photo-quality representations of anyone identifiable as a Jew.

The only certain Jew is David himself, in silhouette, at the earliest point on the show’s timeline. The equally shadowlike figures emerging on the staggered rooftops below him could be anyone. Bathsheba wouldn’t have caused so much trouble if she’d looked like that.

But does any of this even matter?

The Night Spectacular is, and claims to be, nothing more than a popular entertainment. After a long hot day of trails and museums, why can’t a tourist give those dusty sport sandals a break and relax in the cool night air in front of a well-made spectacle?

Maybe because that’s not what the tourists are coming for.

The ­cinema at the mall is open and showing lots of spectacles. For that matter, cinemas and attractions are open for entertainment around the world. But this group of tourists—an atypical, often religiously motivated collection—has come on purpose to Jerusalem to see it first hand and learn what it’s all about. Sure, they don’t want an academic lecture tonight, but they probably don’t want a blatant misrepresentation either.

Neither do the show’s sponsors, which include the Jerusalem Municipality, the Ministry of Tourism, the Israel Government Tourist Corporation and the Jerusalem Foundation—or do they?

If the Tower of David Museum’s Night Spectacular didn’t shy from everything that makes Jerusalem Jewish, its audience could come away with a better understanding of the city’s history—even without facts and figures. Instead they “learn” that Jerusalem really isn’t as Jewish as they might have thought it was; in fact it’s probably not Jewish at all.

They “learn” this intuitively, through the type of emotion-jerking spectacle that always makes for the best propaganda.