Second Reading Response

There were two important facts touched upon in these readings that I found to be of particular interest. The first is how the Sephardic Jewish populations that were expelled from the Iberian peninsula during the Spanish Inquisition played an important role in adding to the overall size of the Jewish communities in Jerusalem. Of course, it was through the immigration of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that the Jewish population of Palestine reached that levels allowed for the eventual creation of a Jewish state. I would be interested to learn more about the immigration that developed as a result of the Inquisition and the experiences of the communities that were established in Jerusalem.
The second bit of information that I found to be intriguing is how Jerusalem is a city that is actually of little value from a geographic perspective. Due to the dynamics of the surrounding land the city has historically been rather difficult to access from the outside, and until the development of a system of aqueducts, was plagued by a nearly constant water shortage. While it is a well known fact, it is amazing to just think about how humans can fight with such vigor for a city that has been of limited economic value. Jerusalem's value truly does come from the emotional attachment that people have to it.