Abstract

In this study the characterization “drunken by Jerusalem” is used to illustrate people who become strongly emotionally affected during their visit to Jerusalem. Israeli psychiatrists gave their sufferings a name&&they call it the Jerusalem syndrome. In this article psychiatric analyses done by Yair Bar-El et al and Moshe Kalian and Eliezer Witztum are examined and supplemented with approaches from comparative religion, more precisely, from the perspective of psychology of religion and the study of symbols. The author argues that if intense experiences of Jerusalem are studied with reference to aspects of spatiality and temporality of the city expressed within millenarian religious representations, it becomes evident that the place might motivate individuals to become actors in a play where they themselves struggle to balance the emotional gap between environment and emotions which they experience powerfully. Religious role-play allows individuals to cope with the critical situation at hand, and hence manage through the crisis by taking upon themselves a role of some to the individuals themselves known biblical characters or by allowing moderating subconscious behavioral models to enter the stage.