City Sets Stage for Biblical Characters

The bruised and grungy woman said she was the Prophet of the Olive Tree. If her branches grew green, Jesus Christ would return to Earth. If they grew black, Satan was on his way.

Police took her to a mental hospital after she started beating tourists who failed to kneel before her outside Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher.

The woman--”probably American and possibly Californian,” according to her doctor--suffers from a psychological phenomenon known as the Jerusalem syndrome. Documented for decades, the Jerusalem syndrome is a condition in which visitors to the Holy Land, especially religious pilgrims, are overcome by delusions that they are Jesus or John the Baptist or Moses or the Virgin Mary or any carrier of divine messages. Sometimes they become violent.

Doctors, mental health experts and law enforcement agencies throughout Israel are bracing for a wave of Jerusalem syndrome cases that they fear will be brought on by the religious and spiritual fervor surrounding the coming of the new millennium. Already, there is a slight uptick in the number of cases being treated here, doctors say, and December likely will be a peak month.

For some victims, the syndrome is a temporary condition that lasts no more than a week; for others, it is symptomatic of profound or chronic mental illness. Most believe that they are on a holy mission.

The folkloric scenery of Jerusalem has always included the occasional odd character who wanders the narrow streets of the Old City or the crowded Ben Yehuda pedestrian mall, dressed in white robes and spouting off verses from the Bible. This ancient holy city of shrines, stone temples and Crusader fortresses has attracted pilgrims of three faiths--Judaism, Christianity and Islam--for centuries, and a very small number of visitors become overwhelmed, disoriented and out of touch with reality.

“Jerusalem is a magnet,” said Dr. Yair Barel, head psychiatrist for the Jerusalem city government and leading expert on the Jerusalem syndrome. “If you are in L.A. and you think you are Napoleon, you don’t have a burning desire to go to Paris and start a war. But if you are in L.A. and you think you are Jesus, you definitely have a need to come to Jerusalem.”

More than 2 million tourists come to Israel annually, and many more are expected in 2000. On average, said Barel, about 150 people exhibit some form of the Jerusalem syndrome each year, but only about 40 require hospitalization.

The number of cases so far this year is about 50% higher than average and may grow further with the advent of the new year and the possible arrival of apocalyptic Christians determined to witness--or provoke--Armageddon and the “second coming” of their messiah. While these people do not necessarily come down with the Jerusalem syndrome, their presence might stir the atmosphere for other susceptible pilgrims.

Barel, who is treating the Prophet of the Olive Tree and three other people, divides patients into three categories. One group includes those with a history of psychiatric problems who identify with biblical characters and come to Jerusalem on what they consider a godly mission.

A larger group consists of people on a similar mission who have deep religious convictions but are not clinically ill, although they may be a bit unbalanced before they arrive.

The third category--what Dr. Gregory Katz calls “pure” Jerusalem syndrome--involves people who usually come from pious backgrounds but who have no history of mental illness, drug abuse or other conditions that might make them prone to losing control.

They arrive in Jerusalem, usually as part of a tour group, then begin to behave strangely. They have a need to visit the city’s holy shrines alone. This is often followed by an obsession with cleanliness, sudden ritual bathing and the shaving of body hair. Finally, they don the sheets of their hotel bed and begin singing psalms and hymns, often in public.

“For them, this comes totally out of the blue,” said Katz, director of the emergency room at the Kfar Shaul Mental Hospital in Jerusalem. “It usually involves inappropriate behavior for a very short time. It is temporary.”

Episodes can last up to a week, but the person usually returns to normal and is embarrassed at his or her behavior, Barel said. Treatment consists of sedatives and a re-grounding in reality.

Sufferers of the first two forms of Jerusalem syndrome generally include both Christians and Jews. The “pure” form almost exclusively hits Christians, the doctors said, and usually those who grew up in evangelical or fundamentalist homes.

More than half of those stricken by the phenomenon are American, the doctors said.

Jerusalem, said Katz, has this mesmerizing effect on Christians in particular because they can see and touch concrete evidence of the essence of their religion: the rock where Jesus is believed to have been crucified or the tomb where he was believed to have been buried before he was resurrected. Christians in Jerusalem can even trace the steps Jesus is said to have taken on his way to his death, the so-called Stations of the Cross along a path known today as the Via Dolorosa in Jerusalem’s Old City.

“It is not something that is distant for them,” Katz said. “They are living this. For them, it is real, it is happening.”

Katz believes that the predictions that thousands of crazed pilgrims will invade Jerusalem during the coming year are exaggerated. Still, a doubling of syndrome cases would not surprise him.

He and the rest of Israel’s mental health establishment have spent much of the year preparing for this possibility.

Emergency services at Kfar Shaul, the city’s primary mental health facility, were overhauled and upgraded six months ago. A team of psychiatrists has provided training to police officers on how to recognize and best handle symptoms of Jerusalem syndrome.

Probably the most famous case of Jerusalem syndrome involved an Australian tourist named Dennis Rohan, who, in 1969, believing he was divinely inspired, set fire to the Al Aqsa mosque, the holiest Islamic site in Jerusalem. Weeks of deadly riots followed throughout the Islamic world.

While extreme violence is rare, even those with the milder form of the disorder can become aggressive and hostile, especially if they feel that they are being stopped from delivering their divine message, Barel and Katz said.

The most seriously ill often are brought to Kfar Shaul without identification, as was the Prophet of the Olive Tree. Doctors and social workers can spend weeks trying to extract information about the patient. Eventually, if the identity is established, the patient’s consulate is enlisted to help send him or her home.