Yes, it takes audacity to live in a place for only two years and then start calling it "yours." Drainie admits that from the start, and then happily explains the uniqueness of this city that causes visitors to claim it as their own.

As an observant Jew, I was wary of Drainie's approach from the start. She went to Israel as a non-Jew, covering up the fact that her mother was Jewish. Otherwise, as she correctly suggests, religious Jews would lay claim to her through matrilineal descent as one of the "clan."

Nevertheless, she does discover some of the spirit of Judaism, while also objectively exploring the other religious traditions uneasily cohabiting in Israel. Her stance towards the Palestinians is the kind of common-sense approach we need to hear more of, and surprisingly enlighting in terms of the current situation.

Regardless of whether Drainie's Jerusalem sounds like your Jerusalem, this city belongs to all of us, and her book is a clear-eyed vision both of what Jerusalem is and perhaps what it should be.