By Samuel Heilman 
(New York: Summit Books/Simon & Schuster, November 1986) 339 pp. 
Winner of 1986 National Jewish Book Award]  
(2nd edition J.P.S. 1995)  

Samuel Heilman takes us on a journey to Jerusalem, the Holy City for three great religions: It is a complex 
journey, running through imagination and culture, the here-and-now as well as the there-and- then. 
Walking about the city, he meets a series of odd and extraordinary men and women, all of whose lives are 
intimately and inextricably linked to Jerusalem. For Christians, Jerusalem is the entrance into the 
everlasting, the site of restoration, the place of the Holy Sepulchre. To Moslems, the city is al-Quds, “the 
holy,” and it is also their home. And to Jews, religions and nonreligious, Jerusalem is the capital of their 
state, the soul of their homeland, and the sanctuary of their hopes.

Powerfully evocative and superbly written, A Walker in Jerusalem renders an unforgettable portrait of the 
people who live in the Holy City and the city that lives within them.

“The best and most haunting book about Jerusalem since Muriel Spark’s Mandelbaum Gate.”  
–Andrew Greeley

“This is a very special sort of work. …How marvelously the city comes alive in these pages!”  
–Chaim Potok

The Jewish Publication Society