Historically, life in Jerusalem has been challenging. There’s nothing new there. If you could, you might ask any of the marauding civilizations that came, saw, conquered, and were ultimately driven out of the hilltop walled city across the millennia. Literature – poetry and prose – is replete with epithets relating to the harshness of quotidian existence in Jerusalem, often citing the unforgiving local masonry as a powerful, unremitting symbol.