Glenn Beck’s crusade

JERUSALEM – For the global traveler who ventures to the city of Jerusalem, a visit to the world’s holiest place has been known to occasionally generate a unique and overwhelming reaction known as Jerusalem syndrome. This phenomenon can lead to a host of delusions and psychoses that generally revolve around the discovery by the afflicted ...

Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
Uriel Sinai/Getty Images
Uriel Sinai/Getty Images

JERUSALEM – For the global traveler who ventures to the city of Jerusalem, a visit to the world's holiest place has been known to occasionally generate a unique and overwhelming reaction known as Jerusalem syndrome. This phenomenon can lead to a host of delusions and psychoses that generally revolve around the discovery by the afflicted that they are a Messiah-like figure, or perhaps a New Age prophet.

JERUSALEM – For the global traveler who ventures to the city of Jerusalem, a visit to the world’s holiest place has been known to occasionally generate a unique and overwhelming reaction known as Jerusalem syndrome. This phenomenon can lead to a host of delusions and psychoses that generally revolve around the discovery by the afflicted that they are a Messiah-like figure, or perhaps a New Age prophet.

Listening on Wednesday night to Glenn Beck speak/preach/lecture in the shadow of the Dome of the Rock, the Al-Aqsa mosque, and the Western Wall, and a stone’s throw from the Church of the Holy Sepulcher — and depart the stage with a musical passage from Fiddler on the Roof — I couldn’t help think that he too had caught a bit of this Jerusalem bug.

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Michael A. Cohen is a fellow at the Century Foundation.

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