Going up to Jerusalem

Three times a year the Torah calls the people to appear in the chosen place, and not to come empty-handed.

First-fruit pilgrims gathered in the main town of their district and slept in the open square. At dawn the officer called out ‘Let us arise and go up to Zion’, and a flute played before them.

The Psalms of Ascents (120 to 134) are often linked to pilgrims on the road; the Mishnah links them to the fifteen steps in the Temple. How they were sung on the way is not known.

Open question: The sources disagree or are silent. The site does not choose an answer. Mishnah Bikkurim 3:2Psalms 120:1Mishnah Middot 2:5

Near Jerusalem the officials went out to meet them, and the city's craftsmen stood up from their work to greet the pilgrims by the name of their town.

In Hebrew, pilgrimage is aliyah, going up. From the Jordan valley the road climbs about a thousand metres. And as you climb, the House comes into view.

No one entered the Temple court, however clean, without first immersing. Those impure from contact with the dead needed seven days and sprinkling before they could go in.

Everyone entered by the right, circled and left by the left. A mourner walked the other way, and those who met him said: ‘May He who dwells in this house comfort you.’

Pilgrims brought festival offerings, first fruits in their season, and their prayers, facing the Sanctuary. The courts were full, yet the Mishnah remembers that people stood pressed together and still had room to bow.

‘Thou shalt rejoice before the LORD thy God’: with family, servants, the Levite, the stranger, the orphan and the widow. The festival was a shared meal and a shared city.

And then the road back. What the pilgrims carried home was a memory of one place, shared by a whole people.

Narrative close, not a sourced claim.