Marcus James, the ‘spiritual mayor’ of Jerusalem

Sarah Tuttle-Singer, The Times of Israel social media editor, is an LA expat (reluctantly) growing roots in Israel. She’s also a contributing editor at Kveller.com. Dangerous when bored.

Marcus James looks like he rolled off a wave from SoCal and somehow landed on the shores of Jerusalem. He is all bright colors and salt.

“I’m a Southern California boy,” James says. “I’m from a working-class family. Corn-fed but well-read.”

Raised in Santa Barbara, California, James spent part of his youth hitchhiking across the United States, reading writers like Jack Kerouac and following the Grateful Dead before eventually attending university to study philosophy, “just enough to mess me up for the rest of my life,” he says.

“If you had told me 10 or 11 years ago that I’d end up happily at home in Jerusalem,” James continues, “I would’ve asked what drug you were on.”

James was not raised Jewish — or religious — and Israel was never part of the future he imagined for himself. But years after divorcing his Jewish wife, his daughter traveled to Israel during what was supposed to be the start of a European backpacking trip.

“She told me, ‘Daddy, I found my people, my place, and my purpose,’” James recalls.

Wanting to understand what she meant, James began reading extensively about Judaism, Israeli history, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The research eventually led him to visit Israel himself.

He first arrived in 2017 and continued returning. During one trip, he spent much of his time walking through Jerusalem’s Old City, exploring historical and religious sites and learning the city’s layered history. He converted to Judaism in 2020 and moved to Israel in 2022.

“At some point, Jerusalem stopped being abstract to me,” he says. “It was like Jerusalem grabbed me by the collar and said, ‘You’re mine.’”

Today, James lives within walking distance of the Old City walls and makes a living cleaning windows. He says he enters through different gates depending on his mood and has developed an intimate familiarity with the rhythms of the city.

“You could blindfold me and walk me around the city,” he says, “and I could tell you where we are from the sounds and the smells.”

Friends jokingly refer to him as the “spiritual mayor” of Jerusalem, a reflection of both his enthusiasm for the city and the wide network of people he has come to know in it.

Following the October 7, 2023, onslaught and the collapse of tourism in the Old City, James began spending more time at Café Al Mufti in the Muslim Quarter, where he befriended the owner, Abu Omar.

“At first I was just trying to support local businesses,” he says. “But then the conversations became important.”

“The most meaningful things in life are passed on through story,” he continues. “Storytelling and story-listening. That’s where humanity lives.”

He laughs while recounting one interaction that changed his perspective on the city’s merchants.

Like many Jerusalem residents, he had grown frustrated by shopkeepers calling out to tourists. One day, irritated after hearing the familiar invitations to enter a store, he snapped at a merchant.

“Don’t you know I live here?” he remembers saying.

The shopkeeper calmly replied, “Relax. I just asked if you wanted to see my shop.”

These days, he stops by regularly, carrying small bags of candied pecans from a nearby herb shop called Sea of Herbs. They sit together drinking tea. Sometimes the shopkeeper plays an old Bedouin string instrument made from camel hair and goatskin while telling stories about desert life, memory, and tradition.

For James, those daily interactions have become as important as the city’s famous religious and historical sites.

“People think Jerusalem is only about monuments or conflict,” he says. “But a lot of Jerusalem is just human connection.”

“Some of the greatest stories ever told originated inside these walls,” he continues. “And somehow they’re still unfolding.”

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