Jerusalem

On our first morning in Jerusalem, we head to the Old City to see the Western Wall. First, we tour the tunnels that show the bulk of the wall, which was covered in an early case of gentrification after the Romans took Jerusalem almost 2000 years ago. I read in one of my books that when Israel excavated these tunnels, many Arabs suspected the project to be a plot to infiltrate the Dome of the Rock, to blow it up and reconstruct the third temple. This didn't actually seem as outlandish when I read shortly thereafter of a plot in the 1980s by the Jewish Underground to infiltrate the Dome of the Rock and to blow it up so they could reconstruct the third temple...a plot that was almost successful and would have surely led to bloodshed dwarfing that of the current situation. At one point, the tour guide uses the stones in the wall as a metaphor for the perseverance of Israel--on either side of him is a woman praying, one standing motionless with her forehead against the wall and the other rocking back and forth with the good book covering her face. ___________________________________________________ Outside at the exposed part of the Wall, after being redirected by an attentive fellow tourgoer before I almost enter the female side, I slip a prayer for peace in a crack on behalf of a co-worker who asked the favor. There are thousands of prayers written on little pieces of paper in every reachable crevice in the wall, and part of me wants to take a handful out and read what people are praying for (although I suppose most of it is in Hebrew). I step back a few yards on the plaza, and just look at the wall for a good few minutes, and the scattered people praying in front of it...it's really powerful, a lot to soak in. At one point, I'm interrupted by a beggar asking for charity, which takes me out of the moment a little bit. I give him two shekels (about 50 cents), and he gives me a half shekel in change (???). After we regroup and head to an overlook of the wall, Elad explains how meaningful Jerusalem is to the Israeli people by telling us a prayer said by Jews at marriage for thousands of years: "If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth." ___________________________________________________ Back on the bus, Elad reads the headlines from the day's newspaper. The lead article is about the war in Gaza, how the second battle for Israel is one of advocacy, to let the world know "we had no choice" (a different, more objective opinion--worth reading--is here). Other headlines include a win by Maccabi Tel Aviv over Josh Childress and Olympiakos (instead of partying the previous night I had watched some of the game with Elad and some of the other Israelis, but couldn't keep my eyes open past the third quarter), and a story about a popular Israeli singer touring homeless shelters--Elad says that he doesn't know what's worse: being in a shelter or having to listen to this woman sing. ___________________________________________________ After a true and much needed day of rest for the Sabbath, and a lecture on the state of Israel the same night (to be discussed later), we head to the Holocaust Museum to start our most emotional day of the trip. The museum is harrowing, a path woven through the rise of Hitler and growing anti-semitism, the Jewish ghettos in Poland, and the incomprehensible violence of the concentration camps ("The Germans killed, slaughtered, and murdered us tranquilly and with peace of mind"). The scale of the violence is not the hardest part to see--it's the microcosmic stories of children being shot, water deprived people being led to showers that let out gas, the story of Nazi leaders gathering to figure out ways to kill Jews even faster. By the end of it a few people are crying and I think all of us are a little shook up. As we come out of the children's memorial and around a corner, I bump right into my friend Dan, travelling on a separate birthright trip--if there was any point at which I needed an old friend to embrace, that was it. The final message from the tour guide: "Do not be bystanders. Do good things. Mazim Tovim." ___________________________________________________ Later that day, we visit Mount Herzl, a gorgeous cemetary. We stop at the grave of Yitzhak Rabin (Elad describes his assassination as "our 9/11") and then at the one of Jewish hero Hannah Senesh, where we listen to the beautiful song she wrote, "Eli Eli", and then to that of an American who joined the Israeli Defense Force with especially great zeal. Our fourth stop is Elad's former commander, killed in Lebanon. Elad is emotional, and reminds us that he could be called back any time. We are turned to face four freshly dug graves in the next row, of soldiers killed in Gaza. A few more people are crying. I'm saddened as well, although I can't help but wonder how many other people are also thinking about the hundreds of Palestinian men, women, and children who have also been killed.