Day 31: Thursday, May 22, Jerusalem

Kids run through the street with waste wood they have collected. That night was a festival (I forget which one) where everyone burned bonfires. All day, kids were running through the streets with scrap wood. This team had a wheeled cart typical of the narrow Jerusalem streets and announced their presence by continually blowing a whistle so they wouldn't have to stop their careening through the streets.

Today was our first day in Jerusalem. The old city is just like you might imagine it in Jesus’ time, except that the “Shalom Y’all” plaques and made-for-tourist shofars in the closely-packed stores are garishly lit by electric lights. The narrow, stepped cobblestone streets are all the size of a back alley. There is an Arab Quarter, Christian Quarter, Jewish Quarter, and obviously that leaves one quarter that I’ve forgotten about. (Google has reminded me that it is the Armenian Quarter.)

A sign on the Via Dolorsa.

This is the parallel parking test that Israelis must take for their license.

It’s hard to tell the difference between them. Almost all of the Old City has been taken over by hawkers calling you into their shops. Some are overeager, some are creative: one advertised his shop as the “5 and a half stop on the Via Dolorosa.” As we went by, another guy acted like he was dialing a phone and pretended to have a conversation with Barak Obama, asking him if he wanted a Michael Jackson t-shirt (all for our benefit). The alleys are stepped, so there are two narrow ramps at each step just far enough apart so that you can pull a handcart up the steps. When one person slipped on a step and landed on his tailbone, a store owner who had been sitting down got up laughing and congratulated him, saying “you are number 7 today! Come shop in my store,” with absolutely no transition.

School kids released from captivity.

All of this happened as we walked the Via Dolorosa. It was interesting, but there were a lot of stops that aren’t in the Gospel account and therefore I didn’t know anything about. We saw lots of Catholic pilgrims who sang a certain song at each stop.

One of the main stops of the day was a Jewish bookstore that doubles as an idea forum and place for religious discussions. The two proprietors are twin brothers that, though 50, couldn’t look any more similar, even down to their matching beards. He talked for a while about Christianity and Judaism, then took questions. It was fascinating, and once again I wished I had a mini digital audio recorder. Some highlights:

Light from an oculus in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the last stop on the Stations of the Cross.

-He said that you don’t have to Jewish to be “saved” under Judaism. (I put that in quotes because its meaning when used in Judaism is only similar to that when used in Christianity. Jews do not believe in a fallen nature, and therefore there is no need to be saved from inherent sin.) You only have to “love God with all your heart.” That does not mean that you have to love the Talmudic God with all of your heart; monotheists who live an ethical life qualify. Without having asked this explicitly, it seems to indicate that dedicated devotees of Islam also are “saved” so long as they are ethical (which presents an interesting bind if you believe that Islam calls the killing of infidels legal and desired).

-He made the interesting (and I think true) observation that few Christians want to claim a denomination these days. Denominations are a whole different discussion, but it was an interesting point, particularly since Jews claim that there are no denominations and only three “styles” of Judaism – Orthodox, Hasidic, Reformed – but there are definitely different strands within those.

It is perfectly legal to drive your tractor down this road. Just leave the tiller at home.

-Christians frequently talk about the “burden of the law.” He said there is no “burden,” because there is no greater joy than to obey God’s laws if you love him. This also hinges on the Christian view of the sin nature: Christians believe it is impossible to meet all of God’s laws on your own and that they are there to point us toward our need for salvation; Jews believe that it is possible to meet the requirements of the law. “The whole Rabinnic culture about how I can serve God more than he demands,” hence the extra man-made laws that are considered on par with the laws of the Torah.

-The afterlife: Jews believe that there is eternal separation from God, but that it’s only for the worst of the worst and your soul just ceases to exist. You get snuffed out of the cosmic candle, if you’ll pardon me. Everyone else is in the presence of God, but for some that is a burning feeling as God looks at their sin, and for others it is incomprehensible joy.

-He talked about how Jews dislike Christian proselytizing. He said he sometimes feel’s like someone’s project. In his words, “Christians are not called to pass out tracts, they are called to be tracts.” True to a point, but unlike Judaism, Christianity believes there is specific revelation (as opposed to general revelation) required for salvation.

One of the things I found most interesting was how well he talked in Christian lingo. If he had used a bunch of Judaic lingo we wouldn’t have understood it, particularly the nuances. I definitely realized that Christian lingo can be a huge barrier to conveying Christian ideas, even if it helps us debate those ideas internally.

He, and many others that I have met, strongly dislike Olmert. Olmert is currently in the middle of a scandal about possible bribery.

After that we went to the Temple Mount. I was told that this was no small item. Our tour guide had never been on the Temple Mount, and he was so excited that he dressed up in slacks, dress shirt, and tie. For him, this was his chance to get as close as allowed by Judaism to the original site of the Holy of Holies. We went through rigorous security and were then allowed on the Mount. The place itself is just a large flat square. On one end is the al-Aqsa mosque, where Mohammed is said to have been transported overnight from Medina before ascending to heaven. Up a few steps is the Dome of the Rock, which is not actually a mosque. Jethro wouldn’t go very near the Dome of the Rock, because it is believed to approximately rest on the site of the Holy of Holies. No Jew is allowed in the Holy of Holies or the area of the temple immediately surrounding it, so since Jews don’t know exactly where that is, they just avoid the whole area. The Dome is an ornate building. Since we weren’t Muslims, we weren’t allowed in either building. I was surprised to find young Arab kids playing soccer and some Arab families just hanging out up there. Overall, it was anticlimactic in the sense that you couldn’t do anything except wander around and see the outside of the buildings up close, but on the other hand it was quite amazing to be standing on the site that housed the actual temple and is now the holiest site of Judaism, the third holiest site in Islam, and the center of contention between the two.

The Dome of the Rock as seen from the outer courtyard of the Temple Mount.

I forgot to mention that last night (or technically today because of the time) we went under the Wailing Wall and against that western wall of the Temple Mount. In doing so we stepped back through all of modern history and onto the street level. Jews pray at the Wailing Wall because it is the closest accessible point to the Holy of Holies. Under the wall you can get even closer, so when we went (at 11:30pm), there were Jews in the tunnels praying at the closest point.

Note the ridged cuts in the stone. This is called Herodian stone because it was a standard feature of Herod's building projects. The Temple Mount is another engineering feat. Herod shaved off one hill, built up a valley, and filled arches in with rubble to support the top.

Outside at the Wailing Wall, it wasn’t nearly as crowded as you typically see it in pictures, but at the same time I was surprised by the number of people praying there at 1am on a weeknight/morning.


The Wailing Wall at night. Note the fence dividing the men (left) from the women (right).

Day 30: Wednesday, May 21, Jerusalem

Today I went to Blogger (but didn’t have a chance to post anything) and had trouble because it was all in Hebrew. Obviously the computer I was using had an Israeli IP address, so Blogger instinctively made everything mirror-image to accommodate right-to-left reading and gave me Hebrew script.

Today was a meandering road trip to Jerusalem. By this time I’m pretty used to the landscape, and it forms an interesting backdrop to Biblical promises. This “land flowing with milk and honey” is brown as far as I can see, where bushes don’t even attempt to grow most places, and sheep have to be continually moved to find grass. The only exceptions are the few wadis and the Jordan, and the concentration of green plants around those make them look like people rushing to hoard the water. The more I’m here the more I realize that God was working daily miracles whenever the Israelis were fat on good crops. However, to the Jews who have clung to this as their homeland, it is the best place on earth. I don’t exaggerate there; if you talk to people (particularly those who made aliyah and were not born here) you will usually get the same emotion you’d expect from a cheesehead who was invited to live in the Packer’s locker room.

On the way to Jerusalem I talked to Jethro about Judaism. Along the way I asked him about the Jews’ relation to the rest of the world. Unlike Christianity or Islam, you can’t become a Jew by believing the Talmud. I can fervently believe everything in the Talmud and keep all the laws in the Talmud, but unless my mom was a Jew, I’m just a groupie. (It used to be that Jewish descent was passed through the dad, but back a ways they had trouble showing lineage. Sometimes it’s hard to know who the dad is, but there isn’t much confusion about what mom you came from.) I asked Jethro what the point of modern Judaism is, and he said it is to “spread knowledge of God.” He said people aren’t inherently good or evil, it’s just how we respond to the God-knowledge we have. I asked him then if spreading knowledge of God is thus mean, because it burdens people with more God-knowledge to which they must respond, whereas ignorance was bliss. I didn’t get a straight answer, but he emphasized that Rabbinical teaching states that people don’t even have to repent, they just have to think about repenting.

Jews have another problem. Assuming they can get the Muslims off the Temple Mount, they still can’t do anything with it. That’s because no religious Jew would dare go near the site of the Holy of Holies from the temple, and no one knows exactly where that is. Jews require a prophet to tell them where the temple stood/should stand and thus where the Holy of Holies is – but a prophet must be confirmed by the Sanhedrin as a prophet in order to be legitimate. Simple, except that that there hasn’t been a Sanhedrin since shortly after Christ.

I also saw a bumper sticker with Jonathan Pollard’s face that read, “Bush, Free Your Captive!” I asked Jethro what he thinks about Pollard and he admitted that he was a spy, but didn’t think he should be imprisoned for life because “it wasn’t like he was giving secrets to enemies.” That’s the general Jewish reaction: Pollard is a hero, because Israel looks out for #1 even within its relationship with its staunchest ally. Somehow I don’t think the “between friends” argument would carry much weight for any American spy caught in Israel’s borders.

Our actual trip took us through Hebron. Jews occupy only a tiny sliver of the town. Jews were driven out in 1929 by rioting Palestinians, and thus there are signs up everywhere in the Jewish section talking about stolen homes, etc. and demanding that it be returned.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs, which Abraham purchased for his wife and descendents, is memorialized there. It is said to contain the bodies of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and their wives (except that Jacob is buried there with Leah, not Rachel). Jethro said that in one of the wars – I believe the Six Day War – a Jewish military rabbi told a unit not to capture Hebron without him. He woke up at one point and the unit was gone. Thinking they had gone to Hebron he got his few escorts and they raced to Hebron, where he went straight to the mosque on the site and declared it captured. (I haven’t been able to verify that.)

A woman prays at the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

The tombs are now sealed up, and the compound is split between a Muslim mosque and a Jewish synagogue. It has been the site of attacks by both sides. There is an old man there who, in 1981, snuck down into the actual tomb. He was caught because he tracked mud out of the tomb, but now he sits in the synagogue with his oxygen tank and corners tour groups that come through to tell them about the tomb and then ask for money.

An Israeli soldier wands an Arab at a checkpoint in Hebron.

We also stopped at Herodium, another of Herod’s fortress retreats. Herod essentially leveled one hill and added the dirt to another hill to build his circular palace/bath on the top. He was proud of his buildings, and rightly so.

As we drove into Jerusalem, one of the first things we saw was “Freedom for Jonathan Pollard Square.” No joke. Most nations cover up their captured spies, and are even more embarrassed if they are caught in a friendly nation. Israel does the opposite and doesn’t just name things “Jonathan Pollard Square,” but specifically names it “Free Jonathan Pollard Square.” Getting the picture?

Another thing we saw was the UN headquarters. The UN took over what was the British colonial governor’s mansion overlooking Jerusalem. How appropriate. Just outside the razor wire-topped fence that surrounds the UN compound is the Tolerance Monument.

We also saw the big wall the Jews are building between the Arab and Jewish areas. Jethro was not a fan of the wall. He said that it did appear to be having an effect on the rate of attacks, but he pointed out that walls don’t encourage rivals to settle their differences, just stew on them without ever hearing the other side. Israel is also not being too careful about where it builds it, because there are Arab houses on the Israeli side of the wall. It’s a “so long as we get most of them” approach.

The Wall. The lone building in the bottom left is Arab.