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.
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