Jerusalem, The Holy City

Jerusalem.

                             I really don’t know where to start.

                             There’s still way too much wrangling around in my head after our visit there. I know that I usually start these things with a lesson, or a funny or two, but somehow it seems that is not the way for me to begin.

                             So, I will begin at the beginning. I know exactly when this yearning to visit Jerusalem began, it was in the last week of November in 1964 and I remember it like it was yesterday because that is when the December issue of National Geographic arrived in its signature brown paper wrapper. This is the issue that introduced me to the Holy Sites of this city. I remember looking at the photographs and wishing that I could see these places in person. I was in the 4^th Grade in St. John Fisher School in California and Bible History was a part of the curriculum….. and my favorite.

                             The yearning at its genesis.

                             The rest is history.

                              Rome is the Eternal City, and I believe that Jerusalem is called the Holy City and for good reason. Two of the top five religions of the world have their roots here and those are Christians and Moslems. The third religion centered here, and maybe the one with the best claim for being here, is Judaism, nothing political, just the “age” facts. The Jewish faith has been centered here since 1000 BC and Jerusalem is obviously the capital of Israel, but when you are there, on a certain level, the three faiths seem to get along just fine.

                             If you keep the politics out.

                             We (Paula, Sherry, Harold, and I) walked all of the quarters of the Old City seamlessly, some differences noted, such as dress and religious places of worship, but all of the faiths live, work, and co-mingle in all of the sections without any problems.

                   We had another wonderful tour by a private guide from Tours By Locals.  We are getting spoiled by these types of tours and while on one level the expense is greater, we feel that the experience level is intensified exponentially, therefore rendering that expense level increase moot.

                   Oh, and by the way, his name is Aladdin 😊

                   A magic carpet, unfortunately…..no

                   A magic experience, definitely…. yes!

                   Aladdin may be the perfect person to provide a person  with the best understanding of Jerusalem, past and present. He is the product of a mixed religious household, one parent Jewish, the other Catholic. He was brought up in two of the family businesses, one was selling antiquities to tourists starting when he was just seven years old. This gave him his language skills, especially English (because at home, Hebrew and Arabic were spoken) and his other job was assisting his archeologist brother with some of the important digs around Jerusalem.

In fact, Aladdin has an archeology degree himself. Couple all of this with a firm grasp of what the Bible says, combined with oral tradition, and science-based facts, and you come up with someone whose depth and breadth of Jerusalem based knowledge would seem to be unsurpassed. Oh, and his current affairs base is as solid as his knowledge of the past. We had the opportunity to experience this, as our tour took place on the very day that the demonstrations erupted over Mr. Netanyahu’s decisions to further change his government, were being tested. The citizens of Israel are scared to death that their hard-won freedoms are being dissolved by a powerful minority. I do not believe that they will stand for this, and if these very effective demonstrations have anything to do with it, they will succeed. They basically shut down the area, even to the point of our dockworkers walking off and leaving us with no one to cast off the lines to let us disembark. We eventually set sail about three hours late, but not until Mr. Netanyahu backed off a bit on his stance.

                   It made for an interesting day.

                   But the action was still in Old Jerusalem for us!

          We arrived here in maybe one of the worst (best?) times to be here for a traveler, that of the combined religious holidays of Ramadan, Lent, and Passover. To say the least, there were an incredible number of busses, not necessarily from our ship, but from a multitude of land tours.

                   The allegory-based metaphor of sheep and a shepherd seemed somehow to fit our surroundings. Tour leading shepherds with their “staffs” held high for all of their flocks to follow was almost comical to see. For us, all we needed to do was follow Aladdin who had conveniently dressed himself in a red jacket and carried a yellow backpack!

                   Our tour started on the outskirts of Jerusalem, looking down from the Mount of Olives, gazing at sights seen by travelers going back to, and before, Jesus’s time. Albeit there were less buildings then and I dare say no antennas, but the thrill of looking down on the walls of this city sent chills through me.

                   Aladdin was able to maneuver his car and get us closer to viewpoints than any bus was able to. He lightly beeped his horn and parted the multitudes like Moses parted the Red Sea…. as we sailed to the front of the line. This trick worked many a time as we progressed closer and closer to the walls of Jerusalem. We walked down the Damascus Road towards the Damascus Gate, the one that Jesus used to enter the City on what would in the future be known as Palm Sunday. But first was an all-important stop at the Garden of Gethsemane where there are ancient olive trees, one that is over 2000 years old. If only that tree could talk as it is the only living thing left that was an eyewitness to the events that transpired on that Thursday so many millennia ago.

                   Our trail was next directed towards Bethlehem and the West Bank. We did not go to Bethlehem proper, but to its outskirts where the local Christian communities have their Olivewood Shops and cooperatives. In order to get there, we need to pass through The Wall. This wall runs for hundreds of miles and is no joke. Checkpoints along the way are guarded by machine-gun toting Israeli soldiers. Getting out is not a problem getting back in is not a guarantee.

                   Aladdin explained that it was the Christian community here that has suffered the most from The Wall. Access to this area is obviously curtailed and that makes for bad business. I haven’t met a tour guide yet that hasn’t tried to “help” out his acquaintances that own shops and venues, but in this case, we were all too happy to contribute to the cause. The workmanship is truly magnificent and well worth the visit. The Shop Keepers were genuinely happy to see us, and you could tell that the throngs of olivewood buyers were a thing of the past. After the shop we needed to get back on the other side of The Wall. Aladdin joked about telling us to “run” when he directed so… and even though the guards were very threatening, they were also very thorough, and we had all of the prescribed documentation that allowed us free access to Israel.

                   We waved at the guards as we passed through.

          We then went back to the Damascus Gate for entry into the Holy City. Aladdin explained that the present city is built on the ruins of the previous versions of Jerusalem and while much of the roads and sites are where they have been for thousands of years, the actual roads, etc. are buried beneath….. hence the archaeology.

The historic and Holy sites were built around 300 AD when Constantine sent his mother, Helen to find, verify, and then construct churches over these sites. So these have escaped the build up that has gone on around them. Quite often one must descend into a site as it is at a much lower level.

                   The throngs were at their zenith as we tried to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This many-faceted church encompasses  several important places at once. First is Golgotha, the rocky mount that was used for crucifixions, just outside the then city walls. Just around the corner from here is an old Jewish cemetery where Joseph of Arimathea owned a tomb, and right outside the tomb is the slab of stone that was used for the anointing of the bodies before burial. So here enclosed, at several different levels, we have the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, the anointing and clothing of his body, and the crypt where he was buried.

                   For Christianity, there is no holier place on the planet, and it is attended by several Christian sects, the Catholics, the Armenians, The Greek Orthodox, and to a lesser extent the Coptic’s, Ethiopians, and Syriac Orthodox churches. The best part of all of this (on a somewhat comical level) is that none of these orders trusts the others enough, nor wants to give the appearance of being exalted, to be the Keeper of the Keys to this important shrine. So, guess who holds, and has held, the keys for the last 800 years?

A Muslim family!

Yes, every morning at 5 AM they come and open the church and every evening they come back at 10 PM to lock it up. You just can’t make this stuff up!

As I mentioned before, we walked from the Moslem Quarter to the Christian Quarter, and to the Jewish Quarter without any issues. We traveled though some very tight little alleys lined with butcher shops, vegetable stands, and just about anything else you can think of. Aladdin bought a package of giant zip-ties from one vendor. Coming to junctions in this labyrinth, turning one way or the other, was the key to finding the next section and the treasures within.

                   The Jewish Quarter is the most modern, but it still “fits” as everything (by decree) is still made of white limestone so the buildings all mesh and glow at the same time.

                   Our destination was the Western, or Wailing, Wall. This is that last part of the Temple that was there during Jesus’ time. It was constructed by Herod and in 70 AD it was destroyed by the Romans who had had just about enough of these monotheistic peoples. This is the time that everyone went “underground” with their religions and beliefs until Constantine was converted and came to power in the 300’s. The Western Wall has two worshiping sides, one for the men and the other for the women. While we were there, we witnessed several Bar Mitzvahs going on….. dancing in the streets was the order of the day! On a somber note, the Western Wall was the only place that we went that we needed to go through a security checkpoint. I guess that someone with nefarious intentions could make the throngs at this site a likely target.

                   You’ve all heard of the Crusades, which were ostensibly driven by the desire to wrest back control of the Holy Land from the relatively new Moslems, but they were as much about political and trade driven reasons as any religious ones. But Islam was here to stay and one of its holiest sites is smack dab in the heart of Jerusalem, practically on top of the Temple Mount and close to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This site is the Dome of the Rock, and it houses the rock that they believe that Abraham (almost) sacrificed his son Isaac on. This is also where Mohammed is said to have started his Night Journey, not to mention that this where Adam was supposed to have ben “Created”. So, you can see how all of these three important holy sites well within “sight” of each other, have caused both unity and consternation over the years.

                             To be honest, I may have found the city that that 4th Grade kid would need to come back to. All along, as we meet folks we get asked, “Which one is your favorite place?” and we have problems answering that one because all of our ports have been really good. Tahiti is idyllic, Singapore mysterious, Dubai is eye-popping, in other words, each one has been unique in its own special way.

                             Except Jerusalem.

                             Jerusalem is unique in many special ways.

                             And on so many levels……