A Different View

ה' חשון, תשס"ז

In the midst of all the turmoil I was miserably watching from afar shortly after I left Israel, I was trying hard to hang on to the sights, sounds, feelings and experiences of my own recent presence there. So I started a few posts I didn't get the chance to write before I left. Since then, I've been caught up in so much upheaval and transition of my own that the mere thought of blogging got pushed to the side. But in the last few weeks, I've been feeling more and more of a desire for this outlet again. There's no way I could even try to "catch up" on all the things I would have posted if I had been blogging regularly over the last several months, but those few unfinished posts are sitting in my draft box and I think they're still worthwhile, if only for the pictures they contain. Certainly the content itself won't be nearly as detailed or as vivid as it would have been if I'd been writing in real-time, but nevertheless I'm going to try to give expression to some of the things that inspired me then.

First, Yom Yerushalayim (and I get to use the virtual Hebrew keyboard I found to write it the real way, too! יום ירושלים ):
Ordinarily, and unlike most Jewish or Israeli holidays, Yom Yerushalayim is celebrated mostly on the day of. From what I understand there are some concerts the night before, but the major festivities happen that afternoon and evening. I don't understand why this is so, but so I was told. This past year, however, since the date to be celebrated fell out on a Friday, all the events were scheduled for Thursday. I suppose that it's no more odd to start early than to end late...

Before the official events of the day, my program had a tour of select parts of the Muslim quarter of the Old City with Natanel, who's a great guide and the husband of one of the women who learns with us. The places he took us were ordinary and extraordinary at the same time. We visited a yeshiva that's literally right around the corner from the kotel...but on the "wrong" side of the wall. We climbed stairs to a small courtyard of apartments where students of the yeshiva (which used to include himself and one of our teachers at Nishmat) live side-by-side with Arab families, and then climbed higher to the roof (was it that building or one nearby??) where we could have the closest view most (any?) of us had ever had to the Dome of the Rock, built on our own har habayit:

This photo was taken with no zoom at all...although come to think of it, I don't know if my camera on the basic setting makes images appear farther away than they are. It certainly felt a lot closer than it looks here! This was taken with zoom:

Natanel told us a story of a cohen who had moved to that house despite extraordinarily difficult conditions in the early days of the resettlement of Israel, because of his strength of faith that the mashiach would come in his lifetime and he had to be one of the first to reach the rebuilt beit hamikdash in order to claim an honored position of priestly service.

When we came downstairs again, we were introduced to an Arab shopkeeper who, when Natanel first moved in, had presented himself as a free resource for any grocery items the latter might suddenly find himself in need of on shabbat. He welcomed us in a similar neighborly spirit as we passed by.

Standing at an intersection of two bustling streets, we were told about an Arab family who had been entrusted with the care of a small shteebel when the Jews fled the Old City in 1948. When Israeli soldiers finally broke through in 1967, a small boy ran out with the keys that his grandfather had guarded. The soldiers took them and quickly sent the child back inside for his own safety, but on opening the room they found it and the Torah inside untouched, as it had been left.

While Natanel told us this story (which is significantly abbreviated and I still may have remembered some detail incorrectly -- that's what comes of writing a journal entry three months after the event!) and pointed to the locations being described, some of my attention was focused on the store display directly behind him. I didn't know quite what to make of it:

If you look carefully, you'll see a rather diverse array of relevant political and nationalistic orientations represented side-by-side in this collection of T-shirts. There are several neutral Jerusalem logos, including the standard Hard Rock cafe emblem and one for the "Holy Rock Cafe" (is the take-off only on the shirt, or is there really such a place? Anyone know? I just answered my own question.) There are shirts expressing an open hope for peace, and one that laughs incredulously at the very idea. There are shirts demanding freedom for Palestine and one depicting Arafat (although I admit I don't know what it says in Arabic above his head), right alongside an image of a jetfighter with the proclamation "America don't worry, Israel is behind you!" Of course, next to this vote of confidence there's also the antithesis, an IDF Intelligence insignia above the declaration, "My job is so secret I don't even know what I'm doing." There's the mathematical and parallel Biblical equation in Hebrew for light -- Vayehi Ohr -- and the tongue-in-cheek "I got stoned in Gaza." What I'd like to know is, what motivates such a display, particularly in such a location? Is it humor? Open-mindedness? Business sense and a recognition of the tourist trade, plain and simple? I just found the whole thing rather intriguing (which, I suppose, could account for my lack of clarity on the detail of the story I was being told at the time...)

When we first entered the quarter, Natanel had stopped for a moment to speak with the soldiers standing at the barricade by the turnoff leading to har habayit. He came back to us apologetic that we weren't allowed further down that road; not that we would have gone onto the actual site (halacha forbids it except under certain circumstances), but he wanted to take us closer. He expressed sorrow that there are external forces forcing our separation with this holiest of sites, but I pointed out that at least it is our soldiers who have the authority to say, "No, this area is off limits to Jews."

So instead we went around the back way. Don't worry, I don't mean that quite how it sounds! We convinced the janitors at an Arab elementary school to allow us onto the grounds of the empty school. Thinking back on it, it's quite startling that the entrance to this institution, located as it was on one of the usual narrow streets, opened onto such a huge courtyard, with individual classroom buildings. One of the four walls of the courtyard had "windows" -- openings with bars over them -- that looked directly on an amazing sight:

Yes, that is har habayit. Yes, we were close enough to see the birds flying overhead. And I believe that is a grove of olive trees.

Coming back , we walked through the Arab shuk, a place where in recent years many Jews (myself included) don't dare set foot alone, or even in a small group most of the time. Possibly this nervous behavior is unwarranted...but generally it just feels like the wrong place to be. That day we were a significant number with an armed guard, however (almost all tour guides in Israel are armed), and it was the middle of the afternoon on Yom Yerushalayim, when the market was overflowing with Arab shoppers, tourists, and also many Jews. We battled our way through the crowd, splitting up along the way as some of us chose to shop, catch up with other friends, or more hurriedly make her way to the afternoon's festivities.

The "rikudegalim" ("flag dance" turned into one word) had started around midday, with males congregating in one part of the city and females in another and then marching/dancing towards one another to meet in the center, at Kikar Tzion (Zion Square) -- the most well-known commercial/tourism/hangout spot in the city. By the time I got there, the dances were in full swing, but all of Rechov Yaffo (Jaffa Street) was packed as well, further than the eye could see, with more celebrants joining the throng:

I snagged a seat on the high mosaic base of a streetlamp and just sat, watching the swirling crowd. I didn't feel like dancing -- my feet were way too tired -- but I didn't need to in order to appreciate the general mood. I just enjoyed watching, seeing all those excited Jews -- and all those flags -- in one place. When I recovered my ability to stand without too much discomfort, I joined the slow march making its way back from whence I had come -- the Old City. I took a picture along my way that is only one of the endless collection of examples, in that antique/modern land, of the contrast between old and new:

Note the archaeological remains under one side of the bridge, and the traffic under the other...