Jerusalem

All Facets of Travel

I made the journey from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem safely; uneventful bus ride, caught a cab from the bus station to the Sh’ar Harioyot (the Lion’s gate or St Stephen’s Gate), walked along the Via Dolorosa, marked by stations of the cross along Jesus’ path to crucifixion. I walked too far missing the sign for the Sister’s of Zion Convent. As I walked back, I was struck by how heavy my backpack felt, surprising as I had only a small bag from Ron & Lisa’s, and spent the day prior toting Laila on my back all over Jaffa. I doubled back, found the convent, checked in, waited a time to be ushered to my room, graciously thanked Ruby, the nun, shut the door, placed my bag on the bed and adjourned to the bathroom where I vomited. Considering my extensive experiences with GI related trauma (most notably during my close to 2 years in Nepal), it was neither particularly long in duration nor exceedingly violent, but it did clean me out top to bottom. Thereafter I stretched out in bed grateful to have a warm, safe, quiet place. Apparently this 24 hour stomach flu has been sweeping through Tel Aviv.

The Sisters of Zion Convent, constructed in the mid 19^th century, is situated just beside the historic Anotonia Fortress, one of several possible locations of Jesus’ judgment by Pontius Pilate. The facility is quite large and accommodates pilgrims, in groups or individually for $38/night including breakfast.

http://www.eccehomoconvent.com

In addition to comfortable, clean rooms, they have a magnificent open rooftop terrace with an expansive view out over the entire Old City. The view encompasses the Temple of the Rock, the large gold domed mosque on the Temple Mount and sweeps all the way to the Christian Quarter and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.

 

After 15 hours of near comatose like sleep, to darkened skies I awoke groggily to the first adhan, the Muslim call to prayer. Translation of the Suni version commonly recited
“God is most great” (x4)
2 “I testify that there is no god except God” (x3)
3 “I testify that Muhammad is the Messenger of God” (x3)
4 “Come to prayer” (x2)
5 “Come to salvation” (x2)
(”Prayer is better than sleep” (x2)– only with the morning prayer)
(”Come to the best of work” (x1)– added by Shi’is)
6 “God is most great” (x2)
7 “There is no god except God” (x1)

The adhan was less soft & melodic than that I heard in Eilabun. The largest minaret visible in the Old City is very close to the convent, and perhaps its proximity lent to the more piercing tone. I awoke enveloped in the kind of groggy one only experiences after depletion followed by so much sleep. My body ached and I felt the kind of fatigue which sleep does nothing for, but rather which is only altered by getting up and moving around in the world.

Finally, I mustered the motive force and headed off into this city. Rather than walking straight into the center, I followed the directions of Sonja, a fellow traveler I encountered at breakfast, for how to get to the Temple Mount, Dome of the Rock (Qubbat es Shakhra) where they only allow the entry of visitors from 7-10am. This entailed walking out of the Old City and following the wall south to Tanner’s Gate Sha’ar haAshpot where one enters to through metal detector and on up a ramp into the compound. Metal detectors and bag checks are routine occurrences in this country, not just in Jerusalem but upon entry into grocery stores, shopping malls etc. At this juncture, I was deeply struck in walking up the ramp to the most sacred of Moslem sites in the city and there making up most western wall of the Moslem compound is the renown Western Wall (the Wailing Wall). What a powerful illustration of this conflicted place where so many different peoples’ sacred entitlements are contradictory and overlapping.

I wandered through taking in what I could before exiting through the Bab al Qattanin, the Cotton market, a dark tunnel of vendors lit only by precariously suspended incandescent bulbs. I waited at the entrance for a bit and entered on the heels of a tour group as they shuffled down. Groggy and compromised I may have been, but my traveling wits are indelibly ingrained after many years of solo voyages and thank God, all of them.

The markets’ polished stone pathways are a maze of narrow high walled streets, some even covered with vaulted cement ceilings. Jerusalem’s markets are an fascinating expression of this modern era where side by side one finds yamakas, classical Armenian pottery and 2 GB memory cards.

I found my way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a site the history of which I grasped only enough to know it epitomizes the overlapping territorial claims for the holy. I found no God in that place. Rather it felt pervaded with cold and darkness. Sitting at one point, watching the tidal movement of tour groups into and out of the main sanctuary, I witnessed a guide, perhaps Eastern European origin, point emphatically to a smooth, round object. Thereafter, the members thronged around it and each took their turn posing for photographs with hand or hands placed thereon, faces ranging from toothy smiles, to pensive, solemn expressions. How intriguing and perhaps pervasive a phenomena that we only don sacred attributes to an object after being told that some thing or place is holy. I left and walked on finding myself at Jaffa’s Gate Sha’ar Yafo, the far western Gate of the Old City.

I inquired at the information office about buses to two different museums, the Holocaust museum and the Israel Museum. Although more inclined to travel to the Israel Museum – exhibit of the Dead Sea Scrolls and other archeological findings, it was a fair walk to that bus, where by contrast the bus to the Holocaust Museum was just outside the gate. And so, not really feeling up for the longing walk, it was decided.

Yad Vashem ~ The Holocaust Museum

Upon boarding the bus I promptly fell asleep, not one of my highly recommended travel tips for women traveling solo, although I have managed to do soon on many a bus without incurring harm, knock on wood. When I awoke groggily, I noted those who got on the bus at the same time (assumedly other tourists) were no longer there and inquired to the woman beside me ‘Yad Vashem?’ Her eyes got wide and she gestured behind us and spoke with concern in flying Hebrew. So I proceeded to the bus driver where he looked at me quisically, ‘But I called it out Yad Vashem.’ ‘Yes, I…fell asleep.’ ‘Don’t worry, I send you on another bus to take you there.’ And so after an additional who knows how long, transferring me into the stewardship of a young, not particularly communicative Israeli woman, another bus #20 in the opposite direction, I ended up at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust museum.

As an early adolescent, on of my most treasured books was the historical fiction novel Bright Candles about 2 teenagers engaged in the Danish resistance. During my first trip to Europe at the age of 14, my mum and I traveled to the Danish Holocaust museum in Copenhagen. I would speculate, although I don’t recall ever asking, that mum & dad indulged my interest to go to Denmark because of what that book awoke in me. There was really no other thing that drew us there. I have vivid and solemn memories of that visit and have had other opportunities through book, film and exhibit to learn of Holocaust history. Yad Vashem was evidently constructed with adequate resources for well designed displays, multimedia in nature, a powerful balance of visuals and as much written history as one wanted. I walked through and took in as much as I could, which in my compromised state was marginal.

Of the main museum, the one image that stands foremost in my mind was a stretch of black & white film, thousands of Allied soldiers parachuting from to land. What an image it must have been for people throughout Europe, after a time of such prolonged darkness and anguish to see angels descending from heaven.

In addition to the primary museum, there are multiple separate exhibits, more rotating in nature. One was entitled Women & the Holocaust. Inside, one encounters a plexiglass case of objects from the camps. I lingered along these cases for some time, but there were two objects in particular which were particularly thought provoking or soul stirring. One, a pocket, some kind of heavy paper, stitched around three sides with great care and precision. Inside was a letter written by one woman to a friend in which she described imaginary foods evidently not attainable in the camp. This was beside a number of other recipe books, leaves of paper folded, handwritten measurements. Further along, there was a bit of wax like paper, not even an inch square, folded in half with some viscous red paste between. The display explained a mother and daughter had carried this lipstick with them to each of the 7 camps they had moved through, assumedly brightening checks and lips to heighten their chances of not being sent to the showers. Something about these objects brought forward a poignant intimacy. I was also struck by how inherently a part of being woman it seems to warm and/or enhance wherever we find ourselves, how we make it our own and in situations of adversity, how we survive.

I asked 3 different people what time it was in the last hour I was there and each responded (at different times) that it was in the neighborhood of 3 o’clock. Yet watching the sun I suspected differently and adjourned to the bus stop, finding it close to 4 which assured I would be back at the Old City and hopefully to the convent before dark. The return journey was a sardine like, but otherwise benign public transport experience.

I shared the evening meal with 2 women traveling together from the US, one originally Brazillian and here to accompany her friend who is conducting workshops of Circle Work, a method of her creation focused on empowerment and mediation as a means of fostering peace. The fourth at our table was a Canadian woman from Vancouver. We were stationed at the non-descript table assigned to pilgrims, to be distinguished from the other tables with indications of ‘group x’ or ‘family y’. Although not inherently unsafe, I chose to eat for the evening meals as the narrow stone streets of the Old City don’t strike me the place for a single foreign woman after darkness falls. Additionally, it provided some interesting opportunities for meeting people from varied walks.

After dinner, sitting perusing the library I ran into Sonja, a German woman a bit younger than myself. We had shared the same table at breakfast and later crossed paths at the Temple Mount. She left her work as a graphic designer 3 months ago, has been collecting unemployment, doing a bit of freelance work, and is now considering whether or not she will continue with graphic design or perhaps focus more on her yoga teaching. She came to Israel to participate in the Grace Peace Pilgrimage,

http://www.grace-pilgrimage.com/index.php?id=178

 

 

“The pilgrimage is to lead us to Israel/Palestine to the so called Holy Land, a region which has been dominated by war, conflict, struggle and division for a long time.…Those who are walking in the name of GRACE do not come to accuse. They do not come to impart a new ideology on a country or on a land and its people – they come in the service of openness, of perception and of support.”
excerpt from Sabine Lichtenfels’ ‘Grace – Pilgrimage for a Future without War’
The group of pilgrims began in Eilat, the very southern tip of Israel, traveling by foot up as far as Ein Gedi, where Sonja joined, and then continued west to Jerusalem to conclude in a meditation at the Western Wall. Sonja spoke candidly of the experience and its challenges; the aspirations for spiritual deepening, for peace, her recognition of the naivete, in some respects, to think a single gesture (the pilgrimage) can really influence such a complicated situation, the awe inspiring components of the experience both in the terrain and people. The group began as 80 in Eilat and grew to 170 by the time they arrived in Jerusalem including members of many different countries, Israelis, Palestinians and Bedouins. Sonja was a very bright eyed and engaged woman. It was a lovely exchange and dialogue after which I adjourned upstairs and elongated this tired body at an early hour.

Day 2 ~ Mostly Restored

I awoke with a more vim & vigor the second morning, felt it from the first adhan. Having toted my PC up to the rooftop terrace to do some of this writing, my laptop automatically began searching and located several open access wireless networks allowing me some connection with the web the receipt of sustaining correspondence from back home.

Rather than beginning my day walking into the city I walked to the east, out the Lion’s gate and down the hill per Sonja’s recommendation. In discussion of our experiences, I had shared my sense of the soullessness of so many of the holy places I had visited my first day, particularly the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. She concurred. Her experience was quite different at a church outside the Old City walls which purportedly holds Mary’s tomb. Without her directions, there is no way I would I have walked down to the base of the Mount of Olives and more curiously inspected a completely unembellished dark hole/entry rather discretely situated to the left. But I had her counsel and I did venture to the doorway where I peered down the wide stone stairwell into the darkness. From the ceiling, hundreds of those chain incense holders, like one sees in catholic churches, or medieval films, smoke pouring out in graceful plumes, were suspended from the ceiling, bits of different colored glass adorning each. I’m sure they both have a name and one could be more accurately and poetically described. There was music ushering forth from there below in the bowels of the earth I walked a bit cautiously down, down, finally sitting on one of the steps close to the bottom but without view of the altar. The cave, this vaulted cave glistening with ornamentation in the dim light was filled with men’s voices, chanting.

Perhaps they were Armenian Christians by their dress, but I’m really not sure. For the first 20 minutes, it was only me, two clergy in view there at the entrance. Then down the stairs confidently walked 2 women, 3 men, all in suits entering into the sanctuary as a group, in purposeful discussion, one on a cell phone. They spoke with one of the priests. The women purchased candles and disappeared from view to assumedly make offerings and then returned. More cell phone calls. After perhaps quarter of an hour, the light pouring through the entrance behind me was darkened with bodies. A group of 60 some arrived, also all in suits. The group was preceded by people who looked as if they were the press, huge cameras snapping the whole affair, toward the end two guys who appeared some form of security with ear pieces looking suspicious and officious. They were not American, assumedly Israeli, not really sure, but each made donations to the plate feet away from me with American dollars. Intriguing. There was a flurry of candle lighting and blessing by the priest to someone in the midst of the group, a mad flurry photo op. Within quarter of an hour they were all gone, the chanting concluded, and there was only one priest, who stood facing out from the altar solitarily reading from the bible. Before leaving, I made a donation and took a candle to light. The priest motioned to me ‘inside the tomb.’ I walked tentatively through a small doorway in the altar itself, maybe 3’ high, and there below plexi-glass, was a white stone tomb. I paused at the base of the stairs and then walked back into the light, a tour group of dozens there at the entry about to descend upon the site. That was the gem of my day…really the rest was less soulful wandering.

I walked on to the gardens of Gethsemane, up the Mount of Olives, back down and on north of the city to the Ethiopian church which someone had commented was beautiful. It was closed, a not uncommon occurrence here that sites have obscure and limited opening times. I knew I was on the edge of the Jewish religious neighborhood Me’a She’arim, one which Lisa suggested I walk through for the cultural experience. I vascilated for a bit concerned about the invasiveness of my presence. I could return the way I came or slip on my borrowed long skirt, long sleeves and walk through to feel the texture of it. And that is what I chose to do.

After turning two more corners I encountered a huge sign in Hebrew and English (perhaps Arabic too I don’t remember)
DO NOT ENTER OUR NEIGHBORHOOD IMMODESTLY DRESSED in smaller font the more explicit instructions about skirts, long sleeves, no tight clothing etc etc. And so with two turns, I literally entered a different world; every man with the long curls at his temples, black coat & hat, children with yamakas and curls in training, every married woman with covered head, long skirt, long sleeves, heavy fabric, routinely with stroller or child in arms. I saw no variance. There were also unique qualities about buildings something about the grill of the balconies but, in my fleeting walk, I wasn’t really able to register what they were or how they were distinct from my experiences in the Arab neighborhood only blocks to the east. One other detail, the walls were plastered with posters in large, black font in Hebrew. Later upon inquiring I learned they were possibly announcements of a recent death in the community. I walked not hurried but with purpose, and while grateful that I did chose to walk through, I was also grateful to emerge on the other side. Not only was I acutely aware of my otherness, but additionally felt a very palpable sense that I was not welcome in this world.

I returned to walk west along the outside of the Old City wall, peeling back to my pants and t-shirt, feeling the sun warm on my face, a face which this evening appears more distinctly brown than I’ve seen it since August. I wandered along one of the main shopping streets, Jaffa/Yafo Rd., had a bit lunch. Further along stopped for a coffee and sat watching this bustle of human beings walk by; Arab women in full dress and head coverings, religious Jewish women as described above many pregnant or with stroller or with grandchildren, modern young women in low scoop neck numbers with shoulders & cleavage exposed. What a kaleidoscope!

Back I headed into the Old City’s Armenian Quarter. Paying 5 shekels, I entered the Armenian museum where I had the sense I might have been the only guest that day. I read bits of the history printed on paper peeling at many of the corners from the foam core on which it was originally affixed. I don’t recall having any previous knowledge of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians. In gazing upon photographs and samples of copper works and printed books, I was struck then as I was in looking at an amazing book of Maha’s on Palestinian culture, by the richness, the sophistication of art and design in these cultures which have suffered so gravely.

Just north of St James Cathedral I stopped along the Amernian Orthodox Patriarchate (street name) for my only real souvenir purchase and had a most delightful conversation with the artist and shop owner. Vic Lepejian, perhaps in his 50s, explained that the one I had chosen was so inexpensive because it was part of a set that had been destroyed in the firing. I explained I had worked with ceramics and understood the quirks of the kiln. He smiled and proceeded to relay a bit of his life story; born in Jerusalem, drawing from early childhood, initially not so much support from his family, later went off to get his Master’s in classical Armenian techniques. At one stage in school he was drawing with a particular stroke only to have his teacher pick up his paper and tear it into pieces stating, ‘when you have finished here, you can do whatever you want. But now, you first learn the technique, as WE teach you.’ For years, he traveled with his work as a representative to Europe and the US, sponsored by the Israeli government, but that all came to an end in 2000, and since then he has, as he began in 1982, continued to make and sell his art in his shop. In the end, he didn’t even accept the marked price for what I purchased, returning 10 shekels, and wrapping it with a very authentic smile sent me on my way.

I had lingered in the Armenian Quarter until 3pm when St James Cathedral was to open. I entered, had a look around and carried on my way. Having again slipped on my skirt and long sleeves, I walked through the Jewish Quarter in the direction of the Western Wall. Inquiring in a tourist shop about Shabbat candles, the woman directed me to the grocery store, of course…the grocery store. And there in the back, beside the soap were stacks of Shabbat candles.

 

Fading Sun at the Western Wall

In the late afternoon light I found myself back in the plaza of the Western Wall. In the open plaza amongst those milling around, several dozen in military service muddy green uniforms were posing together being photographed by one of their comrades, a young woman with pony tail of thick curls, an enormous rifle slung nonchalantly over her one shoulder as she operated the camera. Tour groups of every extraction dotted the plaza in clumps, as did more intimate gatherings of many different kinds of people.

I approached the Wall as reverently as I knew how, sitting for a time in one of the nondescript white plastic chairs, observing. I approached the Wall where there was space amongst other women with hands and foreheads pressed reverently. I tucked a prayer into the stone and stood for a time taking in the sea of quiet whispers. Energetically, it all felt so caught, so constrained, the dynamic of facing, praying into hard stone, some of that innately bound in grief and clinging to what is no longer rather than being present to what is…all done toward the surface abutting the most sacred Moslem compound, the territory of which the Jews wish were in their hands.

The high walled, narrow maze of the Old City provides limited places where one has an expansive view of landscape or sky. There is always a sense of enclosure which feels both intimate and oppressive. It is such an intriguing phenomenon to stroll through this spiritual capital in which, regardless of one’s faith, one inevitably enters into space and place which is holy for someone and not necessarily oneself. Again and again, one is an outsider peering into or transgressing another’s sacred. I had very mixed feelings about my part in this serial transgression. In my time in Jerusalem, and in this country, I have attempted to move as respectfully as possible. I am hopeful this intention and my efforts will have transcended my myriad indiscretions.

In my final early evening in the Old City, I adjourned to the rooftop terrace of the convent where I read and sent email until long after the light went from the sky, a crescent moon suspended in a deep sea of blue, the adhan crying out into the night.