Jerusalem is a city that contains the memories and emotions of millions of peoples. It is the dreams of three religions and the relics of our shared and diverging pasts. Since 1967 when it was taken back from Jordan it has been in the province of Israeli rule, a city split between East and West, two peoples fighting and hating seemingly without end. Days before we arrive the riots that have been flaring up around the Temple Mount reemerge.
The Wall, Al-Aksar Mosque, the Dome of the Rock, Mount of Olives, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, King David City, the old walls these all stand as testaments to the past and witnesses to the future.
Early Sabbath morning we go to the market in the new city some twenty minutes walk from our hotel. It is filled with the sights and sounds of life, matrons preparing for Sabbath, men and women in skirts and religious dress shopping for the coming rest. We taste the sweet red pomegranate offered by one shopkeeper and the pungent cheeses of another. It is a morning of life and vibrancy in this market guarded by Israeli soldiers, as every mall, grocery store and large gathering is protected, our green clad guardians.
Later that same day we walk through Mt. Herzl, Jerusalem's Military Cemetery on the way to Yad Vashem the Holocaust memorial site. It is emotional and moving seeing the graves of the young men and women who have died so that Israel can be a state. They date back to the 1948 war of independence and some are only 16 years of age. Every Israeli with us, Debora and Gal our directors, Asaf our RA all have served, all know people in this cemetery, men and women they have served with, who have died.
As we walk Debora tells Jenn and I of a friend of her who died in the first Lebanon war over twenty years ago. He was one of the first casualties, she tells us through a voice choked with tears.
Tears were to be the theme of the day as we walked through the grave yard, past the memorial for those killed in terrorist attacks and the graves of important personage in Israel, Yitzhak Rabin, Golda Meir, and Theodor Herzl on to Yad Vashem where we see the memorials for those who died, those who stood in solidarity, those of the Warsaw Ghetto, and the children, who's memorial was an emotional creation of lights representing the millions of children who died in the Holocaust. We were all in tears by the end, standing in small circles just hugging each other in silent solidarity.
At the end of the day after naps and temple we spoke as a group about our experiences that day. Our tour guide, a controversial Christian German who moved to Israel over twenty years ago, had sparked anger in the group with his callous manner of discussing the Holocaust. He brushed off the deaths of six million in comparison to other genocides still going on, or in comparison to the larger war casualties and told us to take from this a class room discourse where the Holocaust was merely the end of a "survival mechanism" among the Jewish people that made Israel possible. While his points were good his tact was nonexistent and we spoke into the night, even after the official talk was over reconciling ourselves to him and his positions.
The next day we spent touring the Old City, East Jerusalem, the ruins of what may or may not be the City of David and the beginnings of Jerusalem. We walked through Muslim cemeteries in East Jerusalem overlooking the Mount of Olives through the gate into the Muslim Quarter where we were permitted to glance on the Dome of the Rock from a "riot safe distance"
That night it was Holden and Annie's birthday (21 and 20) so we went out to a club in Jerusalem, which is surprisingly not an oxymoron. For the most religious city in the world it certainly knows how to party. The club was a typical deal, slightly shady, filled with Arseem and Frecha (Guido and accompanying bitches) but we got a private table and danced and had fun. Being Halloween back in the states some people in the bar decided to dress up, very few, but enough to make us feel a little less homesick. We even saw a Hasidic man, black coat, side curls and all shouldering his way uncomfortably through the club (one assumes hes not Shomar Sabbath).
All said our Jerusalem weekend was an emotional one, filled with the joy of birthdays and Ethiopian food, the sadness of remembrance, of mourning, the wonder at history, and the fury of conflict evident in still in this great city. With so much emotion packed into such a city, it is no wonder that any spark of conflict can ignite the conflagration of hatred, and fear and spiral out of all control. But with such a city as Jerusalem it is impossible to ever forget the ties that bind our souls to its walls, so that if we ever forget "let our right hand forget what its supposed to do."
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