Okaaay. I am now in Jerusalem.
Hotel iffy.
Cab driver says I should try to do better.
Deb, you would not want to be here.
My little, funky hotel in east Jerusalem has an edearing characteristic in that of all the hotel people I've run into, they speak the best English.
Everywhere is stone; everywhere is hard.
Shimon asked me " why can't they just leave us alone?" That seems so naive. I couldn't decide if he thought that Arabs were evil, or just stupid. And right after this discussion, I walk into the alcazar hotel and meet the Arab proprietor and he is perfectly reasonable amd accomodating. The mind boggles.
Sitting outside the old city walls, having a salad, considering a return to my hotel by going back into the ancientness, but afraid I will again get lost.
How many peoples have Jews feared?
Contrast that with the number of peoples that America has had to fear.
Just had a nice walk with this guy who wanted to be my tourguide (it's ok Deb, I didn't pay him a cent nor buy him a drink- remember , no alcohol in the old city!) . He's Armenian but an american citizen, from Edina , Minnesota no less. Good guy, we parted best of friends.
It's shabat, Friday. Haredim day.
I decided, based on my inability to identify any of the dishes set out for breakfast at the hotel, to treat myself to breakfast at the America. Colony hotel. Probably costs as much to eat here as a night's stay at Alcazaar.
Remembering that Shimon said that the basis of the Jews claim to Jerusalem is that the city was built by King David and that it is part of their covenant with God. Except that, it was after that point that God, because the Jews had reverted to worshipping the gods of antiquity, that God exiled the Jews and destroyed the walls of Jerusalem. Is it too simplistic to consider this a revocation of their title to the place, Jerusalem?
Did they abandon Jerusalem when the abandoned God?
A tourbus just Passed, "eternity travel".
In the garden of the tomb, one of two possible places where they buried Jesus, people are praying right and left. The other place is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre inside the walls of the old city. I suppose you have to go to both in order to be sure you got to the right one
In spite of all praying, people do tend to look a bit more familiar than at other sites.
No matter which place deemed holy by whichever faith, there is a palpable feeling of Presence among all the faiths, though the christians seem to be in more the vacation mode.
That is, until I got run over by a group of brazilians carrying a cross and chanting. I followed them into the Coptic Patriarchate Church.
When I sat down in the shade to jot this down, I found myself completely alone, a rarity in the old city, but before I wrote one sentence, I was surrounded by a group of Germans.
As an example of navel-gazing, there is a woman painting a picture of the Coptic Church and the tourists all taking pictures of her, of her, not of the church. I am too close to be able to take a picture of them taking a picture of the picture of the church in front of them.
No one's really looking at the church.
Art superseding Reality.
I am in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
I touched the entrance stone and put in a prayer for Mitch.
This place couldn't be any more different in feel from the garden tomb,
which was so peaceful. Given all the incense, mysterious light and crowds, I would say that people are voting for this spot as Jesus' tomb.
I'm listening in to this guide who is saying that this church was constructed in 360 C. E., by the mother of Constantine who came to Jerusalem with an unlimited American Express card. Sumptuous.
Reminds me of St. Marks in Venice.
I lit a candle for Mitch. His candle is the first one in line.
I walked over to the Plaza of the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. Instead of candles, to pray you write your prayer on a slip of paper and stick it in the cracks of the stones of the remains of the original temple that David built 3000 years ago. Under the pitiless sun, (and that's not all that's pitiless in this part of the world!) in the open air and white rock, this Sanctus Sanctorum couldn't be more unlike the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with it's sense of smokey, underground mystery.
And in the background, looming over the wailing wall, is the golden dome of the Al Aqsa Mosque.
Three faiths, all convinced that they are right.
There is a strange jealosy on the part of all these versions of God, all different
Gods of the Bible.
You cannot belong to anyone else.
There is no room here for the small, self-confident vision of buddhism.
No place for saying to God, "I don't need You. I know what I'm doing. "
Hooray. A small victory. I found Jaffa Gate all by myself.
A modest rule of thumb: in Israel, not to eat near a potted plant in an outdoor restaurant, not with cats around.
Jerusalem, swamped with garbage, may be the navel of the world, but there is way too much bellybutton lint.
As an example of how far off the beaten track the Alcazar hotel is, whenever I ask directions from an Arab , I get this look as in "what!" and then they can't be more helpful. I seem to be in the industrial district. Going to move into the Armenian hospice tomorrow, to be inside the old city walls. Gotta try it all.
Now that I am inside the city walls the call to prayers from the mosque, which started a few minutes ago, seems so much farther away than it was last night, seemingly all night. But then the big guy across the street kicked in and it all seemed so much more familiar. It is really loud. I wonder what it would sound like if it were just the unampified human voice. I am going to ask the innkeeper if every prayer is different.
Is there such a place as a poor, clean country? When I leave the Alcazar and walk down through the neighborhood between here and the old city, I pass lines of old cars parked higgildy piggildy on the sidewalk so that everyone is forced to walk in the street, with cars and buses honking and swerving around us. The little stores that line the street , with their open fronts crammed with cases of plastic water bottles and soda, a signs advertising all kinds of ice cream, and the bored guy on a cell phone sitting on the steps and cardboard boxes and dirty smelling water in puddles everywhere, all this might be anywhere, Martinique, Kuala Lumpur, outside Cancun, Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, Naples, all places where the people in one of those places have never seen anything of of the lives of people in any of the others and assume that they have all independently created their lives.
Ascending Al Wad street I am thinking that the only more confusing city I have ever tried to know is Venice. Just at that moment a blind man, alone, passes me. Descending. He can only count on other people and sounds to help him. There's not much else.
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I am in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
I touched the entrance stone and put in a prayer for Mitch.
This place couldn't be any more different in feel from the garden tomb,
which was so peaceful. Given all the incense, mysterious light and crowds, I would say that people are voting for this spot as Jesus' tomb.
I'm listening in to this guide who is saying that this church was constructed in 360 C. E., by the mother of Constantine who came to Jerusalem with an unlimited American Express card. Sumptuous.
Reminds me of St. Marks in Venice.
I lit a candle for Mitch. His candle is the first one in line.
I walked over to the Plaza of the Western Wall, the Wailing Wall, the holiest site in Judaism. Instead of candles, to pray you write your prayer on a slip of paper and stick it in the cracks of the stones of the remains of the original temple that David built 3000 years ago. Under the pitiless sun, (and that's not all that's pitiless in this part of the world!) in the open air and white rock, this Sanctus Sanctorum couldn't be more unlike the Church of the Holy Sepulchre with it's sense of smokey, underground mystery.
And in the background, looming over the wailing wall, is the golden dome of the Al Aqsa Mosque.
Three faiths, all convinced that they are right.
There is a strange jealosy on the part of all these versions of God, all different
Gods of the Bible.
You cannot belong to anyone else.
There is no room here for the small, self-confident vision of buddhism.
No place for saying to God, "I don't need You. I know what I'm doing. "
Hooray. A small victory. I found Jaffa Gate all by myself.
A modest rule of thumb: in Israel, not to eat near a potted plant in an outdoor restaurant, not with cats around.
Jerusalem, swamped with garbage, may be the navel of the world, but there is way too much bellybutton lint.
As an example of how far off the beaten track the Alcazar hotel is, whenever I ask directions from an Arab , I get this look as in "what!" and then they can't be more helpful. I seem to be in the industrial district. Going to move into the Armenian hospice tomorrow, to be inside the old city walls. Gotta try it all.
Now that I am inside the city walls the call to prayers from the mosque, which started a few minutes ago, seems so much farther away than it was last night, seemingly all night. But then the big guy across the street kicked in and it all seemed so much more familiar. It is really loud. I wonder what it would sound like if it were just the unampified human voice. I am going to ask the innkeeper if every prayer is different.
Is there such a place as a poor, clean country? When I leave the Alcazar and walk down through the neighborhood between here and the old city, I pass lines of old cars parked higgildy piggildy on the sidewalk so that everyone is forced to walk in the street, with cars and buses honking and swerving around us. The little stores that line the street , with their open fronts crammed with cases of plastic water bottles and soda, a signs advertising all kinds of ice cream, and the bored guy on a cell phone sitting on the steps and cardboard boxes and dirty smelling water in puddles everywhere, all this might be anywhere, Martinique, Kuala Lumpur, outside Cancun, Abidjan in the Ivory Coast, Naples, all places where the people in one of those places have never seen anything of of the lives of people in any of the others and assume that they have all independently created their lives.
Ascending Al Wad street I am thinking that the only more confusing city I have ever tried to know is Venice. Just at that moment a blind man, alone, passes me. Descending. He can only count on other people and sounds to help him. There's not much else.
So, with no airconditioning and a very loud demonstration going on down in front of my hotel, I feel like I'm in a scene of Year Of Living Dangerously.
Inside the walls, there seem to be hordes of people coming from somewhere and no matter which way I walk, I am swimming upstream.
Arabs, I think, praying.
Actually, Ossis, clerk at the Armenian hospice, says that they are Christians, on the Via Dolorosa, and according to them, the route that Jesus took on his path to his crucifixion.
They look Arab to me.
I changed hotels and am now inside the walls of the old city.
I am completely lost.
But it is said that to be lost is to be close to god.
I'm not sure I have ever seen a place quite like Jerusalem, not even Venice.
For one thing, the noise is deafening.
This place is teeming with life. For a little solitude, I just have to go into any church. Funny.
What is it that makes this place different from, say, piazza San Marco on similar day? There is the same crush of people,but there is not the same grittiness and intensity of purpose. No one is going to let go here.
Everyone's fingernails here are hard, dirty, and unpullable.
Stopped for a beer. 0.0 percent. Surprise. No alcohol inside the old city.
Walking down, or up, it's kind of hard to tell, I helped a Bedouin write a "going out of business" sign. When I asked where he was going, he said "Basle". We shared a glass of orange juice, but I had to leave, feeling claustrophobic. It's going to take some patience and perseverance to crack this city open.
In my lengthy discussion with the Israeli, Shimon Levy, about the Jews and the Arabs ("garbage") I asked whether he considered Obama a friend of the Jews or not. He thinks not. He says that he has a lot of American friends and I asked him if they agreed with me or him. They all seemed to work for Goldman Sachs and were, surprise, on his side. I told him that most of the people at my country club were on his side too. He seemed to think that, since I hung out with such right-thinking people, how could I hang onto the opinions that I do? I told him that I had a lot of opinions, my wife thinks too many. He liked that. He feels that Obama is weak.
Arabs, I think, praying.
Actually, Ossis, clerk at the Armenian hospice, says that they are Christians, on the Via Dolorosa, and according to them, the route that Jesus took on his path to his crucifixion.
They look Arab to me.
I changed hotels and am now inside the walls of the old city.
I am completely lost.
But it is said that to be lost is to be close to god.
I'm not sure I have ever seen a place quite like Jerusalem, not even Venice.
For one thing, the noise is deafening.
This place is teeming with life. For a little solitude, I just have to go into any church. Funny.
What is it that makes this place different from, say, piazza San Marco on similar day? There is the same crush of people,but there is not the same grittiness and intensity of purpose. No one is going to let go here.
Everyone's fingernails here are hard, dirty, and unpullable.
Stopped for a beer. 0.0 percent. Surprise. No alcohol inside the old city.
Walking down, or up, it's kind of hard to tell, I helped a Bedouin write a "going out of business" sign. When I asked where he was going, he said "Basle". We shared a glass of orange juice, but I had to leave, feeling claustrophobic. It's going to take some patience and perseverance to crack this city open.
In my lengthy discussion with the Israeli, Shimon Levy, about the Jews and the Arabs ("garbage") I asked whether he considered Obama a friend of the Jews or not. He thinks not. He says that he has a lot of American friends and I asked him if they agreed with me or him. They all seemed to work for Goldman Sachs and were, surprise, on his side. I told him that most of the people at my country club were on his side too. He seemed to think that, since I hung out with such right-thinking people, how could I hang onto the opinions that I do? I told him that I had a lot of opinions, my wife thinks too many. He liked that. He feels that Obama is weak.
I tried to make the point that it is difficult to assure someone who doubts that you would die for them, that you would, indeed, die for them, short of actually doing the dying.
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