I’ve got peace like a river in my soul …
I’ve got joy like a fountain in my soul …
I’ve got love like an ocean in my soul …
“First Baptist Church members, singing on the bus
We arrived in Jerusalem just after sunset on Saturday, meaning the end of Shabbat, but the elevators were still on automatic. The Crowne Plaza Holiday Inn, near the Knesset and Supreme Court buildings, is an observant hotel (religiously speaking). On the sabbath, the elevators are set so one opens at every even floor and one at every odd floor. That way, the orthodox guests don’t have to push a button, which would qualify as “work” and not “rest.”
Orthodox Jews are known to be a trifle legalistic about rules for living. So the hotel served us wine in plastic glasses at the bar because if they gave us glass, we might take them into the dining room and taint them with the wrong dietary combinations. The hotel lounge also facilitated local matchmaking, as young men in black, wearing almost comically oversized hats, met young women, sometimes accompanied by adults who had apparently arranged the encounters and chaperoned the conversations.
But we didn’t wait for the outcome. Seven of us, including Pastor Harry Parker, who had spent several months here as a student in 1973 and again in 2000 on a sabbatical trip, set off on foot in search of Israeli folk dancing, a Saturday night staple of his previous visits.
We didn’t find any, but we did end up at the lighted walls of the Old City beneath an almost full moon. We entered through Jaffa Gate (one of eight, though one was bricked shut to prevent the Messiah from entering … it’s a long story). Old Jerusalem is another world altogether”a labyrinth of narrow streets with ancient stone pavement, smoothed by time and touch and lined with a myriad shops, bringing to mind the opening lines of that old song “The Year of the Cat:”
On a morning from a Bogart movie,
In a country where they turn back time,
You go walking through the crowd like Peter Lorre,
Contemplating a crime …
Only this wasn’t Casablanca. It was Jerusalem, the ancient, the endlessly fought over”variously called everything from whore to holiest place on Earth, and originally called Or Salem (City of Peace) though peace has often eluded it. Entering Jerusalem is to enter a crucible, where three major world religions come together like the white-hot core of a nuclear power plant. Cor Mundi for many human beings, it is to Judaism and Christianity what Mecca is to Islam. Here, tradition says, the Prophet Muhammad ascended into heaven from the same spot where Abraham nearly sacrificed his son (Isaac if you’re Jewish or Christian, Ishmael if you’re Muslim). Here, tradition says, Jesus was crucified on the same spot where Adam’s bones were buried.
And here, observant Jews stand before 3,000-year-old blocks of stone, the last remnant of Solomon’s temple”the holy of holies”and bob up and down, sometimes violently, chanting the scriptures, and cramming tiny pieces of paper, scrawled with prayers, in the crevices between the stones (though you’d be hard-pressed”not to mention pressing hard”to find an opening).
The Western (aka “Wailing”) Wall is one of the oddest manifestations of religious expression I’ve ever witnessed. Adding to the incongruity was the large number of orthodox men standing on the periphery of the prayerful, talking on cellphones and smoking cigarettes.
The hats were equally disconcerting. Many wore oversized fedoras which made them look a little like cartoon gangsters. Others had wide, fur-lined cylinders that resembled small car tires perched on their heads. We were told the hats indicated their station in life”amount of education, marital status, etc.”but the disparity between pious devotion and status vanity is both striking and deeply ironic. They carry themselves with purposeful confidence, bordering on cockiness. I wondered if the rest of Israeli society, which we were told has become surprisingly secular, had unofficially designated the orthodox to be their religious “proxies.”
I expected to find the prayful postures at the wall emotionally moving, even inspiring. And many in our group felt precisely that. I found it overly stylized and excessive, phony and neurotic, bordering on obsessive/compulsive. I wanted to grab people by their prayer shawls and tell them to snap out of it. Not a compassionate response, I admit, and frankly it surprised me, but that was my honest reaction.
When we came back two days later, just after sunset, the stones were still warm when I touched them. That, combined with a sense of their incredible antiquity, made them seem more alive than the overt demonstrations going on around me.
Leaving the Old City, we headed to Ben Yahuda Street. The place was packed with young people, secular and religious alike, judging by their garb. In fact, people were out on the streets of Jerusalem at all hours it seemed. If they’re frightened about terrorism, they sure don’t show it. We experienced a nervous moment when a couple of knuckleheads set off firecrackers”not the smartest thing to do, we thought, in a place afflicted by bombings. This was, however, the weekend before Purim, a Jewish holiday combining elements of Halloween and Mardi Gras.
Sunday morning, Pierre, who, we came to believe, could drive a camel through the eye of a needle, brought us safely through numerous checkpoints to Bethlehem where we picked up our trusty tour guide, Wisam. He had spent the night back home with his family”in Beit Sahour, or Shepherds’ Fields, the very same where Jesus’ birth was announced by the angels. As a Bethlehem native and Palestinian Christian, Wisam treated us to a refreshingly revisionist take on several key biblical stories”the nativity in particular. There were no “inns” in Bethlehem at the time, he said, and it was unthinkable that the expectant couple would be turned away. More likely, they arrived in Bethlehem several months before Mary gave birth and stayed with Joseph’s relatives. Because of Jewish custom (a woman being considered “unclean” for 40 days after birth) Mary would have wanted privacy, and might well have set up in a stable”only stables weren’t man-made buildings as we’ve always pictured them. Locals used the many soft limestone caves in the immediate vicinity. Most likely, then, Jesus was born in a cave, similar to one we visited. Shepherds to this day drive their flocks along the roadways (including Manger Street) and down the hillsides of Bethlehem. Wisam joked that the residents of this area a talkative lot, “so this was a good place to announce the good news.”
The Church of the Nativity is one of the oldest in the Holy Land. Out of respect for Jesus (a holy figure for both Christians and Muslims), the church was never destroyed during the back-and-forth conquests of the Crusader era. To prevent soldiers from riding into the church on horseback, the entrance was reduced to the current, 4-foot-high “Humility Gate,” which forces visitors to bow as they enter. Like many old churches, this one was built on top of an earlier structure, and at the bottom of both is the grotto identified as the actual birthplace. The custom is to enter with candles, resulting in an extremely sooty vaulted ceiling. The “spot” is marked by a silver star with a hole in the center.
Greg Snyder, our designated song leader, introduced “Angels We Have Heard on High,” followed by “O Little Town of Bethlehem.” A Swedish tour group joined in. For that one magical moment, the languages blended beautifully.
The church above, has seen its share of religious turf wars. Greek Orthodox, Syrian Orthodox, Armenian Orthodox, and Roman Catholic churches all laid claim to this building, and the current shared arrangement is known as “the status quo” (Catholics, for instance, have dibs on noon Mass). The place was so clouded by incense that sunlight streamed through the windows in highly visible shafts, one of which dramatically illuminated the priest in the pulpit at the moment we passed through.
During the 2000 Intifada, Wisam said, many Bethlehem residents took sanctuary here to escape from Israeli troops.
Before leaving Bethlehem, we stopped at the Citadel Cafe, a neighborhood restaurant where Wisam’s father, Tawfiq Bishara Mussa Salsa’a, a woodcarver of some note, keeps on permanent display an enormous, more-or-less to scale, replica of Old Jerusalem in olive wood. It took him three years to carve, and he did it from memory. When Pres. Bill Clinton visited Bethlehem in 1999, Wisam said, he purchased one of his father’s mother-of-pearl nativity scenes.
Wisam’s father’s work is also featured at the Good Shepherd Shop nearby, where a giant multifigured creche or an olive-wood rendering of the Last Supper each carry a hefty $3,500 price tag (shipping extra). Wisam said olive trees are treated with reverence here. They live for hundreds of years and continue to bear fruit, are hard to kill, and carvers only prune branches for their raw material. No one ever cuts down an olive tree, Wisam said.
The cafe owner set up a large hookah (aka “hubbly bubbly”), so we could sample this popular local custom, a staple in Arab restaurants. The tobacco is imbedded in a thick wad of heavily scented goo. The smoke, suffused through water and cleansed of tar, enters the lungs without burning and is exhaled in billowing, fragrant clouds. Wisam warned it isn’t any healthier than regular smoking because of all the chemicals in the goop, but most people around here don’t die of smoking-related causes. The die from stress, he said.
Having begun the day with Jesus’ birth, we would end it by retracing the steps to his death”from the cave in Bethlehem to the cave of his tomb in Jerusalem.
The city is located in the highlands (c. 3,000 feet elevation) surrounded by other, slightly taller hills with familiar names like Mt. Zion. Though not really “mountains,” they all afford picturesque views of the city with its landmark golden Dome of the Rock (a Muslim mosque built in the 7th century).
Jesus started his descent into Jerusalem on that fateful Sunday from the Mount of Olives, and so did we. On the way, we passed Gethsemane (which means “olive press”), site of the “Agony in the Garden.” The gardens today are filled with old, gnarled olive trees, each a living abstract sculpture. You can feel a presence”not of God so much as history, the virtual reality of Biblical stories coming alive in historical settings. Depending on how devout you are, that can be a potent combination.
Pilgrims from other groups with names like Wings of Eagles Tours, were scattered here and there, touching trees, eyes downcast, faces registering strong emotion. We read aloud the agony and Judas kiss accounts from the gospels, then the group sang “In the Garden” (He walks with me, and he talks with me, and he tells me I am his own/And the joy we share as we tarry there, none other has ever known …).
Jesus rode a donkey on Palm Sunday, but we were on foot, and as we approached Lions’ Gate, the same one Jesus entered that day, Dotty Vandervoort, our eldest, asked for a breather. Different members of the group took turns carrying her heavy bag, and later she said she felt she was surrounded by Simons of Cyrene, helping her with her cross.
As we entered Old Jerusalem, the late afternoon sunlight turned the stone path golden.
On the site of Herod’s fortress, we descended several levels beneath the city to a room where Jesus was likely tortured while the soldiers played the “game of the king,” still hazily etched in the stone floor. From there we set off on the “Via Dolorosa””the Way of Sorrows or Way of the Cross. Stations are marked, but you have to run a gauntlet of shops and a bewildering array of scents”spices, coffee, perfume, cigarettes and refuse. Dodging the garbage tractors that clattered along on the uneven pavement stones only added to the distraction level, so following the path to Golgotha wasn’t exactly a meditative experience.
Soon we found ourselves at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, a monstrous hodgepodge of a building”yet another testament to turf wars and the ungodly obsession with plopping houses of worship on as many biblical sites as possible. A glass altar marked the designated crucifixion spot, built on a base of bedrock, and a long line of worshippers nearby filed toward the designated sepulchre spot.
This might have been the emotional climax of a biblical pilgrimage like ours, but it left many of us unimpressed. It was the end of the day, and officious, humorless monks were hurrying people out. The cavernous church was gloomy and not very inspiring.
Much more satisfying was our visit the next morning to a site in East Jerusalem, operated by an organization called The Garden Tomb Association, which features a tomb that more closely approximates the site of the Resurrection. Our guide, Don Boyd, a young, overly polished, former Canadian, whose family emigrated a little over six years ago, explained that the tomb, which dates back to the time of Jesus, shows all the signs of being a rich man’s burial space (befitting the donor of Jesus’ tomb, Joseph of Arimathea), and it’s located near one of the possible sites of Jesus’ crucifixion, Boyd said, pointing to a large parking lot, filled with tour buses.
You mean they paved Golgotha and put up a parking lot?
Well, no one knows for sure, he said. But it’s possible.
The garden, which likewise would have accompanied any rich man’s burial crypt, was serene and lush and, best of all, roofless. This sunlit setting came blissfully close to the picture my imagination has always painted of that glorious morning. Pastor Harry retold the story of Easter morning, then poured wine in tiny olive-wood cups and brought forth flatbread wafers, liberated from the breakfast buffet at the hotel, followed by “Amazing Grace,” and time for our individual reflections. Amid olive, palm, evergreen, and flowering trees, with birds singing overhead, this was a fine place to feel resurrected.
In the gift shop, I came across an official “Crown of Thorns” for $25, complete with “Certificate of Origin” and the following blurb: “For thousands of years, thorn bushes have grown plentifully on the mountains surrounding Jerusalem. The branches from these bushes have been handpicked and individually crafted to remind us of HIS love and suffering. This unique crown of thorns has been sanctified in the Holy Land.”
In the holy land you have to sift through a fair amount of chaff to get to the wheat.
Tuesday was Purim, and the sidewalks were filled with people, many dressed in costume, especially the kids. Even some of the orthodox set aside their normal black garb in favor of festive white. Our motor coach pulled up next to a public bus at one point, and we saw three girls standing in the rear stairwell. Mary Lee put her camel sketch up against the window. Their faces came alive with smiles”an all-too-rare moment of connection. One of the drawbacks of the heavily planned tour like ours was cultural insulation. Another was passivity, induced by the need to stay together and keep on schedule. At one point, I was deep in conversation with a fellow traveler, and when we looked up, we were walking with a different tour group. When we finally showed up at the bus, Wisam smiled knowingly and said, “You went with the wrong shepherd?”
At an archaeological site inside Old Jerusalem, one of the displays listed the layers of civilization that have culminated in modern Jerusalem: Canaanite, Israelite, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine, Muslim, Crusader, Muslim again, Ottoman Turk, British, Israeli.
In the 7th century A.D., the Caliph of Jerusalem built the Dome of the Rock, specifically to show off the rise of Islamic culture and to compete with Mecca as a draw for pilgrims. The golden dome with blue tile facade is now the distinguishing landmark of the Old City. Outside the main entrance, pairs of shoes, neatly lining the outside wall, indicated the number of visitors within. Things have been a little touchy since Ariel Sharon marched a thousand troops up here as a show of force a few years back. Bibles aren’t allowed”at least not openly carried”and mentions of the former Jewish Temple on this site are frowned upon because Muslims don’t acknowledge its existence.
Just for a lark, we hiked through Hezekiah’s Tunnel, an subterranean channel, hewn out of the rock some seven centuries before Christ, to bring water inside the city during times of siege.
Knee-deep in cool, clear water, wearing our most dispensable tennis shoes, armed with flashlights, cracking wise the whole way (“Look, it says, ‘David loves Bathsheba'”), the adventure provided a welcome break from the information overload of the past week, and the interlude was well-timed because our next stop took us to the opposite end of the emotional spectrum.
Yad Vashem, the holocaust museum, may well be the cornerstone of the Israeli nation”certainly the foundation of the modern Jewish experience. The museum is an eye-opener for anyone unfamiliar with the full extent of that dark chapter in history.
It is not for the faint of heart.
The design takes visitors on an S-curved course through exhibits that thoroughly cover every facet of the attempted genocide of this long-oppressed people. A central atrium, formed by smooth, grey, cement walls, slanting inward, with a skylight high overhead, offers momentary reprieves between exhibits. Early on, we passed a prescient quote from German poet Heinrich Heine: “Where books are burned, human beings are also destined to be burned.”
But the catalog of misery ends with a hopeful upswing. Video clips of David Ben-Gurion proclaiming the state of Israel in 1948 leads directly to The Hall of Names, an impressive memorial/library/database, containing records of as many victims as they’ve been able to identify. The “Hall” is a circular space with floor-to-ceiling shelves, stacked with binders (and plenty of room for more). Computer terminals in the back allow loved ones or researchers to look up specific individuals. In the center of the room is a limestone funnel, leading down to a black pool of water.
A quote, posted at the entry, asks visitors to:
“Remember only that I was innocent and, just like you, mortal on that day. I, too, had a face marked by rage, by pity and joy, quite simply, a human face.” (Benjamin Fordane, murdered at Auschwitz)
After the Hall of Names, the museum offers a “decompression” room”a quiet cave with benches where the shell-shocked visitor is serenaded by soothing music while perusing quotes on large wall screens, the words appearing intermittently against a backdrop of Hebrew letters:
We rejoined the cycle of life, but we never recovered.
A man who has nothing left in this world, still may know bliss, be it only in the contemplation of his beloved.
At the exit, books are available for visitors to share comments. Earlier that day Freya Bernstein had written:
My family, which is gone”who were taken through so much suffering and pain, but with strength;
My homeland, Israel;
My daughter, our future;
Never again.
A troop of young, uniformed soldiers (all 17- and 18-year-old Israelis are required to serve) passed through the museum at the same time we did. They neatly stacked their automatic weapons near the front entrance, and encouraged us with their smiles to take photos of them. Yad Vashem, which translates as “A name and a place,” is no doubt the clincher in the effort to help such new recruits understand, “Why we fight.”
On the way back to Jerusalem, we were informed the Israeli military had just attacked a Palestinian prison in Jericho and took into custody prisoners who were accused of assassinating the Israeli minister of culture several years earlier. The American and British “observers” who had been overseeing the prison, pulled out a short while before the Israeli action. Now the media was filled with rhetoric from the Palestinians, promising retaliation against British and American citizens.
Under the circumstances, we were relieved to be heading back to Jordan in the morning, but we still wanted to hear Wisam’s side of the issue. On our final night in Jerusalem, just over half the group headed to the hotel where Wisam was staying, so we could talk at greater length about the current political situation. Though he isn’t a fan of Hamas or any other terrorist group, he is clearly angry about the way Israel put down the Intifada, and about the continuing restrictions placed on Palestinians. He believes the two sides can live together, but isn’t so hopeful about when that will happen.
The following morning at Allenby Bridge, Harry read Psalm 133 to him (“Behold how good and pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity”), concluding with a prayer for peace and justice, followed by hugs all around.
Before heading home, however, one more treat awaited us”the Lost City of Petra in Jordan, a place so hidden and remote, it took even the Romans years to finally conquer it. After hiking the twisting, narrow canyon, it was easy to see why. The mysterious Nabatean culture had plenty of time to carve an unparalleled necropolis right out of the soft sandstone bluffs, including “The Treasury,” a massive facade, which is featured in one of the Indiana Jones films. Our Jordanian guide, Naj, called Petra “the 8th Wonder of the World.”
As with Wisam, the group peppered Naj with questions about Islam and the current Mideast situation. At one point, Naj observed, “If the U.S. wants to play policeman, they should be real policemen”in the middle, fair to both sides.”
After dinner, a few of us headed to the Cave Bar, which more closely resembled an opium den with patrons tucked in nooks puffing on hubbly-bubblies, until suddenly the place came alive with Jordanian music and the patrons, including Naj and the bar staff in white shirts and ties, performing a line dance that involved convoluted steps, stomps, kneebends and leaps.
“We don’t have slow dancing in Jordan,” noted Naj.
Mary Lee, Melanie, and Andrea joined in, fulfilling a trip-long desire to dance. Andrea marveled, “The men here are so beautiful.”
“They’re all heartthrobs,” Mary Lee agreed.
And then it was over”except for a 13-hour flight to Chicago.
We came for different reasons, but we shared one hope, I think”that this pilgrimage would change our lives. That’s a tall order, but at the very least, I suspect it changed how most of us relate to the Bible, and it made some of us look forward to reading it again.
Paradoxically, innocence was sustained and nourished by our pilgrimage into the past, even as fresh awareness was awakened by the events of the present. The journey made our group less insular. As Mary Lee told the First Baptist congregation the Sunday we returned, after thanking them for giving her this trip:
“I had the privilege of reading Matthew 5:1-12 on the Mount of the Beatitudes. ‘Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of heaven … Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.’
“Our guide told us that in Arabic, the word ‘blessed’ is less a reassuring comfort and more a call to action, an urge to ‘get your hands dirty.’
“‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons and daughters of God.'”