An Intense Day in Jerusalem

Rafi has now gone back home and Jennifer is here but about to leave Sunday.  I am so very behind in my blogging efforts that it feels odd to do it. My last post was on May 3rd about events on April 21st and today is May 10th. In other words, I am 3 weeks behind. I need to think about a strategy to catch up or I will still be blogging about my adventure long after I get over my jetlag in Vancouver. I go home three weeks today.


The cab came to get Rafi last Friday at around 2 am and Jenn arrived at noon the next day.  So in between I spent the day getting back to the gym (and finding out what the damage is); getting my hair cut; having lunch with Nicole; and going to the beach with Emanuela. 

Some of the highlights of the time with Rafi in Tel Aviv include, of course, the fabulous restaurant options that the city offers. The food, the locales and the people-watching opportunities are unparalleled. The city really never sleeps. Even when we stayed up late, (way past our seniors’ bed-time), we were able to see how all restaurants and bars and cafes are open late, very late, and full of people.

Post workout snack...

On Sunday, April 22 Rafi met Emanuela at the gym ("she is stronger than she looks"...) and then we spent the day walking around Tel Aviv. 

Dizengoff fruit juice stand, one of so many

Strolling

For lunch, Rafi wanted to go back to Dallal so, ever the accommodating wife (Rafi, you are not allowed to post comments on this blog), we went back.

The day culminated in the evening with tickets to the Tel Aviv Opera, where we saw a wonderful, modern production of Madam Butterfly (and, with the surtitles, for the first time I got it how horrid a character Pinkerton is). We had excellent seats, third row centre. I am glad I ordered them a few weeks back as the place was sold out. 

At the Tel Aviv Opera

While at the theatre, Rafi got a first hand taste of how people are like here. As we entered the beautiful modern Tel Aviv Performing Arts Centre, I ran into R., a business executive I had met a few weeks back. He lives in Haifa and drives regularly to Tel Aviv to the opera to which, he says, "his wife is converting him into a fan."  I just love the idea of simply running into people you know in town, any town, but especially here as I get the sense that I am actually engaged with the city. 

Before the show, we wanted to get a snack but (consistent with my as-yet unanswered, open-ended question "When  do people here eat?" or better yet: "When don't they?") there were fierce lineups at all the food stations. Once we were seated, next to Rafi sat a woman about our age who engaged him in conversation, and Rafi got to find out all about her, her family, her business and her life before the curtain rose. In a just a few minutes in Israel, you get to learn pretty much what at home would take a lifetime of conversations with a random stranger to learn.

From the opera we went, of course, to dinner at a place called The Diner by Goocha. A pretty cool place, very Hollywood, still pretty full even though it was about midnight. I wasn't hungry but Rafi enjoyed what he ordered for dinner (which, for the life of me, I cannot recall what it was).  We knew we should not stay up too late as the following day we were taking an early inter-city bus to Jerusalem to meet Roy, Rafi's nephew.  The next day we got up early to catch the 7:30 am bus. 

In Jerusalem, Roy (who has got to be one of the nicest people I know - and I know he reads this blog. Hello Roy!) picked us up from the bus station, after a few attempts on our part to figure out which way out.  Roy gave up a full day to drive us around and show us Jerusalem. (We really appreciate it as we know he both works full time AND goes to Hebrew University full time).

We started the touring doing something easy: by going to the epicentre of the universe, otherwise known as the Temple Mount to Jews, or al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock to Muslims.

At the epicentre

The Temple Mount is one of the most important religious sites in the Old City of Jerusalem and has been used as a religious site for thousands of years. At least four religions are known to have used the Temple Mount: Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Roman paganism.

With Roy

Jews regard the Temple Mount as the place where God chose the Divine Presence to rest; according to the rabbinic sages, it was from here the world expanded into its present form and where God gathered the dust used to create the first man, Adam. The site is the location of Abraham's binding of Isaac, and of course, the site of the two Jewish Temples.  Jewish texts record that the Mount will be the site of the Third Temple, which will be rebuilt with the coming of the Messiah.

Inside

Among Sunni Muslims, the Mount is widely considered to be the third holiest site in Islam and the location of Muhammad's journey to Jerusalem and ascent to heaven. After the Muslim conquest of Jerusalem in 637 CE, Umayyad Caliphs commissioned the construction of the al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock on the site.

The clincher: the Dome of the Rock currently sits in the middle of the Temple Mount, occupying or close to the area where the Bible mandates the Holy Temple be rebuilt. 

Map of Old City sites

To get there, from inside the Old City, right next to the Western Wall ("next", of course, because the Wall surrounded the area where the Temple was), after passing through security, one walks over a wooden bridge which, in and of itself, is controversial. This is before you even enter the Temple Mount.

An Islamic Waqf has managed the Temple Mount continuously since the Muslim reconquest of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in 1187. In 1967, soon after Israel had taken control of the area during the Six-Day War, Israel agreed to leave administration of the site in the hands of the Waqf, and freedom of access was enshrined in the law. Additionally, as a security measure, the Israeli government currently enforces a ban on non-Muslim prayer on the site. Non-Muslims are only allowed to enter the area once a week, on Monday's between 9 and 11 am. Also, we were not allowed to enter the mosques inside, so we walked around instead.

Non-Muslims who are observed praying on the site are subject to expulsion by the Israeli police. 

Outside

While inside, the place is as peaceful as one could ever imagine an area to be, with small groups of people walking about and engaging in quiet conversation, completely belying  the passion, the tension and the violence it inspires.

At the risk of sounding unoriginal, I was trying to understand the place but couldn't really.

View of the Western Wall

After a stop at the Wall (more telegrams; the ones sent a few weeks ago seemed to have fallen off), we walked around in the Arab Quarter. 

When we last walked there, four years ago, it was on a Friday after prayers and there were thousands of people literally pouring out of the Temple Mount area and filling the narrow streets of the Old City like a stream, mostly males walking very fast, shoving and looking angry. On this visit, on a Monday, it was mostly women and old men, plus a few children. The place was fairly empty and felt nonthreatening  this time.

One of the stops in the Arab Quarter was the Austrian Hospice, truly an Austrian oasis. The hostel, located directly on the Via Dolorosa, is built in the style of a palace on Vienna‘s Ringstrasse. It was built in 1857 and served as a hospital from 1948 to 1985; now it's been renovated and restored to its original use as a guesthouse for pilgrims and visitors.

Inside one can enjoy a weird sense of tranquility, an unparalleled view from the roof terrace plus, of course, all the goodies of a Viennese café. We climbed to the rooftop garden to overlook Jerusalem, then went to their cafe, which truly looks and feels like being somewhere quiet in Vienna and not in the epicenter of the universe.

View of Jerusalem from the Austrin Hospice roof deck

Kafee und Kuchen in the Old City

 

At the Cafe we sat, chatted and rested for a while. I had been reading a lot about declining enrollment in the Israeli Army, one of Israel's cornerstones. The numbers show an increased reluctance among young Israelis to do military service and yet further analysis seems to show that these figures are the result of population increases among the Ultra-Orthodox, who do not serve (but will soon, if the law is reformed -- one of the few things everyone but the Ultra-Orthodox seems to agree on).

The IDF is commonly seen as one of the most powerful armies in the world due to the fact that there is a required service.  However, if you think about it, it is actually the miluim (reserves) that are the main force in the army: all men who served in regular/required service serve in miluim until age 45. This is a yearly event lasting between 20 and 30 days.

To me it seems incredibly onerous on both a personal level and an economic level to remove all men from their homes and their jobs every year. Aside from taking the dad from the family, the government has to compensate each soldier with lost wages, at precisely his earnings level, during their peek earning years.

Think about the productivity lost, the hassle, and the cost to the country.  The closest we have to this is Jury Duty, where a juror is considered to be on unpaid leave for the period. 

This is particularly amazing in light of the strength of the Israeli economy that has to sustain all this.

So, thinking about all the hassle, I asked Roy about how he felt abut his miluim. He loves it, he says, as he gets to spend time with his friends.  (Guys!)

From the Old City of Jerusalem, Roy took us to a Museum I would have never thought if going on my own, but one which I thank him for identifying it for us and taking us there: The Museum on the Seam, a socio-political contemporary art museum.

The Museum, in a unique way, presents art as a language with no boundaries in order to raise controversial social issues for public discussion. At the center of the changing exhibitions in the Museum stand the national, ethnic and economic seam lines in their local and universal contexts.

The exhibit we saw is called "Beyond Memory" and  it "sets out on a memory-aided journey to the future, to face works of art which expose us to images delved from the archives of repression and denial of fears and anxieties from our past experiences. It attempts to examine through them future scenarios awaiting us and to learn from them how to avoid repeating past mistakes".

Located on the road that used to partition Jerusalem before 1967 and in a building which still has bullet holes throughout, it tries to convey that suffering is universal and that no one has a monopoly on it. That by only transcending one's personal experience and memories of it, can the future change. 

Of course this makes total, logical sense.  But like in every argument and/or discussion I have with the Israeli "lefties" I do not see an equivalent attempt at reaching out by the Arabs in general or the Palestinians in particular. Au contraire.

The Huffington Post writes that many Middle Eastern artists refuse to even display their art there, protesting Israel's policies toward the Palestinians. "Many of their governments, notably Iran, make contacts with Israel illegal. In Egypt, which signed a 1979 peace treaty with the Jewish state, rules by many artists organizations forbid members to engage in any 'normalization' with Israel."

We finished the Museum visit sitting at their rooftop deck, gazing at both East and West Jerusalem, and having a great discussion about the meaning of it all.  I tried very hard to see the art in the context of other world horrors, which I am assuming is what the curator is trying to do. But I cannot help it but to see in it a thinly veiled attempt at normalizing the Holocaust, that steel wire that connects Jews.

But the Holocaust, as Rafi pointed out in our tranquil discussion on the deck, is truly a unique event in history when people, us, me, my dad who survived, my grandparents who did not, his mother who did, his grandfather who didn't, were hunted down across all political and geographic boundaries with great zealotry and optimal organizational skills. This took place only one generation ago and Jews' collective memory is too fresh to have it minimized. 

Display is supposed to say "Memory"... Coincidence? Maybe I am just a poor photographer.

Our day in Jerusalem could not end without a memorable meal.

Roy took us to Eucalyptus, where Jerusalem is the theme of the restaurant and its mixed Arab-Jewish staff serve dishes that reflect the two cultures.  Their chef picks herbs and mushrooms from the hills surrounding Jerusalem and has a basket of herbs on display to show customers the plants mentioned in the Bible.  The menu draws on food mentioned in the Bible, such as figs (one of the seven species), and food linked to Jerusalem's history such as khubeiza, a wild wheat eaten during the siege of 1948 ( had both of these). 

It was a phenomenal day and we took the bus back to Tel Aviv, pretty exhausted from what we had seen and done.