Saturday July 8, 2006
We’ve had a very busy but very exciting couple of days. I'll write some here about Thursday through Saturday, then post another section covering today, Sunday.
I travelled in to Tel Aviv on the 5:30 bus Thursday morning to sort out my passport issues and, after a frantic morning shuttling back and forth between offices and businesses in the downtown area, got everything done just before the embassy closed at noon. After all the bustling around, it was good to find a cool place in an air-conditioned “mall” in a big office tower, eat lunch, and write a bit in my journal before catching a mid-afternoon train to Jerusalem, where I was meeting up with the rest of our group after they finished the day’s digging and then rode a chartered bus to the holy city as well. My train ride was great—I always love to travel by train, and this was a great ride up from the coast through some very steep and rather wild terrain to Jerusalem. I was surprised to see both how mountainous and also how undeveloped the land was along this route; in some places there was actually something approximating a “forest,” though the trees were pretty short and stubby. I was also surprised to discover, when we arrived in Jerusalem, how much cooler it was than it had been earlier in the day in Tel Aviv. Granted, a stiff breeze had been blowing all afternoon off the Mediterranean, but I wasn’t prepared for the great difference it made in the temperature. I’d guess it was perhaps 8-10 degrees cooler than it had been in Tel Aviv (and Ein Gev, for that matter). Elevation no doubt has something to do with it—Jerusalem is perhaps 700-800 metres higher in elevation than the Sea of Galilee, and thus about 500-600 above sea level. But regardless the cause(s), it was heavenly to be out in the city around sundown and actually feel goosebumps on my arms. After the brutal heat of the past week, it was as startling a feeling as it was delicious.
I linked up with the rest of the team about 6:00 after taking a taxi from the train station to the Jaffa Gate, one of the main entrances to Jerusalem’s “Old City.” We were staying at the Austrian Hostel, a grand old four-storey establishment in the heart of the Moslem Quarter that felt like a piece of Europe dropped down in the middle of the Middle East. The food was very Austrian, and even the prices were in Euros (and thus pricey prices, too). I spent several wonderful hours, over the two days we stayed there, sitting outdoors either on the covered veranda or up on the roof, looking out over the city and contemplating its paradoxes.
For it was a rather strange place, on several levels. Within the Christian community, there’s a surprising amount of bustling and jostling at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre as various groups vie with each other to hold Masses, processions, and rites of various kinds in front of—and within—the dilapidated little structure that houses the tomb in which Jesus may have been buried (and even more important, from which he then arose!). Some of our group were a bit put-off by all of this, and I can understand why: we’d like to think that the Church is more harmonious than it appears to be in that particular place. At the same time, though, I found the whole scenario pretty honest, in the sense that the church’s brokenness and hiddenness was very evident even as its members gathered around the same holy place to worship the same Lord Jesus. Both realities are equally present: what we see, and what God sees… the pettiness of our human weakness and the majesty of what God does in spite of us. I loved it!
The same kind of rivalry was equally evident, if not more so, within the city as a whole. The Old City models it perfectly, with Jewish, Christian, Armenian, and Moslem “quarters.” There are no official boundaries between them that I know of, but the names of streets suddenly change as one rounds a corner, the predominant language on signs shifts, and you figure out pretty fast that you’re in a completely different neighbourhood. Living in the Moslem Quarter was a bit of a challenge at this particular time due to the ongoing violence in the Gaza Strip; the police and military presence was very obvious and the tension ran pretty high a few times. I wish I could frame these rivalries in the same “yes but” perspective that applies so well to the inter-Christian jostling, but I haven’t figured out a way to do so. Nor have those who are immersed in these tensions, either!—they just seem to fester and grind away from year to year. Everybody has ancient claims to the same real estate, for similar cultural and religious reasons, and nobody knows how to adjudicate all of those varying claims. Whoever is asked or forced to leave will be able to complain that they’ve been treated unfairly; whoever is the victor will feel that they are perfectly justified in their ascendancy. What a nasty situation!
Anyway, apart from the politics, we had a simply wonderful weekend (Fri-Sat) touring a whole bunch of holy sites in and around the Old City. I found my feelings about such places changing quite dramatically, too. For one thing, seeing places that might have been the genuine sites of Biblical events helped those events come alive more fully than ever before; I actually have a picture in my head now of the Mount of Olives, and Gethsemane, and the Pool of Bethesda, and many other places. Some people I know can imagine those places without ever seeing them, or even without seeing pictures of them, but I’m not like that. I actually have no picture at all in my head of places I haven’t seen; there’s just nothing there! But now some of those voids are filled, and I’m delighted at the richer understanding of Scripture that that gives me.
Even more, my attitude is shifting in another way too. I’ve always been dismissive of the search for the actual Biblical sites. “Nobody will ever know for sure whether we’ve got the right places or not,” I thought, “so why bother even looking?” My view is a little more subtle now. Maybe these aren’t the right sites. In some cases, they’re pretty likely to be correct; in other cases, the likelihood is very low. But regardless, these are places that Christians before us have venerated for centuries as places to commemorate Biblical events—and that history of veneration itself carries some weight. Does that make sense? Maybe the Church of the Holy Sepulchre is not the actual place where Jesus died and rose again. But it’s been revered as that place since the time of Constantine, whose mother Helena built a church on that place—and the reason she did so, already in the early 4th century, was because Christians at that time already had a collective memory of these events having happened there. That tradition must be worth something! And you know what: even if that isn’t the exact place, it’s pretty much certain that somewhere within a 1- or 2-kilometer radius is. And I guess that’s close enough for me (at least this “new” me).
Another impression to share: I had no idea that Jerusalem was as vertically challenging as it is. Up one hill and down the next; into this valley and up onto that ridge. Whew! Our hike yesterday morning (Saturday) from the Old City down past the remains of Herod’s temple to the ancient “city of David” and then up, up, and up the Mount of Olives was actually quite physically challenging! If the city were being built today, I suppose a lot of these ravines would have been filled in by the contractors, or at least been crossed with bridges, but because the city is so old, pretty much all of the original contour lines are still being followed.
Speaking of which: I spent Friday morning touring The Citadel, the remains of the fortifications built by various rulers just to the east of the Jaffa Gate on the highest point in the Old City. This citadel includes one of the great towers Herod built in the first century, along with the remains of older (Hasmonean, which describes things of the Maccabean period in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC) as well as later (Byzantine, Umayyad, and Ottoman) walls and towers. The whole thing looks very confusing at first because remnants of one set of walls lie right on top of others. But there are enough high points within the complex that one can climb up and get a birds-eye-view of the whole thing, and sort it out piece by piece with the help of a map and a guidebook. Fascinating! The biggest revelation to me was that the existing city walls bear almost no relationship at all to earlier structures, except for the fact that most of the present walls lie farther outside most of the earlier ones. But not even that is always true, because in some cases one or more sets of old walls enclosed a larger area than the current ones! Very, very cool. It was also quite amazing to see—and touch—a whole lot of structures that dated from the time of Jesus. For a western Canadian in particular this was a very moving experience, given the sharp contrast between the youthfulness of our part of the world and the staggering antiquity of this part. What a great experience.
My one significant regret is that I didn’t spend more time shopping. That’s not my favourite activity at the best of times, and here it was especially intimidating for several reasons: the smallness of the shops, the readiness of the vendors to pounce on anybody who shows the slightest interest in their wares, the much greater interest I had in historical matters, and especially because of the hassle of having to barter for things without having a clear idea what they’re “worth.” Example: I saw an icon—a copy of an old one, actually—and asked how much it was. 1200 shekels, the man said (about $300). Forget it! I said. Okay, 1100, he said. No way! I said; that’s way too much! Well then, he said, how much do you want to pay? I don’t know, I said; I have no idea. How much? he asked; come on, just tell me how much you want to pay. I don’t know, I said—thinking very fast in my head—nothing more than 200. Two hundred! he said. What, are you crazy? I’ll give you a special price: 800. Nope, I said, that’s way too much. What’s your best price? he asked. Tell me, how much is your best price? Two hundred, I said. Five hundred, he said. Two hundred, I said. Four hundred, he said. Two hundred, I said. Two fifty, he said. No, I said, I won’t pay anything more than two hundred. And I started to walk out of the shop. OK, he said, two hundred. So he took it and started to wrap it up. How about 225? he said. No, I said, we agreed on 200. He said nothing more, but wrapped it up, and I walked away.
Did I get a good deal or not? Considering that he started at 1200 shekels, yes. Considering that he did all the conceding, and I didn’t budge, yes. But considering that I still paid about $50 for it, well now all of a sudden I’m not too sure. What if the going rate was just 100 shekels? But if it was, why would he have started at 1200? Aarggh! You can drive yourself crazy second-guessing things this.
Anyway, we left Jerusalem yesterday, Saturday, about mid-afternoon, and sweated our way along the whole long descent from the city through the Judean Desert toward the Dead Sea, then north along the parched valley of the Jordan up to the Sea of Galilee. Again, as I said before, these were just names and perhaps at best points on a map before recently; now I can picture them in my head! We were glad to get back to the kibbutz, hot and sweaty and tired from a draining trip, just before suppertime.
After supper, which was a picnic like last Saturday’s, but this time hosted by our cottage of six, on the lawn between the cottage and the lake, the four of us Edmonton folks—Dan, me, Clint and Joyce—were somewhat unexpectedly “upgraded” to better accomodations in a different cottage on the kibbutz. A couple of new people joined the dig team, and another housing unit became available, so changes were necessary to a number of people’s housing situation, and we were among those affected. Clint and Joyce share one bedroom and Dan and I the other; we each have our own bathroom and share a common kitchen and sitting-room. Wonderful! The air conditioning works better than in the previous place we had, too. And I must say it’s nice to be together, if only because we are all about the same age and know each other relatively well. Super!