PILLARS OF ZION: PART 1

This was a complicated week (actually month) for holidays. The double whammy of Passover and Easter had barely finished when we launched right into the three pillars of the Israeli's national psyche. Pillar One is the Holocaust Memorial Day


I am standing on a scenic promenade facing the Jerusalem city and valley. At 11:00 sirens go off all over the country for a 2 minute silent memorial. On my left is the end of the impressive Yad Vashem Museum which after a long tunnel of exhibits opens majestically on to a view of the city. Everywhere in the country people/cars stop and contemplate, its very heavy.

This is a huge metal tree sculpture at the museum, as best as I can interpret, it depicts people in free fall. I arrived at Yad Vashem at about 9 a.m. and inexplicably found myself completely alone on the grounds. All the dignitaries were up in the open auditorium and as I walked around there was nobody, not even soldiers. It was very eerie, I mean here I was in the middle of the biggest Holocaust Museum, on the biggest memorial day in Jerusalem, admidst empty freight cars and granite markers and I was completely alone.
I find this to be one of the more interesting exhibits: the Hall of Names. In these volumes are the names and Pages of Testimony of people killed in the Holocaust. Millions of people's lives have been documented and the 360 degree circular atrium of the Hall's bookcases contains thousands of binders all of which are now computerized. Keeping track of these names and their stories is one of the highest priorities of the state, soon in about 10-20 years there will be nobody lucid enough to remember what actually happened.

The huge conical ceiling is covered with photographs and each person/victim is catalogued on a Page of Testimony with family pictures and witness statements which must be verified before inclusion in the official record.

As I left there was a children's harmonica coral group. They were playing a haunting song which I am sure is the theme of a famous Holocaust movie, but I can not for the life of me identify which one. As you can see in the background there is an inspiring view of Jerusalem.

A WALK DOWN MEMORY LANE

This is probably the most bizarre image I have seen so far (I think I've said that before), but this time I mean it. I was standing on the Via Dolorosa in the Old City at the V Station of the Cross (or maybe it was VI) and saw a crowd of people touching and kissing this "brown spot" on the wall. I asked a nearby Monk for an identification and he said, "that is the hand print of our Lord Jesus Christ." Whoa! So Jesus is being marched down the Via to his Crucifixion and at station 5 or 6 he stumbles against the wall and leaves this hand print, which over the last 2,009 years has been touched by millions and millions of pilgrims.

This intersection of Via Delorosa and El Wad is one of the most interesting, probably in the world. Coming from one direction are Arab worshippers on their way back from prayers at the El Aqsa Mosque (they're the group with head dressings.) Going in the other direction are the Christian pilgrims who are retracing Jesus' actual steps and as mentioned kissing/touching the hand print. A third group is made up of Jewish tourists on their way to the Wailing Wall which is just down the road a piece.


This video starts with the Christian hand print touchers and moves to the Arabs returning from prayer. Note the sound of the trinket peddlers in the background.


This video starts with a group of Jewish Wall Wailers and continues as the Arab worshippers passes along side of them. I can't tell you how incredible this mixing of different religious followers appears in person. At this one intersection there is just a mob of people who all believe that their God is the one true God, they are speaking English/Hebrew/Arabic and not acknowledging anyone else's existence except their own people.
Of course everything is overseen by hundreds of Israeli soldiers with machine guns and many check points.
The T-shirts are quite novel. This one was being sold in both Israeli and Arab stores and depending and which one it is either funny or revolutionary. Below is a collection including a Free Palestine combined with a Detroit Piston's NBA Jersey, the whole gamut of the political spectrum.

No tour would be complete without a stop at the Virgin Mary's Birth Place and Tomb. As you can imagine, these two places were heavy duty, (ie NO TALKING OR JOKING) There was a solemn procession of very serious minded women, kneeling and crossing themselves, I felt very awkward when the sound of my camera kept going "click-click."

And finally lots and lots of stores selling christian "stuff." BTW: Most of the stores seemed to be owned by either Jews or Arabs, so what else is new.

ONWARD CHRISTIAN SOLDIERS

Just as I put Passover behind me, up comes Easter and once again this town is alive with religious fervor. Actually, I missed the “real” Easter, the one with the Pope and the Michelangelo Last Supper painting; that was last Sunday. I didn’t see any mention of it in the papers and with all the Passover hoopla, there never was a ground swelling of Easter Fever. But alas, I was saved by a quirk of religious calendaring, as it seems the Greek Orthodox Church, that's the one with the cool icons, celebrated Easter a week AFTER the Roman Catholic Church. Just an aside, but these two churches share custody of the crucifixion/resurrection site and have been fighting over such important things as the number of fingers one uses to cross themselves for thousands of years. I heard the priests of the two sects can't be in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher at the same time because they are prone to fighting.

In any case, I got up to the Old City early Saturday morning and there were several thousand people already waiting in line. It was a mad house with little old Greek ladies in black, (right out of Zorba the Greek) facing row upon row of Israeli soldiers desperately trying to hold them back.


Here a group of Israeli soldiers take a break on the steps of the church while mobs of pilgrims tried to break down the metal barriers.

I thought I would get stuck in the crowd waiting for hours and suddenly saw this gaggle of monks walking down street so I tagged along and they suddenly became my NBFs. (New Best Friends) We were all joking and chatting in Greek or was it Russian, whatever. In any case it got me past the initial barricade of soldiers.

I next found myself in a huge courtyard, filled with more alternately weeping and screaming Greek and Russian ladies when out of nowhere there appeared a Scottish Highlander band with bagpipes blaring. I was later told these were Jordanians, but why they had bagpipes I'll never know.

I followed the band further into the bowels of the Old City where we came to the plaza in front of the Church where Jesus was either crucified, buried and/or resurrected, it's unclear what exactly happened here. But at some point a major procession of potentates appeared and disappeared into the church with me continuing to follow. The little old ladies had dropped away and now everyone (except me) had VIP badges

The scene inside the Church was controlled bedlam, there were about 500 people squeezed into a room about the size of Jesus' tomb, if you can imagine that. The air was thick with incense (and myrrh, whatever that is) there were TV cameras, lots of kneeling, crossing of one's self and sporadic sounds of grief. Except for the hundreds of Israeli soldiers guarding this fort, I might have been the only Jew there (except of course for Jesus, his family and the disciples.)

The center of the Church is dominated by this tomb like structure which supposedly houses the earthly burial spot of Jesus. I'm not sure I have the complete story exactly straight because at some point the wife of Constantine was digging around this area and found wood splinters which she identified as pieces of the original cross. Many battles were fought over this and many lives lost, but if you want to know more, check out Wikipedia.

Finally, I extracted myself from the group of mourners/revelers and made my way outside where I discovered that I was on the inside of the barricades looking out at about a thousand people who wanted to get in. I had no idea how this happened and I think the soldier I was standing next to was as surprised to see me as I was to see him. I politely asked if I could be let out, he hesitated sensing that I was an intruder, but after an awkward pause he opened the gate and I jumped through it.

HERE COMES THE SUN

OK, so I didn't take this picture with my cell phone camera, it comes courtesy of Vardit's real camera. The sun has just risen above the horizon and is hitting the Old City. Needless to say, "the crowd went wild" at this moment of truth. (BTW: this picture makes a great screen saver)

Finally a holiday has come along that combines the unreality of the Ultra-Orthodox Jew with the unscientific creationism of the Evangelical Christian, its called Birkat Hachama. According to one of the world's leading authorities on the subject, Rabbi Bleich (a man by the way who does not use a computer and has a rotary phone) every 28 years the Sun returns to exactly the same spot it was at on the 4th day of creation, which is always on a Wednesday. This year the event is super symbolic because it occurred on the first day of Passover and (if you do the math correctly) it also occurred on the first Passover in Egypt and of course on the 4th day of creation about 6000 years ago. There was talk that such a coincidence could only mean one thing: the arrival of the Messiah.

So to make a long story short, about 50,000 Jews around the world from New Zealand to New York and of course passing through Jerusalem gathered at 6:28a.m. to say a prayer welcoming the Sun and I was one of those Jews. Arriving at Haas Promenade at about 5a.m. to get a good parking spot about 1000 of us sang and shivered as we wait for the Sun to crack the plane of the horizon. It was a little irritating to realize that the West Bank Arabs in Jericho got to see the sunrise about a minute before us Jews, since they would not have understood the significance of the event. There was some criticism about the fact that this whole celebration looked a lot like Sun worship, which if you recall your Bible is the kind of thing that really pissed off Moses in the desert.

I ended up in the middle of the more ecstatic, musical and dancing crowd and the Rabbi asked us all to think about where we were 28 years ago (1981 and recently arrived in Berkeley) and where we will be in 28 years (2037 and probably God-willing not around any more). We then all waited a respectful period of time (about 10 minutes) and when the Messiah didn't show up, we headed off to a cute French restaurant for a nice Israeli breakfast.

This is the view from the Haas Promenade, donated by the famous Haas Family of San Francisco (inventor of Levi jeans), a UC Berkeley graduate, namesake to Haas Pavilion, home of the Golden Bears. A makeshift prayer site was set up with about 500 people, note the improvised curtain which separates the men worshippers from the women worshippers.

This was actually a very spiritual moment, intense singing and praying as the Sun came up and bathed the Old City in an orange glow. It was a teary moment, not sure about the "time-of-creation" thing, but definitely emotional.

Here is Stephen Colbert doing a very funny spoof on Birkat Hachama which shows how flippantly the American public can treat a goofy religious phenomena:

http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/224061/april-08-2009/birkat-hachama---stephen-frees-his-jews

Also a brilliant article in Haaretz by Gideon Levy on the fact that Israel is a religious country in many ways not much different from Pakistan, Iran or Afghanistan, OUCH!! There were lots of letters to the editor criticising this article, but I thought it was right on.

www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1077908.html

Here is a picture you don't see very often. I'm sitting in the stands at the local soccer game at about 5:30pm on a SATURDAY afternoon and the guy in front of me is wearing a kippa, which means he is an Orthodox Jew (he shouldn't be at the game on Shabbat) and he is eating a matzoh sandwich and of course sitting amongst fans that are yelling things like, "your mother is a whore" and worse. What's a nice Jewish boy doing in crowd like this on Shabbat?"

This is a picture of the check out counter at the local hardware store and the aisle at the supermarket. The plastic coverings are concealing "snacks" that can not be eaten by the Orthodox on Passover. There is an unenforced law in Jerusalem, the Chametz Law, which forbids the public display of non-Passover approved foods, thus the coverings. Near the end of Passover, the less religious public starts ripping away some of the plastic to sneak out the sacrilegious food.

PASSOVER MANIA: The Photos

It's not possible to put in words the range and depth of the Passover Mania that is sweeping Jerusalem so I'll try to capture the mood in photos. Keep in mind the comment made in the paper today that "modern archaeologists can not find any evidence of the exodus from Egypt as describe in the Bible." You would think that would put a damper on things, but it hasn't.


Probably one of the best photos I've ever taken. The guy in the picture is one of many who has set himself up on a corner with a boiling pot of water to sterilize the hametzy (non-passover) dishes that people bring him. What makes this guy so unusual is the CAL Berkeley hat he is wearing. When I told him what it represented, he had no idea and said his sister gave it to him. I assume he also didn't know about the lack of evidence of the exodus.

There are long lines of people everywhere sterilizing their dishes. What I find curious is that the process of sterilizing is designed to kill germs, but the religious doctrine of "hametz" is designed to cleanse the spirit. According to the boiling water theory, it is the people who should be dunked in the pot, not the dishes. I didn't share this with the Cal guy, just gave him a thumbs up and a GO BEARS!!

I got my hair cut today and I picked a pretty busy day to do so. This man is both de-hametzing and cutting/styling an orthodox wig. Ultra married women must wear wigs (more on that another time) and obviously you can't wear a hametzy wig on Passover, (dah) so they have to be cleaned and dolled up for the Seder.

Many people do a massive cleaning of their houses, but rather than live in them during the Passover and get them dirty, they check into hotels for the holidays. Unfortunately, the hotels are staffed by less religious people (both Jews and Arabs) who must be fed, but they don't want to eat matzohs all day so the hotel caters sandwiches on real pita bread. But (are you still following me) the workers can't eat bread in the anti-hametzy hotels so the staff eats their meals in the underground garage. When they saw me taking the picture, they offered me a sandwich, but, not wanting to anger God, I declined.

Cars have to be de-hametzied too. So there are long lines at all the car washes. BTW: dog and cat food must be kosher for Passover so all old hametzy pet food must be pitched and replaced with special for Passover pet diets.

In the Ultra neighborhoods there are rows and rows of signs which lay out the latest rules of religious conduct. There are obvious ones like, "women must dress modestly in this neighborhood", but sometimes they get very complex. Vardit says these signs refer to the problem of the "smeta" year. For those of you who aren't up on that problem, every 7 years the fields must be left farrow (unplanted) That was last year, this is now year 8. But, (still following) some seeds that ended up in the ground in year 7, are germinating in year 8 and you guess it, that is a huge problem. These signs warn people about buying food from vendors who might be including 7 year seeds in 8 year products. Let this be sufficient warning to all of you!!

While the average religious person boils their dishes clean, the real Orthodox throw their old dishes away and buy new ones. Thus the stores are packed with people buying full sets of dishes, also sheets, table clothes, even kitchen appliances.

The seamy underbelly of the holidays! Piles and piles of hametzy "garbage" are everywhere, garbage pickup has been doubled, scavengers are out and about. I'm told there are some real bargains in these piles, but haven't seem many.

Finally, keep in mind that not much of what you've seen and read above is found in the Bible. If you recall the story, the Jews where told to get the hell out of "Dodge" and they left so quickly they barely had time to bake matzoh, which is for me one of the really nice parts of the holiday. I'm not sure where all these other traditions came from, but one of the most recent additions is that Passover is a gift giving holiday. Even the newspaper didn't know where that came from, but observed that gift giving on Passover is almost as big as Hanuka, so once again the malls are packed with people buying their friends gifts and of course, lots and lots of presents for the children. Thus, a holiday whose message used to be, "travel light with just the shirt on your back because you never know when Pharaoh will change his mind," has morphed in the modern Israeli slogan to "shop till you drop."

JERUSAELM STONE

This is the bathroom underneath the museum containing the Dead Sea Scrolls; see the female toilet symbol in the doorway? What a classy entrance. Note the nicely fitted cut stones which can be found everywhere in the city.

This wall separates a residential neighborhood from the highway and goes on like this for what seems to be miles.

Jerusalem Stone: In 1918 or so, the city plan for Jerusalem required that the fronts of all buildings be made out of stone. This gives the City an amazing and distinctive look. Compared to California, the buildings seem to me to be cold. I mean there is a LOT of stone everywhere and I find myself wanting to see a few nice cottages covered in cedar shingles. At the same time, the quality of the stone work is just breathtaking. Even if you could find someone in the States who could do this kind of work, I think it would be very expensive.

I have recently learned that there is a down side to all this stone work. First of all, there is no wood for building. I recently hung a light fixture and was looking to attach it to the wooden support beam and was told that the Israeli's don't use wood in their construction. If you want a redwood deck, you have to import the wood from overseas. (BTW: there is no shortage of cement) Second and more importantly, the stone comes from the West Bank so in legal terms, there is a steady flow of natural resources from an "occupied territory" to the land of the occupying country, which is a violation of the Geneva Convention (Germany used to do this with Romanian oil.) That is a big deal to the Palestinians, but it is also a source of about half a billion dollars of revenue. (See this article for an in-depth analysis: http://www.csmonitor.com/2000/0104/p6s1.html ) Finally, the best stone cutters are Arabs who are no longer allowed into Israel and to make matters worse, cutting stone is a huge occupational hazard because of all the dust particles.

Passover Fever: I think this is the most bizarre story so far on Passover, but Vardit has assured me it gets worse. Do you remember the concept of "hametz," that is an impure, non-Passover approved particle and during Passover there can be no hametz in Israel, PERIOD! See if you can follow this, cows eat hay, some grains end up in hay, some grains ferment in cow's stomachs, fermenting grain is HAMETZ, hametzy grain ends up in cow’s milk and you can't sell that milk at Passover. Solution: a week before Passover the eating habits of the cows are changed to a special non-grain diet, chickpeas are especially popular. Also extensive cleaning of the stalls and filtering of the milk is performed. Even the cows get into the religious swing of things!

Hametz Police: I'm just now learning about this group. They are responsible for making sure that people don't eat hametzy food (i.e. bread) on Passover. They have asked all "kosher" grocery stores to block all the bar codes on hametz food so if a customer takes a loaf of bread and goes to the checkout counter, the price will not scan and the product cannot be sold. This group also goes around with cameras to photograph politicians who might be caught eating bread on Passover and then their pictures will be published in the paper for the whole world to see.

Messiah Watch: (This section of my blog is new, but I hope to make it a regular feature for those of you who are anxiously waiting for the second coming.) Vardit had a conversation with an Ultra the other day who said he was not going to see his mother in New York for Passover because on Wednesday night, the first night of Passover, there will be an eclipse of the moon and there is anticipation that the Messiah might appear and he doesn't want to miss it by being out of the country. Wish I had thought of that excuse when I had to visit my mother at the nursing home.

Politics Update: We now have a government made up of 30 ministers of departments and 8 ministers without departments (without portfolios) Two are women, the Ministry of Women Affairs (dah!) and the Ministry of Culture and Sport. The only department that was not given a minister was the Department of Health, go figure! The table for the ministers at the Knesset can only seat 18 ministers (the last government's number) so you can imagine the huge problem that creates. Every minister gets a staff of about 10 people, an office and a nice operating budget. The word "bloated" is being used a lot to describe the new government. The new Finance Minister has no economic experience, but is a close friend of Sara Netanyahu, wife of the Prime Minister. The new Foreign Minister, Lieberman ("if you want peace, prepare for war" is close to indictment for money laundering and a loyal follower of his is in charge of the police department doing the investigation. Oh yes, 54% of the Israeli public does not currently support the new government and that is only 2 weeks after the election.

BITS AND PIECES: March 30, 2009

California Dreaming: This huge slice of a Sequoia tree can be found in the middle of the Hebrew University campus, it is the gift of someone who paid to schlep it all the way from California, hundreds of rings and all. I'm not sure what it symbolizes, longevity, a belief in nature? It didn't quite make me homesick, (I'm not really a tree hugger), but it was nice to contemplate a piece of home. What struck closer to home was the story of the poor schmuck who spent a year sitting up in an Oak tree in Berkeley protesting the University's decision to cut down an old grove forest for a new athletic complex and then he came to Israel to a West Bank protest and was promptly hit in the head by a teargas canister fired by an IDF soldier and might die. Talk about a life on the cutting edge of political dissent.

Matzoh Madness: Its starting, the Passover Fever time of the year. And isn't it fortunate that I just finished reading a book by a revisionist historian (actually he is called a Biblical Minimalist) which says there is absolutely no evidence of a mass Jewish exodus from Egypt. The 60,000 liberated "slaves" have left no trace of their journey through the Sinai Desert and believe me the Israeli archaeologist have been looking diligently. The book also found very little evidence of King David and Solomon and the evidence he did find indicated that they probably weren't that great. Predictably this guy has been vilified by the archaeological community.

You think you have a bad job, how would you like to clean up all of last year's requests from the Wailing Wall. I'm surprised some Israeli techie person hasn't come up with a paperless Wailing Wall.

Wailing Wall Mystery Solved: I am often asked, "What happens to all the messages put in the cracks of the Wailing Wall?" You would think that after 2500 years there would be too many messages and two few cracks. Well, today I read that in anticipation of Passover, the Wailing Wall is cleansed of its messages by a guy(s) with a specially purified stick dipped in "mikveh" (ritual bath water) The spring cleaning will get rid of the message for peace written by Barack Obama when he passed through Jerusalem, as well as the tags of my late dog Lily that I inserted in May, 2008, and a request that UCLA win the NCAA basketball championships that I inserted last month. The messages are buried in a grave after a proper burial.

Armageddon: I had my first encounter with a "profit (sic) of doom" yesterday. While waiting for the bus, a crazy guy came up to me and in perfect English started pointing at the gaudy apartment complex that towers precariously over the house I'm living in. (see early picture in this blog series) He said that when the apartment building was completed, presumably in the Fall, the earth would shake and the hillside would give way and all the buildings would come tumbling down. I asked him how he knew this and he said, an "angel" told him that this was the event that was predicted in Revelations for the ending of the world. (I actually felt a little home sick while sharing a Telegraph Avenue moment with this guy.) Afterwards, I told Vardit, who hates these buildings more than life itself, and she was thrilled that their demise was expected in the near future even if it meant the end of civilization as we know it.