My Time in Jerusalem, The Holy City

Ok, so I spent Monday-Thursday in Jerusalem and it was AMAZING. I went with Baeli, that girl I met a week ago, and a guy named Eyton (I don’t know how to spell it, but it is pronounced A-tawn) who speaks Hebrew fluently and is the incredibly fraternal brother of Ilan Wurman, a guy in my class at CMC (they look nothing alike). I’m going to go through the entire trip by day so to begin with there was…

DAY 1: We got to the central bus terminal in Haifa and took a bus down to Jerusalem. Once we arrived we then took a taxi to the Old City, which is surrounded by this giant medieval looking wall. The wall has several gates (Damascus Gate, Jaffa Gate, Dung Gate, Zion Gate, New Gate, etc) and we went in through the Jaffa Gate near the Tower of David (Also known as the Citadel of David). Once there we were utterly dependent on Eyton’s rather astounding sense of direction to navigate the narrow winding streets of the old city. Eventually we arrived at the hostel we decided to stay at, the Citadel Guest House. The interesting thing about the citadel guest house is that it looks an awful lot like a cave that was hewn from the very rock which the Old City stands upon (it turns out that the old city does not stand upon any rock at all, but I will get to that later). Literally everything in that place was built for very short people. I hit my head on the ceiling, on light fixtures, on the shower nozzle (which was at nose level with me); needless to say it got rather irritating. The dormitory style room we were staying in looked even more cave like than the rest of the place with a high vaulting ceiling of stone and many beds spread throughout it. We came to call it The Cave, or occasionally the Bat Cave, over the course of the trip. Baeli and I also had a hard time sleeping in there because it smelled funny and was uncomfortably warm (Eyton can apparently sleep anywhere at anytime). We still had several hours of daylight left so we decided to go out and see what could be seen in the old City before it got dark. The first place went was the Western Wall (aka the Wailing Wall), which is the last remaining piece of the Jewish Temple which was located where the Dome of the Rock now stands. The square in front of the wall was swarming with people, but it was not very hard to get close to the wall itself. I had to put on one of those little skullcap things in order to approach the wall, and because I have no experience with such things I had to hold it onto my head to keep it from blowing away in the wind. Anyway, I went up and touched the wall and said a prayer for my family, as we have been having some rough times recently. Then I went back aways and took some pictures. After we had finished up at the Western Wall, we exited the city through the Damascus Gate and went to a café on top of a hotel for lunch. The food was ok, but the view was amazing, so I took yet more pictures (overall I took 225 during the entire trip). While we were on our way out Baeli had a sudden attack of claustrophobia when she realized that every street in the Old City was narrow, winding, and full of people trying to get her to buy stuff, it was pretty funny. On our way to the café, we passed a few places where some very irritating children had left lit firecrackers near sidewalk, so my ears were ringing by the time we arrived. After we ate we returned to the city and wandered a bit until we stumbled upon the fourth station of the Via Dolorosa (which translates to Way/Street of Pain/Agony), aka the Stations of the Cross. It was then decided to go back to the first and follow the Via all the way to Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Most of pictures from the Via Dolorosa and the Church itself aren’t too great since many of the stations were just plaques commemorating places where Jesus did something while on his way to be crucified and the church itself was very dark. On our way there we were passed by several groups of people, probably church congregations from other countries, carrying large wooden crosses and singing as they followed the Via. We then went on to explore the Church of the Holy Sepulcher which was interesting but very Catholic. I couldn’t really get into it though because a lot of the stuff there didn’t match up with what I remembered from the story of the crucifixion. After we left the Church we went back to the Western Wall to see if we could get a tour of the tunnels beneath the wall and found out that we could not without a reservation. So we made one for the next evening and sat down for a while to come up with a plan of action. The sun was beginning to set so we decided to hike up the Mount of Olives and watch the sunset over Jerusalem. On our way to the mount, we passed the Church of All Nations and a Church dedicated to St Steven, both of which were very pretty buildings. The hike up the mount itself was easily the steepest hike I have ever done, but it was worth it because the sunset really was quite beautiful. Not as nice as some back home, but they don’t have enough smog here to achieve the same variety of color. Regardless, my pictures don’t really do it any justice. After the sunset we wandered back to the city through an old Jewish graveyard and returned to the hostel. It is believed by the Jews that when the Messiah comes and the dead are raised, all that stuff will begin on the Mount of Olives, so there are A LOT of graves there. At the hostel, we watched about half of the movie Say It Isn’t So, largely because it was on and in English, and then went to bed. A word of advice, never ever watch that movie. It is weird and disturbing in the extreme. Also, I discovered that it is Ramadan now (who knew?) so on our way back all the Arabs were celebrating and eating and such since they had been fasting all day. Over the course of the visit I began to feel kinda bad for the Arab restaurant owners who had to make and serve food all day while not being able to eat themselves. This was off-set by how funny I thought it was when we would pass Arab carpet salesmen who would invariably be napping on a pile of their rugs, on account of how it is easier to avoid hunger if you are asleep.

DAY 2: We began day two by waking up at around 11am or so and going out to the New City because Eyton wanted to visit the Holocaust Museum there. It was petty interesting, but I had seen a lot of the stuff they had on display at the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. There were also a lot of soldiers there and I still get really awkward around large groups of soldiers here for some reason. The three of us actually got into a bit of a debate about the soldiers and their ever-present guns. Apparently Eyton and Baeli feel safer with all those guns around because it decreases the chances of something bad happening. I said that all the guns imply that the area we are in is inherently unsafe so, while the soldiers and policemen with uzis may make things safer, it does not make me feel safe. We ended up agreeing to disagree. After the museum we wandered through the New City and went to a large pedestrian marketplace type thing. I bought a shirt and learned that I like three new foods. It turns that hummus is not that bad, so I now like hummus. I also tried schwarma, which is beef or lamb roasted on a spit served in pita with hummus and salsa and other random things. It was fun to watch the guy selling stuff remove the meat from the spit because he used something which looked like a power sander to grind off little chinks of it. The place went for schwarma was easily the best place I have been to thus far. The last thing I tried was gelato. I had a sample of Italian Vanilla at the museum and thought that it tasted like cake batter, which I enjoyed. When we were wandering I stopped by another gelato place and ended up getting some waffle flavored gelato, which was also excellent. Then we had to power walk back to the Old City to make our appointment for the tunnel tour. This tour goes through the tunnels underneath the old city and runs parallel to the course of the Western Wall, which continues beneath the Arab Quarter. Apparently after the Muslims took Jerusalem the Mamlukes built their city (which is now the Arab Quarter) on top of a series of arches which filled in a valley next to the Temple Mount. This means that all the streets I had been walking on were built over nothing. This thought continued to haunt me for the remainder of my time in the Old City. The tunnels which ran parallel to the subterranean sections of the Western Wall were also too low for me to walk upright in, so my head was tilted uncomfortably almost the entire time we were down there. At one point we passed a section of the wall which was closest to where the Holy of Holies was when the Jewish Temple was still standing. I repeated my prayer for my family there too (it couldn’t hurt, right?) and got a picture. My favorite story regarding the tunnels is this one: Two explorers traveled through the tunnels until they came to a large pool dating from the time when the Romans ruled the city. They waded into the foul water using doors as flotation devices and carrying torches above their heads. Unbeknownst to them, the far side of the pool opened up into the basement of the Convent of the Sisters of Zion. When the nuns who lived there went down into their basement, they found two men (gasp) riding doors and carrying torches who appeared to have come out of nowhere. The nuns believed that the explorers were ghosts and promptly proceeded to freak out. They eventually managed to get everything sorted out and the nuns built a wall to partition the pool in order to keep out further (male) disturbances. I also got some pictures in front of the Nun Wall. After the tour we went out into the New City again. We had drinks and sushi at a Japanese restaurant, then went to a pub, and later to a salsa club because Baeli and Eyton both like to salsa dance at least once in every city they visit. I ended up getting a crash course in salsa when Eyton had to take a break (he was dancing barefoot because he only had flipflops and the floor was tearing his feet apart). After all this we went back to hostel once more.

DAY 3:

On the third day we got up early and went to the Temple Mount, which was only open in the mornings on account of Ramadan. I got some really good pictures of the whole thing and read some fun stuff about the Dome of the Rock in Baeli’s guide book. It is believed that the summit of the Temple Mount (aka Mt. Moriah) is where god rested after he created the world, where the creation of the world began, where Adam was created, and where Abraham nearly sacrificed Isaac. It is also where the Arc of the Covenant was kept during the time of the First Temple. The summit is directly beneath the Dome of the Rock, and no one is allowed inside it. Beneath it there is supposed to be something called the Well of Souls where the souls of the dead gather to pray twice a month (this image amused me greatly). On the Temple Mount we encountered two British students who were staying in the same hostel we were. They were named Laura and Saul and stayed with us for the remainder of our time in Jerusalem. After we left the Temple Mount we went down to see the City of David, which is where King David first established his capitol in that area. However, there were a lot of stairs involved and everything cost money, so we decided to not do anything there. After sitting and trying to think of something to do, we ended up wandering through the Jewish Quarter and going to the Tower of David. Now, this is kinda interesting. The streets in the Arab Quarter were narrow and windy and smelled funny and were full of people constantly yelling and exhorting and such. But it was also very colorful and lively. The Jewish Quarter streets had the same architectural design, but were cleaner, quieter, and more sparsely populated. Of the two, I think I preferred the Arab Quarter, despite the smell and increased chance of being pick-pocketed. We also stopped at a small café, in the Armenian Quarter I believe, and had the most marvelous iced lemonade ever. It was simply sublime. I spent the rest of the day drinking lemonade in an attempt to experience that joy again, but all I got for my trouble was a horrible stomach ache in the middle of the night because of all the sugar, oh well. Back to the story, the Tower of David is one of the oldest structures in the Old City. One of the original walls which once protected Jerusalem still stands within its courtyards and the observation point on top of the Citadel itself provided an amazing view of the city. The Tower mentioned in the name is actually a minaret from an old mosque and has nothing whatsoever to do with King David, but people thought it did at one point so the name stuck. All in all it was a very pretty ruin and it contained a museum about the history of Jerusalem that was mildly interesting. After we left the British folks split off to go visit an orthodox neighborhood and we went back to hostel to rest for a bit seeing as how we had been walking nonstop for several days. We agreed to regroup at a market in the New City later. We then proceeded to meet up with them, have a small dinner, and then went to some pubs and another dance club. After all this, I was dead tired, but didn’t get much sleep due to that stomach ache I mentioned earlier.

DAY 4: We woke up, packed, and then left to go to the Israel Museum so we could see their exhibition on the Dead Sea Scrolls. I was feeling very sick the entire time, but I managed to get over it after I ate some chips (salt tends to quell my upset stomach most of the time). Because it is currently Israel’s 60^th anniversary year, the museum actually had several feet of the scroll of Isaiah on display. The scroll which contains the Book of Isaiah is the oldest complete copy of any biblical text discovered so far, and in addition to that they also had displays of other scrolls which were important to the Qumran Community, the sect to whom the Dead Sea Scrolls originally belonged. Among these other scrolls were the rules and tenets of faith for the Qumran Community as well as a number of apocryphal works such as the Book of Jubilees and the Book of Enoch. I would highly recommend looking up some stuff about both the apocryphal scrolls and the Qumran community itself as they all seemed very interesting, but I don’t have the time or patience to write down everything I learned about them right now (sorry). After we saw the scrolls and learned a bit about the Aleppo Codex (one of the oldest existed copies of the complete Jewish Bible or Torah or whatever it is called), we went back to the hostel, grabbed our bags, caught a cab to the bus station and returned to Haifa.

Now to explain the pictures above:
1. A large mausoleum in the Jewish graveyard we passed through on our way back from the Mount of Olives
2. A subterranean section of the Western Wall. The large section with the holes in it near the bottom of the wall is the largest stone in the entire structure and weighs about 500 tons. No one is quite sure how they managed to get it there or lift it into place, as even modern cranes cannot move that sort of weight
3. The Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount
4. Me in front of the courtyard of the Tower of David. The Tower itself is visible to my right in the picture.
5. People praying at the Western Wall itself