Hello from Haifa, the first stop on our voyage. It’s my first time in Israel, and I’m very glad to have had even a short time to see this remarkable country.
Our bus tour on August 22 took us to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, although I’ve certainly seen many photos over the years. Perhaps my first surprise was seeing stretches of the border wall between the Palestinian territory and Israel as we motored south along the highway to Jerusalem. Our guide, Elie, explained that Israelis see the wall as not to keep people out, but to protect people in Israel from arms fire coming across from the Palestinian territory.
I pause here to mention that as with anything you hear about the Middle East situation, you have to take into consideration the frame of reference of the person who’s telling you the story. Everyone is telling you their truth. Reality is far too complex to be explained objectively. Factor in the deeply held religious beliefs of the people who have been fighting over this small piece of the world for thousands of years, and no matter what you say, you’re going to set someone off. I’ll stick with my own observations and feelings, and state here quite clearly that anything I say is what I experienced in my ridiculously short exposure to this place. Also note that I come from a Protestant upbringing, and I am not as steeped in the traditions of the Church as are my Catholic friends.
Jerusalem
I had always heard of Jerusalem as being the City on the Hill, but I did not appreciate how extensive and high that hill is. Our bus drove along hillside roads leading up from the valley for about 15 minutes before we reached the city itself. Our first stop was atop the Mount of Olives to take in the vista of the Old City.
We stopped at the Church of All Nations, which is next to the Garden of Gethsemane. It’s a relatively modern church next to a grove of ancient olive trees – we’re talking nearly 1,000 years old.
We next entered the Old City via the Dung Gate. Heavily armed security police were stationed everywhere, which I actually found reassuring. “All are welcome, but all must be screened!” We stopped at the Western Wall, which Americans often call the Wailing Wall. Elie said that the Jews don’t consider the Western Wall to be especially holy in and of itself; it was actually more like an open-air synagogue. Women and men were separated by a wooden wall, men to the left and women to the right. I hadn’t thought to write out a prayer to place into the cracks of the wall. I guess I assumed that there’d be paper and pencil available. But I did stand at the wall for a few minutes and have a silent moment of remembrance of my mother, who had wanted to visit here but never had the opportunity.
Next it was on through the tunnel into the Old City. Throngs of people pressed through the narrow alleyways between stalls that were selling everything from cheap souvenirs to fabrics to leather to jewelry to freshly-squeezed fruit juices.
The aromas of spices and incense wafted from occasional shops on the left and right.
Everywhere above, electrical wired crossed the alleys haphazardly between buildings and laundry was hung out to dry from balconies. People spoke in Arabic, Hebrew, English, Italian, French, and many other languages that I did not recognize.
Rather than feeling claustrophobic, it felt exhilarating. There was something familiar about it, perhaps because of my three years in Saudi Arabia. That was especially true when the midday call to prayer suddenly blared at bone-jarring volume from the many mosques in the area. It’s that way on purpose, of course. You’re not supposed to be able to hear or think of anything else other than getting to the mosque to pray.
Our route took us past several of the Stations of the Cross on our way to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. This church was originally established by the mother of the Roman Emperor Constantine in 326 CE and marks the spot traditionally associated with Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection. It’s been demolished and rebuilt many times over the centuries. I remember my father talking about having been here back in the 1960s, and in his typically skeptical way, he pooh-poohed the idea that anyone would be able to pinpoint the exact location of these events, since the first church wasn’t even started on the site until nearly 300 years later. One of the things I learned afterward was that the Emperor Hadrian had ordered a temple to Venus to be built on that site, to cover over and deny access to the areas that Christian pilgrims had already been flocking to for more than 100 years. So while I believe that the exact locations of these events cannot be conclusively proven, there is certainly a long history of tradition that points to the events having occurred in the immediate vicinity.
Upon entering the church, we turned to the right and climbed 19 steep stairs to see the final Stations of the Cross and the chapel marking the traditional spot of Golgotha. A woman in a yellow skirt prostrated herself at the altar and began to embrace and kiss the bare rock under the altar. It was clearly a moment of intense significance in her life, and I admired her faith and envied her having been able to do something so important to her.
Back down the stairs and across the sanctuary, we came to a large rotunda which houses the Aedicule, a chapel enclosing the tomb said to be that of Jesus. We did not have time to stand in line to enter that chapel. I wish I could say that I had felt particularly moved by the Spirit when I was in that church, but I left there instead feeling that it was too elaborate, too ornate – that generations of well-meaning clergy had added so much ornamentation to the site that it lessened its impact on me.
Many people of deep faith had fulfilled their pilgrimages by being there. But it seemed that many more people were like me, hustled through the church on tours and snapping photos with their phones as fast as they could, rather than being allowed the time to reflect and contemplate the meaning behind what they were seeing.
We hopped back on the bus and passed through the border crossing into the West Bank to visit Bethlehem. We parked in the glamorous Bethlehem Bus Station and made our way up the street to the Church of the Nativity.
I wish I had more to say about the Church of the Nativity. However, it was extremely crowded, the old church was under construction, and a mass was going on when we arrived, all of which conspired to move us out of the sanctuary as quickly as possible. We were told that the Catholic church next door, from which they broadcast the Christmas Eve services worldwide, was too full for us to enter, and our guide said we didn’t have time to wait. Our tour group started raising a ruckus. The guide relented and allowed us to spend five minutes indoors before we had to run back to the bus.
We spent more time admiring the tacky souvenir shops back at the bus station while waiting for the bus than we did inside the actual church. I hope that the people who buy these souvenirs will see them and have happy, heartfelt memories of what they saw.
Does anyone need an Ark of the Covenant for their living room?
It turned out that our rush back to the bus was in order to get us to a shop selling olive wood souvenirs. “These are all hand carved by Christian artisans living in Bethlehem. It’s your religious duty as Christians to buy something to help keep these people in Bethlehem.”
While I was happy that I finally had the opportunity and good fortune to be able to visit these sites, I have to say that I was not happy with their commercialization.
Haifa
After an exhausting day in Jerusalem, Jane and I were not interested in taking a 10-hour bus ride to Tel Aviv and other sites in northern Israel. We decided to sleep late to save our energy for a 14-hour day in Cairo on Friday.
Instead of taking the group tour, we caught a cab to the top of Mt. Carmel in Haifa to take an English-language tour of the Baha’i World Centre.
I knew very little about Baha’i until the guide took us halfway down the terraced gardens that make up the World Centre. The founder and the top prophet of Baha’i are both buried in Israel, and their primary temple is here. However, their faith forbids Baha’i from working and living permanently in Israel or the West Bank. All the Baha’i who work at the Centre are volunteers who are here in the country temporarily. Their faith also forbids them from taking money from non-Baha’i, so admission to the gardens was free.
In contrast to the orthodoxy of the Big Three monotheistic religions, the Baha’i (according to our guide) believe that all previous religions are valid and represent stages in evolution toward a more complete faith – that there are core truths, but much of what is in error in our religions is because of what was culturally appropriate at the time but is no longer meaningful. Hence, they believe that every 1,000 years a new religion will be founded that will correct some of the errors of previous iterations. All men and women are equal. Within 1,000 years, all the people of Earth will become one nation and speak one language. (Right now, they say that Baha’i should learn English.) It sounded a little like the world of Star Trek to me, a positive view of our future.
The structure and layout of the gardens reflected some of the precepts of Baha’i numerology. The number 19 is a cornerstone for them. Their calendar has 19 months of 19 days, plus 4 extra days to complete the year. 1+9=10, and the digits in 10 add up to 1, symbolizing the unity of mankind. The gardens are laid out with nine terraces at the top, one terrace in the middle with the temple with the tomb of their founder (The Bab, “gate” in Arabic), and there are nine terraces going down the hill below the temple. 9+1+9=19.
We chatted with a young Israeli man while we were on the Haifa tour. We told him we had been to Jerusalem the previous day. He said, “I hate that city. It’s dirty and crowded. I’m not religious at all, and I can’t understand why people have been fighting over that place for thousands of years.”
It’s hard for me to understand the bloodshed over any one place on the planet, committed in the name of people who might find such warfare abhorrent.
We left port at 6:00 pm. On to Port Said, Egypt!