Category: Sandy’s Israel Diary – June 2012

A trip to Israel with a professor I had in college.

Reading, Writing, and IT

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's Israel Diary - June 2012 | No Comments

A legislator has to know how to count.

It helps to know how to read and write.

I’ve been searching for the right way to amend one of my bills.  Late yesterday, I reread the bill and found just the right provision to change.

An email I received this morning from another delegate began, “Sandy, I wanted you to be among the first to know about an important decision I’ve made.”

Was this colleague changing his position on death penalty repeal?  I feared.

I read on and realized that this was an email sent to the delegate’s 2,000 closest friends and constituents to let them know that he would be voting for repeal.

One of my cardinal rules is to draft the bill or document so that my words frame the discussion that follows.

Except when you don’t know enough about the issue to do so.

Information technology was the issue during a discussion of one of my bills.

I asked the other party to draft the document.

Next Time in Jerusalem (June 16)

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's Israel Diary - June 2012 | No Comments
I have a new place to go on my next trip here. 
 
We met with a group of students who are doing public service for a year.
 
The Americans before they go to college, the Israelis before they go to the army.
 
One told us about going to his brother’s Bar Mitzvah at the Wall.
 
More precisely, at the southwestern corner of the foundation walls for the Temple Mount, near Robinson’s Arch.
 
Men and women can pray together there. 
 
“It was like discovering it for the first time,” he said.  “It was really personal.”
 
Next time, I will be there.

Family Ties (June15)

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's Israel Diary - June 2012 | No Comments

So I walk into this Roman port city on the Mediterranean, Caesarea.

 And I see a teenager wearing a t-shirt that says “Baltimore Lacrosse.”

“Anyone here from Baltimore?” I ask.

Someone recognizes me.

We had worked the polls together at Fallstaff Middle School several elections ago.

Her son just had his Bar Mitzvah.

She is the sister of Katie Curran O’Malley.

Only in the Land of Israel.

Just before I leave, I ask a member of our group to take a picture of me.

I stand next to a statue without its head. My mother had done so more than 50 years ago.

I’m wearing the Coca Cola (in Hebrew) t-shirt that my twin niece and nephew, Rachel and Elliot, gave me when we came here to celebrate their Bar and Bat Mitzvah.

—

As we approach, the Rabin memorial in downtown Tel Aviv, our guide says, “When he was killed, five million Israelis felt like orphans.”

Side by side (June 14)

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's Israel Diary - June 2012 | No Comments

Religions can exist side by side here, except when they don’t.

The remains of a synagogue and the home where Jesus lived when in the Galilee were discovered beside each other at Capernaum.

A 20th Century church was built above the church first built on the site of the latter.

In Nazareth, we visited the Catholic church marking the annunciation.  An Orthodox church is nearby.

At the Baha’i world center in Haifa, we learned that Baha’ullah, the man who declared himself God’s new prophet, was imprisoned by the British in Acre.

Decades later, so were eight members of the Irgun, Begin’s faction in pre-independence Israel.

We went to Baha’ullah’s tomb.  Members of the faith do not turn their backs on his remains.

Similarly, observant Jews do not turn their backs on the Western Wall.

We received a different message about religion from a pair of twenty-something Arab Christians at As Sennara newspaper.

“The solution to the mistreatment of Israel’s Arab citizens [those who live within Israel’s borders before the Six Day War in 1967] is a secular democratic society.”

Our professor said afterwards, “Even Ben Gurion, a secular Jew, was a passionate Jewish nationalist.”

No Israeli Prime Minisister will bargain away the country’s unique status as a homeland for the Jewish people – for those who move here by choice or to escape oppression.

But the necessity of striking the right balance between security and individual freedom remains.

Water and History

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's Israel Diary - June 2012 | No Comments

Water is a precious commodity in this part of the world.

Access to the Sea of Galilee was the sticking point in Israel’s negotiations with Syria several years ago.

Yet, the exterior of the building housing the Dead Sea Scrolls is constantly showered with water, to lower the temperature and preserve the documents inside.

The scrolls, portions of the Bible written on sheepskin, are the “deed to the land,” an Israel Museum official told us.

Today, as we were touring the ruins of a Roman city at Beit Shean, we came across someone hosing down the remains of an arch.

“We try to give a longer life to these stones,” he told us.

 But this a also a region where every piece of land is “strategicized,” said one member of our gtroup.

History, archaeology, and religion abound.

Identifying Names and Lives

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's Israel Diary - June 2012 | No Comments

“We’ve identified many of the people in this film,” stated our tour guide.

The people were about to be executed by a Nazi firing squad before falling into a shallow mass grave.

Approaching Yad Vashem, I wondered how my visit would be affected by the imminent disclosure of the records submitted by the French national railroad company regarding its transportation of Jews and other to the German border and their death.

I sponsored the bill requiring the company to digitize those records if it wanted to bid for the MARC commuter rail line.

Of these thousands of Jews, I learned today, most had sought refuge in France from German-occupied territories.

Hitler had the French surrender to Germany in the same railroad car where Kaiser Wilhelm’s generals had signed the armistice ending World War I, the war to end all wars.

“Our goal is to give all 6 million a name,” declared our guide at the conclusion of our tour.

“Thus far, we have done that for 4.1 million.”

My next time at Yad Vashem, more will be known about the names and lives of those who left for their death on trains from Paris and the Drancy internment camp.

Rookie Visitors and a 10% Discount

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's Israel Diary - June 2012 | No Comments

A friend wrote me yesterday, “Having rookie visitors always makes the trip more fun for you.”

Our journey today from the Mount of Olives to David’s Citadel and then the Church of the Holy Sepulcher is best capsulized by two newcomers to Jerusalem in our group.

“So many stories that come together,” said one.

“I think Jesus must have stumbled,” said another as we walked the Stations of the Cross, “even though there are no references to it in the Bible.”

Six Christian faiths share space beside and on top of the remains of earlier structures in the Church, where an agreement dividing the sacred space has lasted since 1852.

—

A photograph of Jews praying at the Western Wall in the 1920’s caught my eye as we walked through the Arab shuk (market).

The contrast between the limited space then and the large plaza today is stark.

(I thought that men and women were praying separately, as is the case today, but others in our group disagreed.)

I engaged the shop owner in some Shuk Price Is Right, was willing to walk away, and wound up with a 10% discount.

I can already see a montage of my photos at the Wall from this trip surrounding this acquisition.

A Prime Minister, the Fallen, and an Entrepreneur

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's Israel Diary - June 2012 | No Comments

Menachem Begin was the Prime Minister of Israel.

 He won the Nobel Prize for signing the peace treaty with Anwar Sadat and Jimmy Carter.

“I want to be remembered, above all, as someone who prevented civil war,” declares Begin in the quote you see at the start of the tour in the Begin Center.

He was referring to the armed dispute between his faction and the new State of Israel, headed by his long-time rival and first Prime Minister, David Ben Gurion, over the shipment of military supplies to Begin’s group.

Begin kept his pledge not to leave his modest apartment in Israel until he was elected Prime Minister.

Nonetheless, he asked to be buried on the Mt. of Olives in Jerusalem, next to two compatriots who committed suicide to avoid being hung by the British during the pre-state Mandate period.

Other PMs are buried on Mt. Herzl in Tel Aviv.

—

Before lunch, I walked in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City.

Instead of turning left to go to the Wall, I went right.

I found a memorial to the 48 Jews who lost their lives defending the City in 1948.

Rabbinical permission was needed for them to be buried there.

The reason: Jewish law prohibits cemeteries within a city.

That prohibition is also relevant at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is built on the burial site of Jesus Christ.

On an earlier trip, we came upon archeological evidence that the church was outside the City limits at that time.

—

My tour guidance for the first-time visitors was not what I hoped it would be.

Only Professor Levin and his wife joined me, and we took a taxi, instead of walking my newly found route to the Wall.

Our entrepreneurial cabbie asked us if we also wanted to go to Bethlehem – quite a distance away and a reminder that while some people in Jerusalem may ask me for directions, I’m still a tourist.

But very much at home and moved once I prayed at the Wall.

I have never walked down this street before

| by delsandy | featured, Sandy's Israel Diary - June 2012 | 2 Comments on I have never walked down this street before

I volunteered to be the tour guide/rabbi for our group tomorrow as we walk to the Western Wall to welcome the Sabbath.

So I did a dry run today and wound up taking a new path to the Zion Gate, one of eight entrances to the Old City of Jerusalem.

Instead of walking in, I veered right to explore for the first time the Tomb of David, the Dormition Abbey, and a Christian cemetery.

A trumpet blared as I returned to the City walls.

It was a Bar Mitzvah procession – twin boys (sorry, Rachel), surrounded by trumpet, drums, and shofars; family; and tourists.

Only in Jerusalem.

In the afternoon, I had a private tour of Hebron, site of the tombs of the patriarchs and matriarchs and Arab markets now desolate and off limits to Palestinians for security reasons.

—-

“Did you sleep on the plane?” one friend emailed me.

“Over Western Europe,” I replied.

Better snoring through chemistry.

No trouble staying awake this evening and getting my body on Israeli time.

I went to see “My Fair Lady,” featuring a friend from Baltimore, Chip Manekin, as Alfred P. Doolittle.

As the usher said to Grandma and me when I first saw the show at Ford’s Theatre in Baltimore 50 years ago, “Two wonderful seats for a wonderful show.”

  • My Key Issues:

  • Pimlico and The Preakness
  • Our Neighborhoods
  • Pre-Kindergarten
  • Lead Paint Poisoning