Tag: jerusalem

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.

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.”

December 9-11 A love of the place and of the game

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Today, I am a tourist.

I want to get an idea of what the divided city of Jerusalem was like before the Six Day War.

We drive beside the newly operational light rail system, which parallels the old seam line that divided the modern parts of the City.

My first stop is Ammunition Hill, where a crucial battle was fought. The video ends with incredibly moving footage of soldiers at the Western Wall, singing the Shehecheyanu prayer.

The Jewish people had returned to this holiest of places.

I also wanted to enter the Old City as the soldiers did that historic day – through the Lions gate. But the gate is under repair; scaffolding and plastic sheeting render it impenetrable.

So we retreat and walk around the City’s outer wall – from Lions Gate to Dung Gate, passing closer to the Golden Gate than I ever have and providing views and photos I’ve never seen before.

For the long flight home, two books that bear upon what I’ve seen in Israel and what awaits me at home:

Shimon Peres’ biography of David Ben Gurion quotes the first Prime Minister and founder of the state on its uniqueness:

“Eretz Yisrael must be a process of repairing and purifying our lives, changing our values in the loftiest sense of the term. If we merely bring the life of the ghetto into Eretz Yisrael, then what’s the difference if we live that life here or live it there?”

Chris Matthews’ Jack Kennedy: Elusive Hero reminded me why I eagerly await the start of my 30th year as a member of the House of Delegates:

“Tip O’Neill was rich in stories, each shining with a love of the game that bonded him with Kennedy.”

And I might add, with future generations.

December 8 – Sacred Ground

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There is something unique about being part of a meeting just inside the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem and introducing yourself to ten religious leaders, including the Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, as someone who has worked with the Maryland Catholic Conference for the last five years on repeal of Maryland’s death penalty.

Especially when my sleep was delayed the night before when a Washington Post reporter called out of the blue to ask about a meeting I had with Governor O’Malley on the issue this summer.

“How minority communities are treated by faiths with more adherents is the litmus test,” commented a rabbi present.

“When every piece of ground is sacred,” I thought to myself, “every piece of ground is fought over.”

—

We observed the demonstrable progress in the Palestinian economy and police system as we traveled through Ramallah to meet with Salaam Fayad, Prime Minister of the Palestinian Authority.

“There is a much better awareness among Israelis of what we are doing,” Fayad declared. “However, more people subscribe to a two-state solution than believe it will actually happen.”

One of the things impressed upon us by many of the leaders and thinkers we’ve met with these past four days: the unwillingness of politcal figures on both sides to come to the “damn table,” as Defense Secretary Leon Panetta recently said.

As an Israeli academic put it at the end of the day, “You can’t prematurely create a Palestinian state under the wrong conditions.”

Israel must demonstrate the merits of that argument to the Jewish Diaspora and the rest of the world.

December 7 – Mamilla Street and 30,000 votes per seat

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We are on Mamilla Street, where high end shops predominate, and more than one cornerstone bears the name of the developer and the architect. (The latter is Moshe Safdie, whose body of work includes 2218 and 2220 Angelica Terrace, where I live.)

Lunch is at a restaurant named Herzl because on his only trip to what was then Palestine, he stayed in the house on this site, which was dismantled and now restored. (That’s why each exterior stone is numbered.)

Standing outside Herzl, our guide shows us a photo of the street before the Six Day War in 1967, when Jerusalenm was divided in two.

Mailla was on the border line, home only to the poor since Israel’s birth in 1948 because the upper class had fled. Jordanian soldiers were firing at Israeli civilians.

We are joined at Herzl by an American expert on the Middle East. Like others this week, he notes the progress that has been made in establishing a civil society in the West Bank. (He also acknowledges the anti-Semitic materials still being used in the schools .

But, he notes, that progress has its limits for a Palestinian if there are still Israeli checkpoints during his daily travels.

Far from Mamilla Street.

—

I didn’t get a chance yesterday to ask the student protesters what they planned to do next.

A Labor Party member of the Knesset gave us an answer today.

30,000 votes are needed to elect someone. An increase in turnout of 250,000 among those under 30, who normally don’t vote in great numbers, translates to eight members of the next Knesset.

December 4 – Next Year and What Next

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L’an prochain a Jerusalem.

For millenia, every Passover seder has ended with the words, “Next year in Jerusalem.”

I read that phrase in French for the first time today in the haggadah used by Jews in 1941 who were sent to to a French internment camp.

That hagaddah is among the archives at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Museum.

The museum has few records of the role of the French national railroad during the Nazi period.

However, one memorandum summarizes a meeting attended by railroad officials on July 15, 1942, the day before the mass arerest and deportation to Auschwitz of 13,000 Jews.

“It will be very important to get all these details – the whole picture of what the railroad did,” commented Shaul Ferrero, a senior archivist for documentation from France.

—

“To have a city where 40% of the people are new immigrants, that is the Zionist ideal,” Mayor Benny Vaknin of Ashkelon told me at lunch.

“How does this compare to running Jerusalem?” I asked.

“There you have eight deputies. It keeps your coalition together,” the Mayor replied.

“Lincoln used that theory when creating a Cabinet of his band of rivals,” I responded.

—

Over the years, I’ve explained my bills in many settings – before committees in Annapolis, at neighborhood meetings, and in my Legislation classes.

Never, until today, before nine people whose parents were transported to their death by the French national railroad.

They asked some questions more than once.

Most urgently, “What do we have to do next?”

I simply replied, “No other state will have to pass such a bill, if the company complies with the Maryland law. All you will need to do is turn on your computer. The records will be there.”

I was emotionally drained when our hour together ended.

December 3 – At the Wall

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One does not travel to Jerusalem. One returns.

I first heard those words last year, as part of the Shehecheyanu ceremony when we first saw Jerusalem on the Family Mission, with Stewart, Bonnie, Rachel, and Elliot.

They were the first words I read when I neared the Western Wall this afternoon.

I had dropped my bags in the hotel room and walked towards the Old City, hoping to get there before sundown.

Once there, I was told, “No camera until 5:20 when Shabbat ends.”

So 30 minutes to read from my Bible, Genesis 22 and Psalm 118, and observe with my naked eye.

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