Moving Moments in the Holy City

BELOW THE TEMPLE MOUNT
We got an early start today, heading out just after 7 a.m., as we had an appointment in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. This was our allotted time in the ancient tunnels that weave their way under the Western Wall of the Temple Mount. The area abutting the Wall was as busy as usual and would be mobbed today, since Thursdays and Mondays are the days when bar mitzvah ceremonies are allowed to be celebrated at the Wall.

The main tunnel runs parallel to and directly beneath the Western Wall, for a distance far into the Muslim Quarter. It exits at the first Station of the Cross, where the trial of Jesus took place. In the tunnels are labyrinths of arches and Roman streets, all existing during the time of the Second Temple, but during the Muslim Mamluk era packed with rubble, covered and constructed upon.









It was eerie and thrilling to walk along the foundations of the Temple Mount and touch the huge chiseled stones constructed there at the time of Herod the Great. As we made our way through the curving subterranean passages to the area nearest the base of the Temple structure, there was a palpable aura of sacredness. In fact, the stone we touched directly under the "Holy of Holies," the site of the Ark of the Covenant, is not the chiseled limestone of Herod, but rock that forms part of the summit of Mount Moriah itself. Even within the tunnels, this is a site for adoration and prayer, crowded with Jews who seek their closest connection to this most venerated location: for them, the center of the earth.

TODAY I AM A MAN
On returning to the street level of the Wall, the plaza was alive with celebration. The rite of bar mitzvah was occurring in about a dozen locations along the Wall and in its plaza. Each family would herald the event by parading into the plaza, lead by timbrel drums, the blowing of a shofar (ram's horn) and singing. The lads marched with their proud Immediate family under a white "chupah," which I've previously only seen reserved for bridal couples.









As the assemblage of family and friends approached the Wall, women split off to their isolated area. But they were not to be deprived of witnessing the ceremony. For most of the bar mitzvah services were strategically placed adjacent to the women's section. The ladies stood on chairs so that they could lean over the separating demarcation, chant along with the service, and pelt the bar mitzvah boy with wrapped candies at the conclusion of the event. The noisy, if joyful, miasma goes on all day in this crowded plaza of high solemnity mixed with ceremonial mirth.

HOLOCAUST
We spent most of yesterday revisiting history. Yad Vashem is the national memorial complex dedicated to the six million Jews who perished during WWII. The Holocaust is an integral and complicated subset of Jewish identity, and none express this more articulately than Israelis. I won't go into detail on the main museum exhibits. They are effective in setting up the historical perspectives leading to the War, the horrible events that followed and their aftermath. There were, however, two aspects of our day at Yad Vashem that most affected me:

THE CHILDREN'S MEMORIAL
Among the War's loss were 1.5 million Jewish children. To memorialize the cumulative impact of this loss of generations that could not follow, a building was constructed whose architecture reinforced the "unfinished" element of a shortened life. Within its darkened circular chamber one gropes along a path lit by the reflection of hundreds of floating candles. This is, in fact, a deliberate optical illusion: only five candles are reflected by a myriad of small mirrors, symbolizing how many multiple unrealized lives were impacted by the loss of the initial number. The only sound is a human voice, slowly recounting the names and countries of every child chronicled as having perished in the Holocaust.

TESTIMONY OF JACK
Throughout the museum, there are video testimonies by those who endured the unimaginable, from the onset of Jewish persecution in the 1930's through the horror of the War and, for those few, liberation. We had the honor of spending about an hour and a half in a private meeting with such an individual. His name is Jack, a man in his late 80's, who patiently, and with great dignity, shared his experiences in detail, from his teenage endurance of an eight day cattle car journey from his home in Greece, through his years at Auschwitz, the death march, and his unlikely survival, the only one of his large family to have done so. To say that being in his presence was a memorable encounter is gross understatement. I don't know that any one of us will be unchanged by our time with this remarkable person.

That's it for tonight. I just returned from dinner in the garden restaurant of the King David Hotel. It's probably the best known hotel in Jerusalem, and it was delightful to spend an evening on its cool terrace overlooking the twinkling lights of this ancient city. One more day in this area, then on to the Dead Sea.