Day 2 - Jerusalem by day
Trip Start
Mar 21, 2008
1
2
15
Trip End
Apr 05, 2008
Jerusalem,
Israel
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Today we would explore Jerusalem from all angles. So first we strengthened ourselves with a typical Israeli breakfast buffet: mainly bread, cheeses, eggs and herring - an old Eastern European Jewish tradition. There isn't any meat as that would not be kosher (milk and meat must never be combined!).
The old city of Jerusalem is encircled by a huge wall about 4.5 km long. It's divided into 4 parts: the Jewish, Christian, Arab and Armenian quarters (heck knows how they got here). We gained entry through the Jaffa Gate. Really, it's more like the Jaffa Gape since it was blasted wide in 1907 to let German Emperor William II travel through it by coach, just cause the bastard couldn't be asked to dismount. We quickly got absorbed by the colourful souks with Arabian merchants selling everything from spices to china to religious artefacts of all faiths
40 years of (forcefully) unified Jerusalem
. My favourite T-shirt there has an F16 fighter plane on it and reads "don't worry America, Israel is behind you". That pretty well embodies the sass, healthy arrogance and self-confidence that has given Israel the strength to hold the fort through numerous wars and crises and under the misgiving eye of its larger Arabic neighbours.Of course we couldn't leave out the Via Dolorosa, the road along which Jesus carried the cross from Pilatus' palace to the site of crucifixion. This is one of the innumerable historically very debatable sites of Christianity. Many such sites in the Holy Land were determined by St Helena, pious mother of a Byzantine emperor in the 4th century AD. She'd say "dig 'ere" and, hoppla!, here we have the true cross and "Ooooh, luuuuvly, this must be where Mary's mother was born". I'm not trying to be disrespectful, but a lot of Christian sites have very little scientific background. But that doesn't really matter, it's the belief that counts. And although we'd missed Good Friday we could still bear witness to the occasional congregation carrying a cross along the 12 stations mentioned in the bible, ending up at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.
Now that has to be the most chaotic beehive Christianity has to offer. It's a large domed structure in the middle of the old town. Every Christian faith has over time secured a nook and a cranny somewhere in this rabbit warren of passageways and places of prayer: Franciscans, Benedictines, Greek orthodox, Russian orthodox, Coptic, etc. Only the Protestants came too late...The different monks and priests could not decide who should be in charge of the keys so in the end it's an Arabic family that takes care of this. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre has quite a few attractions like the lid to Jesus' Sarcophagus, the site of Jesus' alleged grave, etc
Dome of the Rock, Basilika, Dominus Flavit
. There's always a service and a procession of some description in progress somewhere and the hordes of tourists buzzing through the place raise a truly unholy racket that you're glad to be out of the place. The one haven of peace is the little back entrance that gets you into the Coptic part of the Church. The Copts are an ancient Christian group founded by St Mark 42 AD and stem from Egypt and North Africa, they even have their own Pope (currently Pope Shenouda III, which of course you knew...). Here they quietly hold service in the catacombs. The monks even live in little dwellings and doorways on the roof of the church. Regine met one of the Coptic monks whom she took a beautiful picture of in the doorway of his dwelling 7 years ago. There are other relevant Christian structures in and around Jerusalem: The Church of the Redeemer (German Protestant "Erloeserkirche") is certainly one of them. Many go there just to enjoy the great view from the tower. Yet for Eva and Udo it bears a special importance: they got married there 35 years ago. The Arabic Christians in the congregation there still speak excellent German. A very tranquil antithesis to the hubbub at some of Jerusalem's sites is St Anne's Church, an old crusader church at the start of the Via Dolorosa with a lovely garden adjacent to the old ponds of Bethesda. These started as part of an ancient Greek Asklepian healing temple site and maintained their role as a place of healing into Byzantine times
House of a Hadji (Muslim who's been to Mekka)
. Jesus, too, healed there. Across from the temple Mound, outside the old city lies the Mount of Olives. Here there's a Russian Orthodox Church; the Church of Ascention; and the Dominus Flevit church (where Jesus cried predicting the destruction of the second temple). The Mount of Olives houses a humungous Jewish cemetery with all graves facing the Temple Mount across the valley and the bricked up Golden Gate through which one day the Messiah will arrive (who obviously hasn't been here yet in the Jewish belief). During Jordanian occupation many of these graves were destroyed. We enjoyed spectacular views of the old city from all surrounding hills. In essence it was really interesting to take in the rich mix of cultures and faiths in this holiest place of Christians and Jews and third holiest place of Muslims. Especially the Christian Pilgrims heralded from all parts of the World. You'd have a Peruvian Group having a quick service with a Nigerian colourfully robed Group waiting outside and an Indonesian group on the approach. Wild!
