I'm having a fantastic last semester, complete with intrigue, fine cooking, the usual school politics, and wonderful friends.
I'm attending 6 classes this semester:
- Computer Science 134 (or CS 1 for those outside Williams), which is a lot of fun and very enjoyable. Definitely a class I wish I'd taken sooner.
- Political Economy 402, a senior seminar where my group is investigating access to higher education in the United States, and will travel to DC to interview experts on the matter.
- Political Science 233, a course in international law that I need to complete the major with a great professor. It certainly seems like IL is like a playground with a bunch of kids trying to establish some sort of government/hierarchy, with lots of little forums and meeting places scattered around.
- Economics 229, a course on law and economics where we debate which parties to lawsuits should be hit for the benefit of all, and more...
More later - I must be off to lab! But, if you want to read more of my thoughts about Jerusalem, click below...
Jetlag is a very particular feeling. One’s eyes resist the sun, seeming to protest the very existence of light at such incorrect hours. One’s mind is constantly off-kilter, unsettled by the disturbance to the biological clock. One’s body wants nothing more than to return to a homeostatis, free of sound and light, preferably horizontally on a bed with a 600 thread count.
Thus it was that I looked up to the Lion’s Gate and thought, “well, this should be exciting,” while at the same time desiring nothing but to ascend the hill and reach a place of refuge. While the jetlag eventually dissipated, the feeling of “well, this should be......” returned again and again to my consciousness during our visit to Jerusalem, despite the fact that I wasn’t feeling much of anything. In the same way, I what we saw and experienced in Jerusalem sometimes made the city seem to be divorced from reality, as if everything should have been much mroe tense than it actually was.
After coming through the airport, while waiting for our two Muslims to be freed from a pointless and needless detention by Israeli border security, we started to use our walkie-talkies. These little cell phones had a calling service, but that cost money (if one called someone else), and so we opted to use the two-way radio service. With a few button pushes, one could alert or talk to someone at any time if their phone was on. Since our phones were all set initially on speaker, this turned out to yield a bit of awkwardness, such as when Ben’s voice radiated from my pants while I was in a bathroom stall: “Red Leader to Blue Leader, come in please.” I can only imagine what the guy next door was thinking. The rest of the trip saw us use “alerts” more often to reach each other, with constant deliberations about when “alerting” was and wasn’t ok. It was like a Facebook poke - ambiguous in meaning because it was so new. In any case, the walkie-talkie phones were fun as we came from the airport to the city via the Prominade, an overlook from the South of the Old City constructed to replace the previous overlook on the Mount of Olives, which featured the Muslim-controlled Temple Mount / Haram Al’Sharif more than some Israelis were comfortable with. From so far away, the old city’s relatively new walls (built in the 1600s by the Ottomans) beckoned to us, daring us to come inside and explore.
We climbed up to the Lion’s Gate (one of a few allowing access to the Old City: Lion’s in the East, Herod in the Northeast, Damascus in the north, New in the Northwest, Jaffa in the West, Zion in the Southwest, and Dung in the Southeast) from the valley that separated old Jerusalem from the Mount of Olives. The hill was a part of the place’s natural defenses, and we felt a distinct burn hauling our luggage up the hill and down the Via Dolorosa, to the Ecce Homo convent. After putting our things away, we were shown the inside of our temporary home.
The Ecce Homo is, in some ways, a symbol of “invasion;” it stands starkly Christian within the Old City’s Muslim Quarter. It took a while to figure it out, but the convert’s complex actually occupied parts of four city blocks - two streets cut under the buildings. One, the “Nun’s Ascent,” was largely open air, with a few bridges that spanned it. The other alley was like a tunnel - it went directly under our residential hallway, and my room’s window was near an opening to the alley. Precisely describing the Ecce Homo is difficult because of the complicated mess of floors and terraces - suffice to say that while walking on the roof, there were at least 7 different levels of terrace, reflecting a rather disunified construction. Rooms were on various halls of various floors - it took me five days to see how everything connected. the biggest surprise was this - the Convent actually goes under the alley way as well, in a basement open to tours. I could thus find myself in what looked to be a completely separate building by taking an underground passage. One reason for this internal confusion is the history of the place - the Ecce Homo name refers to Hadrian’s Arch, from the Roman times when a forum occupied the location of the convent. One piece of this arch is still visible above the main road, but a smaller portion of the triple arch is used by the convent as the alter during services; the main arch goes through the sanctuary’s wall on its way outside. Most importantly, the arch goes much furhter down than ground level - at least 10 feet, with the implication that Jerusalem’s ground level is not built on solid ground.
Instead, arches, former buildings, rubble, and who-knows what else have taken over the initial ground. In some places, this is permanent, such as in Solomon’s Stables on the Temple Mount, which were the leftover space when the Temple Platform was raised high above ground level. The space is now used as an internal Mosque, with skylights dotting the Temple Mount. Indeed, moden-day Jerusalem also gives the impression that such take-overs might happen again. Some of the main roads are almost enclosed by buildings on both sides, and there are several times where walking along rooftops provides better access than staying in the crowded market streets. These factors yield a city that has straight roads amidst buildings that can never be quickly understood - too many of them are converted from previous uses, and the historic nature makes starting over a near impossibility. Elevators are thus built in courtyards, and stairways wind irregularly downward. The use of stone makes the ground seem permanent and stable, but the reality is anything but.
We also explored the Jewish History of Jerusalem. The city’s four quarters have not always been viable – a map on the wall of the Ecce Homo pointedly shows the “former Jewish Quarter,” having been produced between Israel’s independence and the Six-Day War in 1967 when Israel won control of the Old City from Jordan. Nowadays, the Jewish quarter appears the most clean and well kept, in contrast to the outdoor shops in the Jewish and Muslim areas. The quarter builds around a huge plaza facing a portion of the Temple Mount’s western retaining wall, which has been a historic Jewish spiritual place for centuries. After entering the Old City via the Lion’s Gate in 1967, the Jewish soliders made their way straight to the Western Wall, which had been long denied for prayer, and the space is venerated. The mount is a large space, taking up 20% of the Old City, but the Jewish affinity is for a small portion of the Western Wall. Separated by sex, Jews come to the wall to pray and study; countless pieces of paper are crammed in and around the stones. Coming here, to this long-valued space, I expected some sense of calmness or urgency. But the feeling was instead that of another public square, albeit sensitive, and I was not impressed by the laughing tourists in the plaza. I also couldn’t stop thinking of the homes that Israel razed in order to build the plaza (the western wall used to face an alley); overall it seemed to be a mixture of people and feelings that left me ambivalent. Next to the wall is a temporary walkway constructed on scaffolding that goes up to the Haram Al’Sharif or Temple Mount. Our guide Ophir observed that nothing is more permanent in Jerusalem than a temporary solution, and the stark scaffolding next to Judism’s most holy site is a testament to that. A walkway on land previously occupied the space, but was eroded away, leading to the construction of the walkway since digging proper foundations would have required controversial archeological excavations. Even the temporary walkway inspired riots, but it was needed to serve any tourists seeking to enter the Temple Mount (all other doors are exit-only for non-Muslims). Walking up the path, we passed many Israeli officers and an airport-security style building that looked for any non-Muslim prayer materials. Another object concern is a brick, since reactionary Jews have sometimes sought to being a “3rd temple” on top of the mount, which is strictly forbidden by the Muslim authority in control of the mount.
Atop the mount itself, we saw many more soldiers at the entrance, and then no other army presence. Since submachine guns are a regular facet of street corners and patrols, the relative calm on the mount (albeit watched over by the Waif’s officers, who are dressed in black with walkie-talkies) was enjoyable. We were kicked off of the Mount each time we visited as a group so that the space would be clear for noon-day prayers, but I returned the next-to-last day and walked around, unencumbered by anyone watching or looking. I passed a Christian group who seemed to be surreptitiously singing a hymn while looking out for authorities, but otherwise all was peaceful on the Mount. It is a holy place, though a huge area, and I’m certain control over it will continue to be contested.
Elsewhere in the city is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, supposedly atop the site of Jesus’s crucifixion (though no one is sure of that). The church was the largest example of a place where I felt like I was supposed to feel a certain way – considering its holiness, I would have expected reverence, peace, and calm. Not so.
The church’s entire existence is the result of a complicated series of compromises maintaining a status quo of shared control. The Greek Orthodox, Catholics (or “Latins,” as they say in Jerusalem), and Armenian Apostolic Churches have control of various parts of the interior. According to an online article, Coptic Orthodox, the Ethiopian Orthodox and the Syriac Orthodox also have some level of control, including being on the roof of the Armenian chapel. The doors of the church have been opened by a Muslim family for centuries as well, with a different Muslim holding the key. These arrangements have persisted because the disagreements over them have ben so fraught; the “Status Quo” reigns supreme, even while badly needed repairs cannot be conducted since there is no consensus of how to go about them.
I found the church deeply depressing. It seemed more an attraction for tourists, and location of ritual, than as a holy place. The space is small and awkward; pilgrims must be surprised when rooms immediately next to the supposed tomb of Jesus are laid completely bare (since that group has the space, they pack in chairs, rugs, and everything needed every week, and leave the room empty at other times so that no one else can use it. It is ridiculous and a symbol of the lack of Christian reconciliation that is so needed between many factions in the world. I was inspired more by the history of an invading Muslim caliph, who choise not to pray inside the church in order to prevent its conversion to a mosque. The crusaders were not so helpful; they butchered anyone and everyone upon arrival to the city.
We also visited the Western Wall Tunnels, where Jews have dug along the side of the wall, in spaces that are now underground despite the fact that the wall goes much deeper. The Romans knocked over part of the Western Wall when they conquered Jerusalem, and Jews are reluctant to move any of the holy stones. And so, many of the Western Wall’s perfectly cut stones are hidden, and the full scale of the wall is withheld by the gradual rise of Jerusalem’s ground level. The masonry is superb, but I found myself more annoyed at the irony of the tunnels than impressed by the Jewish engineering. Because the tunnels are narrow, the authorizes wanted to construct an exit in the Ecce Homo, where my group was staying. The Convent objected (despite the fact that a single wall separates the halves of an underground cistern), and the Jews had to build a different exit in the Muslim quarter, which also inspired riots. However, since our tour was after dark, when the exit is no longer open, we had to walk all the way back to the Western Wall, and then back to the Ecce Homo, despite practically being home! I didn’t expect the world to clear aside the issue for us, but I did regret the sensitive nature of the area and how so much angst had gone into simple archeological excavations. I don’t blame Muslims, though: apparently some streets in Muslim areas have collapsed because of Jewish digs.
Ali, our idiosyncratic Muslim guide of a wealthy family, took us around the Temple Mount (pointing out the beautiful asymmetry of the architecture) and then outside the city. After the war for independence, the business center of West Jerusalem was suddenly cut off from the rest of the city. Ali showed us the East Jerusalem district that became a city center, where villas were converted into apartment buildings and shops to provide services on both sides of the demilitarized green line.
We also observed a protest in Sheikh Jarrah, which is the subject of a complicated legal battle. The Muslim families were resettled there after being evicted from Israeli space in 1948; they took the land in agreement for giving up refugee status. Now, settlers are/were trying to get the land back, and a regular protest for the Arab families is held each Friday. Again, I felt awkward, like I was intruding on someone else’s experience, and didn’t feel comfortable with/in the crowd. I enjoyed the rhythm of the protestors’ beats, and I was glad that a demonstration could happen peacefully, but it felt like a status quo, not the disruption that protests are usually supposed to be.
Another day, we visited Gethsemane, the garden where Jesus prayed before his capture. The place is just across the valley from Jerusalem’s eastern wall (and the Lion’s gate). Here, I also expected to feel something for the location, but was more stuck by the armed guards and the ancient mosaic in the church. Across the valley, though, I saw the Golden Gate, which has been sealed for hundreds of years. It leads or led directly to the Temple Mount, and I was struck by the future-oriented nature of the image – the Gate is supposedly to be the way that Christ will reenter the city. It was in stark contrast to the past-oriented city.
We also visited the excavations south of the Temple Mount, where a visitor’s center has been built around and though old palace storage rooms that belonged to Muslim rulers of the city. The area is nice (and provided another chance to see the real scale of the Western Wall), and I was struck by the relative wealth of the Davidson Center, amidst dusty and ill kept public roads outside. Jerusalem’s Jewish locations sometimes seemed to be showcases of concentrated wealth. The Center now connects underground via an ancient water duct to the City of David complex outside of the city walls. Ironically, the City of David is the oldest part of Jerusalem, but is not enclosed by the Ottoman walls. There, another Jewish area of wealth and calm stands – a peaceful plaza with harp music just up the street from Palestinian homes.
The Palestinians in Jerusalem told us that their situation is very difficult. Thanks to city zoning that mysteriously allocates green space to Muslim areas, it is difficult or impossible for Arab families to get permits for home construction. When families expand, the lack of any land on the market means that construction is urgently needed. Since Jewish authorities don’t approve construction, the Arabs must build illegally, which is used to justify home demotions and condemnations by Israeli authorities. It certainly appears to be an underhanded policy of domination and expansion. But again, I didn’t feel the same level of outrage that I would have felt in the US – Jerusalem had a norm of conflict or injustice that I adopted. I wasn’t surprised by the Israeli tactics, though I deplore them.
We also visited Yad Vashem, the holocaust memorial site. The Museum is a strong piece of design – a single triangular prism seems to lay on top of a hill. Those entering see a projection of pre-Holocaust Jewish life on one end of the prism, and wind their way through a series of rooms and exhibits that quickly run through the history (for example, the Nuremburg trials get a single panel). The museum floor gently slopes downward to a metaphorical “low point” around the time of the worst actions in Poland, and then slopes upward as the visitor progresses through the allied victory and discovery of the concentration camps. After two more rooms, one holding a record of each known victim and another for reflection, the visitor emerges into the light, with the sides of the prism tapering away in a symbolic opening to the Jewish homeland. The symbolism of emergence from the Holocaust to the modern Jewish homeland is potent; I found myself impressed and affected as an outsider, though a little more subtlety wouldn’t have hurt. The Holocaust is a part of the Jewish identity – it represents how easily extinction could have happened (or happen now) to Jews, and how much a secure Jewish land is perceived as necessary, despite the protests of others in the country.
We met students from a Israeli/Palestinian discussion group. The youth we met were very kind, and more representative of their populations than I expected. They expressed how neither had known a Jew or Arab prior to the dialogues, besides passing each other on the street, and that surprised me. The modern de facto segregation of Israel is apparent in these stories of passive isolation, but the effort and difficulty of such discussions also convinced me that they cannot be repeated with success on a large scale; peace will have to come from something else.
We attended an Armenian Orthodox Service. The various requirements (don’t cross your legs or arms) were very hard for me to stick to as we observed a Vesper’s service with lots of chanting I couldn’t understand. I said in my application essay for the trip that I had wide Christian experience, but I had never experienced anything like this: the entire event was mystifying, with one exception. Services were announced by a person hitting a bell 3 times again and again, and then only striking once. It was obviously a code for the use of the seminary students to come to church, and reminded me of a summer at a monastery-like place in France. Otherwise, I was lost, and received a reminder that we cannot know what we don’t know about until we can experience it – unknown unknowns are a reality.
Later that day, I chose to attend a service for Christian Unity being held at the Lutheran Church, which is near the Holy Sepulcher (protestants showed up way too late to be inside the church). I wrote the attached document on a notepad before the service, and was overjoyed to see Christians of all sorts worshipping together in English and Arabic, though a little dismayed when the different sashes of what I thought were various protestant denominations such as Baptists ended up adorning a variety of Lutherans near the alter. A communition-ish meal of bread with wine was served afterward, in order to avoid awkwardness, and as I schmoozed, I notices that many of these people knew each other. While the staff of the various churches minister to various groups, they ultimately exist alongside each other, and the connections between Christians run deep, as noted in the sermon, which was on the power of Christianity as the “balancing power” in Jerusalem.
We also met with some of the bereaved parents who had lost their children to the conflict. The love they modeled was a much better example of Christian love than I had ever seen in the Holy Sepulcher, though neither were Christian, and I saw a much greater potential for long-term good in this group, which has an authority no one else can claim to end the conflict. However, their hope was for peace in 10-20 years, so I’m not going to get my hopes up in 2011.
The rest of our trip was spent in political discussions that aren’t going to fit in this essay, but I hope to write more about them elsewhere. Hopefully, this paper conveys some of my experiences, and the confusion I felt from the combination of facts, expectations, and emotions in the city. Thanks for reading.
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