Three Weeks in the Levant

Part 1: Jerusalem 

I’ve been working on a novel for a couple of years. It’s a complicated story about a non-traditional family (a gay son of lesbian moms and their relationship with two gay father figures). It spans two generations from World War 2 to the present. It's fiction, but closely follows events and people in my life. Much of the story takes place in Tel Aviv and in parts of the Palestinian West Bank. I’ve already done a lot of research, but everyone (especially my husband) kept telling me that if I am going to write about Israel and Palestine, I must go there and experience it. So John planned an amazing trip in February and March of 2018 that took us to Jerusalem, the Judean Hills and Tel Aviv in Israel; occupied territories Ramallah and Taybeh in Palestine; and Aqaba, Wadi Rum, Petra, and Feynan (a Bedouin encampment) in Jordan. John took all the pictures. This is my account of our trip. 

We flew in to Ben Gurion Airport via Frankfurt, Germany on Lufthansa. Security at customs in Israel was surprisingly easy, though it may have been a fluke—the people just ahead of us in line got pulled aside for extra questioning, so we breezed on through. All my worries were for naught about Israel’s ban on visitors like me who support the non-violent Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement (BDS) and Quakers, who also support BDS and an end to the occupation (John has Quaker connections).

Jerusalem

An ancient olive tree near New Gate

From Ben Gurion (just east of Tel Aviv) we caught a taxi southeast to Jerusalem (about a 25 minute ride). Nothing is very far away in Israel. Our hotel was in the downtown triangle. It was within easy walking distance of two gates to the ancient city: Jaffa and New Gate. The hotel was in an older building, redone in simple décor. Its beauty was its proximity to the old city, the train on Jaffa Street, and popular shopping squares. We arrived a few hours before Shabbat, sundown Friday through sundown Saturday, when no one is supposed to work. We bought some wine before everything closed up, and got our bearings. 


One of the first things you notice about Jerusalem is the orthodox dress of the men—yarmulkes (kippahs), long black coats, shawls, broad-brimmed fedoras, payot (long curls of hair above the ears), and beards. Maybe the second thing you notice is how everything is built of sand-coloured limestone. We headed to Jaffa Gate.

Shopping before Shabbat

The narrow streets of the walled city are lined with tiny shops selling tourist wares, religious trinkets, pomegranate juice, and other goods typical of souks across northern Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. It was very busy in the late afternoon. We strolled to the Western Wall (also called Kotel or Al-Buraq). There was as much security getting into the plaza as at the airport. 

The Western Wall

Everyone crowded in to empty their pockets and go through a scanner/detector. Men and women were separated. Women are barred from the main part of the wall, but their voices occasionally rose above the men, praying and singing in groups on this side of the divider. Bins of loaner yarmulkes were available for those of us men who came without one. Crevices in the 2000+-year-old wall were stuffed with rolled-up paper wishes, messages, and prayers. The evening’s Shabbat celebration was exuberant. Men, some with large fur-covered hats (shtreimels), stood or sat in circles. Those standing alone held books, mouthed prayers, and nodded. Groups of young soldiers with automatic rifles slung over their shoulders danced and sang. I couldn’t help thinking about the contrast between this teeming, weekly Jewish observance and the just-on-the-other-side-of-the-wall quietness at the Al-Aqsa mosque where most Palestinian Muslims are restricted from entering. 

We left via the Dung Gate and walked along the outside of the old city in the warm evening air until we decided we needed a taxi. Then we got a lesson in Israeli currency. Coins we thought were 10 shekels were actually 10 agora (1 agora equals 1/100^th of a shekel). The driver couldn’t use his meter because it was Shabbat. He quoted us a flat fee, then cursed at us when he realized we underpaid in agorot. How embarrassing.

Modern Jerusalem

Few places were open Saturday morning. We found a decent non-Jewish restaurant (Menza), and then walked to the Israel Museum. We did a little bird watching on the way in a wetland viewing area adjacent to the Knesset building (Israel's parliament). We didn't see many birds, but I remember the turtles (could I make this into a metaphor?). The museum had impressive archaeological exhibits, including the Galilee hominid skull, at least 200,000 years old. The sculpture garden, looking out from the steep hillside, was designed by Isamu Noguchi (a Japanese-American artist I love).

Jewish school boys

Lots of people were out walking Saturday afternoon—there was a street fair south of the old city near the restaurant Adom, where we had our most expensive dinner of the trip. It was excellent and we had the leftovers the next day. Afterward we went to the light show at the Tower of David. Rows of chairs were set up around the 'keep' and on the upper walkway. Set to dramatic music, images were projected on different surfaces of the ancient tower complex of the bloody king. The show covered millennia of changes to Jerusalem—invasions, destruction, commerce. It was a grandiose procession of silhouettes in costume by era. (Oddly, it made me think of last summer’s projections on the Cambie Bridge piers in Vancouver—the life cycle of salmon, unrelenting sex and death.)    

Inside the Tower of David. The light show was projected on these walls.

                                                                       

Inside Damascus Gate

Damascus Gate is the entrance to the Muslim quarter of old Jerusalem and a grittier, livelier market area. (This side of the cohabited city of Jerusalem is where we will return after our 2-day tour of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank.) 

An Arab farmer

A boy in the Muslim quarter

To get into the Arab shrine—the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque— you must enter a graceless, imposing elevated ramp that goes over the Western Wall. We lined up early Sunday behind a Christian tour group and yet another security scanner.  

Dome of the Rock

Al-Aqsa’s olive-treed plaza was quiet and uncrowded. The ancient gold-topped Islamic shrine at Dome of the Rock is a marvel of mosaic. The mosque seemed more humble by comparison, but is also an architectural wonder (non-Muslims haven’t been allowed inside since the second Intifada). There was some kind of orthodox Jewish ceremony happening that morning below the stairs to Temple Mount inside the Muslim plaza. Arab guards escorted the Jewish worshipers across the plaza and shooed us away when we tried to look. We walked around the whole compound and discovered portals that led out of the plaza guarded by soldiers. These openings in the otherwise barricaded shrine provided access for Muslim school kids who go to classes here. The portals lead you out to Via Dolorosa, the Jerusalem street that was the supposed path of the cross which Jesus carried to Calvary. We stopped for some fresh-squeezed pomegranate juice.

Leaving the old city through the Damascus gate, we bought train tickets to Mount Herzl to visit Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial. It was a short walk along a wooded path to the museum which was crowded. Crisscrossing back and forth the length of the prism-shaped structure, you see the horror of anti-Semitic fascism unfold in images and personal stories and confiscated objects. It culminates in the overwhelming Hall of Names, a soaring dome of photographs of those who were lost. The interior flat walls resemble bookshelves with millions of spots for the name of each person who died in the Holocaust. 

A wall sculpture in Yad Vashem

The exit from the memorial takes you to a terrace that looks out to a forest. There is a place to sit in silence (which I definitely needed afterward—it is an emotionally wrenching experience). Other buildings in the complex include a gallery of art produced by some of those who were interned. We learned that this new Yad Vashem memorial was designed by a Canadian Israeli and opened about 2005. In the gift shop I was able to find a parchment scroll to replace the one stolen twice from my friend Aaron’s mezuzah. There are strict rabbinical rules about writing these scrolls and they are not cheap. The clerk was shocked that anyone would steal a scroll from a mezuzah.

We got back on the train going back down toward our hotel. A middle-age man in black orthodox regalia sat across from us. When a young woman boarded at the next stop and sat in the empty seat beside him, he got up and moved. Just as women cannot mix with men at the Western Wall, the “ultra-orthodox” require gender separation in public transportation. This practice is not mandated by civil law. She looked like a college student. She just shrugged to me and John as the man found another seat. “It's his choice,” she said. My thought was: men of all three Abrahamic religions (Jews, Christians, and Muslims) are fucking sexist pigs, especially the fundamentalists.

A few blocks before our hotel, we got off the train at the Yehuda market—Jerusalem’s large open-air street market or shuk—and walked through, marvelling at all the fruit, vegetable, and spice vendors, the meat and fish stalls, and craft carts. We sat on stools at a busy corner bar and had a beer as John snapped photos of the masses of people going by, all ages and shapes, women with shopping trolleys, men in broad brimmed fedoras, soldiers, school kids, tourists. Quite a scene.

Young men stroll through Yehuda Market

A dried fruit merchant