Have you ever met a Hittite, a Canaanite, a Pict? Like other beings on the
earth people and peoples disappear. Others hang on. Learn your people’s
stories, we are told, so you know who you are. The question in my mind this
week is how much it matters whether the stories are true. On the one hand
stories bind— we are the people who endured suffering, were heroic in battle,
were kind— and on the other, stories put you in a bind, encourage the belief or
reinforce the fact that you don’t play well with others.
On the way into Jerusalem, maybe about where Jesus mounted the donkey, there’s
now Scotch Broom. It has a beautiful yellow flower and it’s invasive.
At Yad Vashem our guide said we were entering craziness. A little way in she
said, “I don’t usually say this but you are such a wonderful group…” and then
she supplied some particularly awful stories, worse than the general run of
awful facts in a Holocaust museum tour. A treat! The lagniappe of misery.
There’s been a lot of yellow flower this week and some lagniappe of craziness.
But no physical violence. Unlike say contemporary Mexico, military personnel
here don’t drive the streets in a show of force. But unlike say the U. S., the
security guard at minor railway station or art museum looks alert and ready to
use a weapon to good effect. Israel is not currently on general alert. People
climb staircases, walk the streets while staring at their phones or texting.
But from Tel Aviv to the wall that seals off the West Bank is less than twenty
miles. There’s no getting around the fact that the nation is surrounded and
outnumbered. Masada and “never again” are the references people repeat.
We did two days on our own schedule, hiking to Jaffa and then taking the train
to Haifa. And then three on a coach with wedding guests, visiting Masada, the
Golan Heights, Jerusalem.
Practically no one wears a mask. It’s as if COVID has gone away and life from
two years ago crept in on a tide.
Imagine a group of loosely-affiliated humans demonstrating the spirit of shalom
while visiting sites of much violence. We got along as visitors from afar can.
Imagine all the words of John Lennon’s “Imagine” inscribed on the back wall of
the lobby of the Sheraton hotel. Art, bought and paid for. Something DADA
about that.
Imagine a dinner provided by Circassians. i had to look them up.
Jerusalem is a small old place, surrounded by a bigger new one. If it wasn’t
blasphemy in the tenth degree, I’d suggest you could zip line from the top of
the Mount of Olives, over Gethsemane to Golgotha. They’re surprisingly close.
The groom’s father fought in the Six Day war and in Yom Kippur. A secular Jew
from Tel Aviv, he doesn’t like Jerusalem, “No ability to compromise.” I tell
him I’ve never fired a gun. He says, “You haven’t missed anything.” It’s a few
minutes before I realize that has two meanings.
Tel Aviv people will tell you, “There are two states—Tel Aviv and the rest of
Israel.” Maybe someone should propose a three state solution?
More DADA. In the nineteenth century a treaty or agreement was signed, freezing
in place spatial arrangements in the Done of the Rock/ Church of the Holy
Sepulcher, buildings marking where Jesus was said to have been crucified and
then ascended to heaven. At the moment the agreement was signed there was a
ladder outside a window; some work was in progress, work which necessitated
the use of a ladder. The ladder was included in the inventory of what was
where, so no one has been allowed to move it since. Been outside the window for
more than a hundred years.
Again. The Western wall is not a wall of the second temple in the sense of
holding up the roof of that structure. It was more like a deck support, a
retaining wall essential for a jutting patio. It’s holy because that’s what
remains. The wall is for the unwavering; those who compromise get the rubble.
There’s some rubble, supposedly thrown down by Romans, a comfortable distance
from where the orthodox back away from the wall like people leaving the Royal
presence. The rubble is for those who prefer to worship in mixed company; they
can have their bar and bat mitzvahs in its presence, break a glass at a wedding
to remind themselves that in the midst of life there’s both joy and destroyed
walls.
In Jerusalem our small tour group was provided with a guide, who was very good,
and an armed medic.
I wondered what compromise could be considered. How about the model of
Lascaux’s cave paintings? You’ll recall that the paintings were being
destroyed by the breathing of many people wanting to see them, so someone hit
upon the idea of re-creating the work close by. The same has been done at the
cave Werner Herzog made famous. How about recreating Jerusalem? “You can have
two, three versions, exactly as you wish, where you wish. City of David, second
temple, what you want, omitting everything you disagree with . Plus hot yoga?
Drip irrigation.”
The camel among the tourist vendor people on the top of the mount of olives
costs, said our guide, one price to mount, another to dismount. On the Mount.
We entered Jerusalem through the dung ( or garbage or as I called it the “holy
shit”) gate. Just along the way from the tannin or tanners gate. At other
gates there are lots of bullet holes in the walls. People fighting to get in.
Jerusalem has four quarters: Jewish, Moslem, Christian and? Armenian. Our
guide said, “They’re very good diplomats, Armenians.”
Our bride and groom have a young baby. ( They were married in New York; Covid
delayed the Israeli celebration. ) Traveling with a small kid has reawakened my
wonder at the miracle of the boob. I’m of course , in the manner of some males
and lesbians, distracted by the look and other function of boobs, but here I’m
reminded of what was once a fact of fatherhood; I lack the ultimate ability to
quiet a child. What a miracle that is.
What kind of miracle? Opposite of Lazarus? Not quite. As good as walking on
the Sea of Galilee? Well that’s a big body of water. Feeding with loaves and
fishes? Closer I suppose.
How about the miracle of flying? Jordan, not the state but the river is big
for a brook, probably also greater than a burn, but half the width of the Karun
River in Ahwaz. That’s an unhelpful comparison for most readers, I know, but
that’s where my mind went when we crossed over. I was in Ahwaz, Iran for a
couple of months in 1978 and saw beside the Karun a sign marking the very spot
where an aviation pioneer, named Ritchie if memory serves, crashed into the
Karun. Not a good idea on many fronts, not the least of which is that sharks
swim up from the Gulf and sometimes take cows. I saw fins, almost hidden by
silt in the water.
Outside Haifa there are fields of bananas, all covered up, like they need to be
concealed from drones, like they are some kind of military secret. No doubt
there’s an explanation. Invasive pests perhaps?
D, the Hereabouts reader I mentioned last week, drove us to Ein Hod, an
artists’ colony founded by Marcel Janco and others. Janco was the co- founder
of DADA.
What a grand day that was. With chickens.
I tried to talk with them but found they’d taken Janco too much to heart, “
Time and a brand of detergent wait for no man.”
“Yes, yes.”
Much nodding in the marsh.
One could think of Israel as California with more camels, and churches built
where people were stoned. Don’t see those in California. St. Stephen, for
example. Kaiser Wilhelm paid for a church where that death happened, or
thereabouts. Prince Phillip’s mother is buried there .
I asked what the difference between a schlemiel and a schlamachel might be.
“One pours soup on the other.” In other words one is a jerk and the other is
merely hapless
I noted the following signs:
Moving money for better
In the city partner hello future
The authority will be happy to answer your touring questions
The find spot of the lots
Parking for private vehicle according to the markup
I recommend Jachnun, a Yemeni breakfast: brown boiled egg ( guy passed over
the white ones) indescribable rolled up dough-thing, tomato sauce, green hot
sauce. http://food.lizsteinberg.com/2011/02/08/jachnun-yemenite-breakfast/ ;
Temperamentally I’m not adventurous at breakfast, but when in Tel Aviv, do as
Yemeni Jews do.
After we floated in the Dead Sea we were so happy to shower. I reached for the
soap, “made with Dead Sea minerals.”
The wedding is coming up. Then, of course, Malta. Our guidebook says the macho
thing to do in Malta is sit in the back of a pickup and shoot birds that are of
their way from Africa to Europe. Totally illegal. And quite DADA too. I’ll
give that a miss.
David Ritchie,
Tel Aviv
