Next year in Jerusalem !

I am back from a second journey to Israel – the previous one was in 2013. I would simply like to share some images, without the slightest apologetic pretention. It was a two- phase journey: a “traditional” pilgrimage week, with a group of Christians, followed by four days with my Israeli cousins.

Jerusalem. The Old City, buried under the weight of levels of history and religion. But it is a living city, as well. Alleys, crowded with legions of tourists, Arabs wearing keffiyeh or niqab, Jews with side curls, caftans and large hats, Ethiopian monks wearing their long cassocks, yeshiva students with a black velvet yarmulke, Franciscan priests in brown garb, policemen, soldiers, male and female, with a gun on shoulder. People pass each other with little, if any, communication, except for the merchants who badger you and extol their products.

 

The Christian Holy sites, the Holy Sepulchre, the Basilica of the Nativity in Bethlehem, etc. The swarming crowds and the surrounding din make any attempt for recollection a vain pursuit. But there is a one notable exception, the Basilica of the Agony, in Gethsemane, where an attentive Franciscan friar enforces the silence and where the dimmed light, around the rock, is an invitation to prayer.

The landscapes of Galilee, green and flowery, as spring arrives, evoke the settings of biblical stories. Then there is the Sea of Tiberias and, in the distance, the Golan Heights, which lead one to think of clearly less peaceful places… 

Yes, the Kotel. To those who persist in calling it "the Wailing Wall", I advise you to go there on a Thursday morning. People gather there to celebrate bar mitzvah (mitzvoth, because there are many of them), in a climate of amazing joy and fervor. At the Kotel, I brought - and wore - the kippah offered to me on my previous trip by the father of my cousin's wife. He is a 90 year old man, polyglot, bright and cheerful as a child. At the moment he offered me this kippah, he said to me: "I attend the synagogue out of loyalty to my parents." 

The Dead Sea, whose level is alarmingly low. Its shores are disappearing and its banks subsiding. Will the pipeline project bringing water from the Red Sea ever materialize? Led by a French native Israeli guide, we visit Masada and Qumran. 

Tel Aviv, bustling and yet relaxed. The splendid campus of the University, with the Diaspora museum. The Sarona district – an agricultural colony founded in the 19th century by the Templar Society of Christoph Hoffmann – a weird set of German-style, nicely restored houses, amidst high offices buildings. This neighborhood is now a fashionable area.

Rehovot, where, four years ago, I visited the famous Weizmann Institute. This time, I discovered the remarkable kibbutz of Machon Ayalon. There, from 1946 to 1948, members of the Haganah, six meters underground, manufactured millions of 9 mm bullets, right under the nose of the British Mandate authorities. 

On the way back from the Dead Sea, our Israeli guide told us that he made his alyah twenty years before, just “to see”, and that he decided to stay in Israel. He added that several of his companions returned to Europe. They came with too many preconceived ideas and too idealistic a vision. "They could not bear to see that Israel is a country like any other". Perhaps. But that country seems to me quite different from others. I feel plenty of enthusiasm and vitality among its inhabitants... Something very different from our “depressive” Europe. Next year in Jerusalem? I hope…

Fiodor

Three stones…

This text was sent to me by "someone whom I know well"... A man already in his "third age". He evokes some striking moments of the trip he has done in Israel, together with a younger colleague.

This journey was for me a pilgrimage, for a double motive, given my roots: Jewish and Christian. As for the first, four or five years ago I discovered some cousins on my father's side living in Israel, of whom I had never heard, until then. Here is not the place to talk about the moving meeting with them and their offspring.

There is no way, either, to describe all the moments of an incredibly rich and diverse journey. The Old City of Jerusalem, Mount of Olives, Yad Vashem, Masada and Qumran, Bethlehem, Galilee, etc., leave intense memories in the mind and heart of the one who, like me, visits this country "flowing with milk and honey" for the first time. But if I had to remember the moments that marked me the most, the most symbolic moments, I would retain three stones.

The first stone is one of these massive blocks that constitute the Kotel, the Western Wall of the Temple. When we went there, on a Thursday morning, the atmosphere was very joyful; it was the day when many young people celebrate their "Bar Mitzvah". I approached the wall and, like many others, I put my forehead on the stone. A powerful emotion invaded me. It was like a pent up piece of my family history coming back to the surface: my paternal grandparents and their children, all of them annihilated one day in1942. And then, all the generations that preceded them, who had turned – one way or another – towards that place, dreaming: "Next year in Jerusalem"...

wo days later, I put my forehead on another stone, that of the Holy Sepulchre. Despite the onrush of the crowd, the long wait before entering the narrow sanctuary, the pressure of the guards asking the pilgrims to proceed, I was able to fill the tomb left empty by the Risen One with all the situations and all the people that had been referred to me or that I carried in my heart. The human pettiness of this place, where the various Christian denominations barely tolerate each other and jealously guard their territory, could not darken the burning memory of the One who "emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave ..." (Phil 2, 7).

The third stone, with sharp angles, had the size of an apple. I did not put my forehead on it, but my forehead indeed was its target ... With my companion, we walked quietly along the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem between the Damascus Gate and New Gate. It was 4:30 pm. A hundred yards away, I saw four or five boys throwing stones to the ground with great force. Jokingly, I said to my companion: "They are preparing stones to snipe at people." I did not suspect that, a few seconds later, they would, indeed, begin to throw them at us, shouting "Allahu akbar! "... Still, we wore neither kippa nor black hat nor curls, nor pectoral cross ... The  rocks of these fellows were thrown powerfully and accurately. We found our salvation in flight.

He who has sent me this testimony did not draw a conclusion. He simply leaves us with a question, something that is never comfortable ...

Anyway, I wish you a Happy Easter. Hag Pessah Sameah.

Fiodor