A Week of Goodbyes

It has been a very long time since I last posted--so long, in fact, that I forgot my password to my Blogger.com account. The Rothberg undergraduate semester is officially over, which means most students--and all of my friends (minus Alex, who lives here)--have headed home. Some of my classes are graduate-level, which means they last a few weeks longer; I will remain in Israel until the 7th. Below is a picture of the "last supper" I cooked for Dana, Shiri, Andrea, Zach, and Alex. Thanks to all of them for making my time in Jerusalem so unforgettable!

Dana left Israel 48-hours after the others, so we spent an extra day wandering through the Old City to soak it all in. We decided to wait in line to enter the Tomb of Christ at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Technically, no photography was allowed inside, but I discretely snapped a picture of the rock upon which Christ was supposedly laid. My apologies--I couldn't use flash so it is rather dark. Two pictures are below.

Three of my four final papers are written, so I will spend my last week finishing up with schoolwork and (hopefully) seeing the last few Jerusalem must-sees. On Wednesday, school is out due to Jerusalem Day, and Alex and I will be wandering around the city together. Expect a blog post or two before I come back to the U.S.!

Happy 63rd Birthday, Israel!

This week, Israel celebrated its 63rd Independence Day. The day immediately prior to Independence Day was Memorial Day, which falls 6 days after Holocaust Memorial Day (I like how compact the national holidays are, compared to the US, where Memorial Day is devoid of all meaning!). In celebration of the many holidays, I had yet more time off--a 5 day weekend! Though I spent most of my time writing papers, I made a few fun excursions.

Over the weekend, Dana, Shiri, and I completed the Ramparts Walk--a long, staircase-ridden hike from the Jaffa Gate to the Lion's Gate on top of the Old City walls. The views were spectacular. Below, I've posted my five favorite shots. (Note: the fourth picture is of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem!)

After the Ramparts Walk, I visited Solomon's Quarries (also called Zedekiah's Cave), a huge cave carved out of the bedrock beneath the Muslim Quarter. Scholars have suggested that from this cave, Solomon's builders mined the stones used to construct the First Temple (alternatively, Herod may have used these stone quarries for the construction of the Second Temple); the cave is also believed to be the path by which King Zedekiah escaped from Jerusalem shortly before the city fell to the Babylonians (see Jeremiah 52:7-8). Nowadays, the cave is the location of the meetings of Jerusalem's Freemasons, who believe themselves to be successors of King Solomon. Several pictures of the cave are below. I attempted to photograph myself in the third picture, but my shadow is blocking the water which is dripping from the rock behind me. The spring is called the "Tears of Jerusalem."

For Memorial Day, I went on a field trip to various war memorials near Jerusalem. We caught a memorial ceremony at a Kibbutz in the Judean Hills. Below, I've posted a short video of the three ceremonial gunshots fired by IDF soldiers at the conclusion of the ceremony. The remaining pictures are from Mt. Herzl, Israel's version of Arlington National Cemetery. The last picture is of the grave of Yitzhak Rabin, the famous Prime Minister of Israel and Nobel laureate, who was assassinated in 1995.

The Western Wall tunnel + field trip

On Monday evening, I crossed an important item off my Israel bucket-list: the Western Wall tunnel. As I have explained before, the Western Wall is one of the retaining walls built by Herod the Great after he expanded the Temple Mount complex. Originally, a Herodian street (see the previous post) ran along the entire base of the wall. Jerusalem was much hillier in this time, and this area of the city was situated in the valley between the Temple Mount and the western hill. In the Muslim Period, this valley was filled in, making the city level (as it is today). The Muslims installed a series of supporting arches beneath the area, to hold up this renovated (and flat) part of the city. During the time of the British Mandate and subsequent Israeli period, a tunnel was dug out beneath these supporting arches that runs the entire length of the Western Wall--the Western Wall tunnel.

The tunnel begins underneath a supporting arch (see first picture below) dating not from the Muslim Period, but from the Second Temple Period. This arch was used to hold up a pedestrian bridge which led onto the mount, and also channeled water into the numerous ritual baths (the model in the second picture shows what the bridge would have looked like).

The Western Wall itself is made of huge limestone blocks, some of the largest building blocks used in architectural history. The stones were likely quarried from beneath Jerusalem itself, where they were cut, painstakingly hauled, and put into place. To complete the work, stonemasons etched borders around each individual block.

The important draw of the Western Wall Tunnel is that it brings the visitors as close to the Holy of Holies--the inner room of the Temple in which the Ark of the Covenant was once kept--as possible. (At this point, the tour guide shared that it is her belief that the Ark of the Covenant was hidden in the tunnels underneath the Temple Mount itself, however, "every time we start digging for the Ark, a bus gets blown up and we have to stop." I felt that this comment was more than a little insensitive.) The third picture below shows a number of Jewish women praying at this special spot.

Towards the end of the tunnel, the wall merges with the bedrock itself (second picture below). In the Second Temple Period, a fortress was built upon this spot (this corner of the Temple Mount was lower to the ground and much more accessible to enemy armies) to defend the mount. The tour ends in a large cistern, connected to the same water system which is visible at Ecce Homo and St. Anne's. The final picture is the more familiar, outdoor Western Wall plaza.

On Thursday, my rabbinic literature class embarked on a tour of northern Israel to visit some of the ancient synagogues uncovered there. We also repeated a few of the significant Christian sites. Our tour began at Beit Alpha, a synagogue dating from the 500s CE. What is significant about Beit Alpha is that the synagogue's mosaic floor sports an image of the zodiac (complete with the Greek sun-god Helios), a pagan symbol which has no business in Jewish art. Furthermore, in the panel depicting the binding of Isaac, it is the ram in the thicket, not Abraham, that is emphasized--this is clearly a borrowing from Christian art (the ram that was substituted for Isaac is traditionally seen as a foreshadowing of Jesus).

After Beit Alpha, we drove to Tiberias, where another, even older synagogue also uses zodiac symbols. Archaeologists believe that the zodiac was the "in" style of the Greco-Roman and Byzantine worlds; these images pervaded even the Jewish communities. This resulted in a relaxation of the Jewish commandment against the fashioning of images.

Here is a picture from the ancient (fourth century) synagogue in Capernaum, the town of Jesus.

In Tsippori, a third synagogue displays the wheel of the zodiac, but with an important difference: the sun-god Helios is not pictured at the center. This later synagogue might therefore represent a backlash against the borrowing of pagan styles.

The tour concluded in Jewish burial caves at Beit Shearim, the famous burial place of R. Judah HaNasi (compiler of the Mishnah) and his contemporaries. The graves have been looted in the many centuries since the Nasi's burial, but it was still cool to see all of the sarcophagi.

A Busy Week Off

Last week, beginning Easter Sunday, was the last stretch of Hebrew U's generous Passover vacation. While many of my friends went to Istanbul, I remained in Jerusalem to get some work done and save money. As you can see, however, I did end up having a pretty busy adventure on my own!

On Tuesday, I took a tour of the Temple Mount Antiquities Salvage Operation, located in the Zurim Valley between Mount Scopus and the Mount of Olives. The project is only a decade or so old. In the late 1990s, the Muslim authorities decided to expand the area around and under Al Aqsa mosque on the Temple Mount in order to accommodate more worshipers. The construction was done hurriedly and in secret (the Israeli Antiquities Authority was never informed) over the course of 48 hours. The Muslims used bulldozers to remove hundreds of cubic feet of material from the southern corner of the Temple Mount, which they discarded into the Hinnom Valley. The Temple Mount is perhaps the center of the tension between Arabs and Jews. The Muslims didn't just discard a bunch of earth--they bulldozed their way through two (maybe even three) millenniums of history. Many Muslim extremists have responded to accusations by claiming that there was nothing on the Temple Mount before the Muslims conquered Jerusalem. (Normally I feel that the Israelis portray Muslims in an unfairly negative light most of the time; this is an example where I wholeheartedly agree that what the Muslims did was BS.)

After several years of political struggle, Israeli archaeologists were given control over the huge deposits of earth which had been left in the Hinnom Valley. The archaeologists are about halfway done sifting through the remains, and they have made incredible finds dating from every historical period beginning with the Second Temple era. As part of the tour, I got to "dig for a day" through the Temple Mount remains. I discovered tons of pieces of pottery, glass, and marble, but my major find was a brass button, pictured below. The button was unidentifiable due to the rust and dirt it has accumulated over the years, but we suspect it probably dates to the Crusader or Muslim periods (it will be sent to a lab to be cleaned and dated). Another tourist found a piece of gold tile that once covered the Dome of the Rock.

The next day, I journeyed to Herodion, the palace-fortress located in the West Bank near Bethlehem. As the name implies, Herodion was constructed by Herod the Great, to serve (like Masada) as both a private getaway and a fortress in case of attack. The complex is built into a giant volcano-like hill, and contains the remains of a Roman-style bathhouse, a synagogue, and a mikveh (Jewish ritual bath), among other finds. Underneath the complex is a series of tunnels, originally part of the water system, which were expanded by the rebels of the Bar Kokhba Rebellion (132-136 CE) to use as a headquarters. Herod and some of his family members were buried at Herodion; unfortunately, however, when I tried to visit the tombs, this area of the complex was closed.

After Herodion, I returned to the Old City to explore the much-neglected Armenian Quarter. Here, I stumbled across two amazing churches: the Syrian Orthodox Church of St. Mark, and the Armenian Orthodox Cathedral of St. James.

The Syrian Church of St. Mark purports to be the first Christian church in hisotry, built over St. Mark's original home. It was here (not on Mt. Zion), according to the Syrian Orthodox Christians, that Jesus celebrated the Last Supper and the disciples received the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. The church was small but incredibly beautiful; no photography was allowed. The church's caretaker, an old woman, told me a little bit about the church's history--the Syrian Orthodox Church is the only Christian rite that uses the Aramaic language (the spoken language of Jesus' day) in its liturgy. The woman showed me an ancient icon housed in the church, an image of Mary holding the child Jesus, which was supposedly painted by St. Mark himself after Jesus' ascension to heaven. She reported that she has witnessed a number of miracles that have taken place in the presence of this icon.

The Armenian Cathedral of St. James was, by contrast, huge and ornate. I happened to walk in during the middle of afternoon prayers, which were beautifully chanted by a huge choir of seminarians. Two pictures and a video are below (I had to stop recording the video when the priest scolded me).

For dinner, I ate at Hummus Abu Shukri, another restaurant which claims to serve Jerusalem's best hummus. I admit, it was pretty delicious, but still no Chummus Lina.

After dinner, I explored the Church of St. Anne in the Muslim Quarter, a Crusader-era church built in honor of Anne, the mother of Mary, upon the site at which Mary was supposedly born. The church itself was typically Crusader--high, arched ceilings and impressive stonework--but the real draw of the site was the excavated Second Temple Period water system beside the church. This system of cisterns is connected the one beneath the Ecce Homo convent, which supplied water to the Temple Mount.

I exited the Old City through the Lion's Gate (first picture below), and walked back to the bus station past Herod's Gate (second picture below). Now, this blog should contain pictures of all seven Old City gates.

The next day, I returned to the Old City to visit the Burnt House, a museum in the Jewish Quarter. As a result of the bombing and subsequent reconstruction of the Jewish Quarter during and after the War of Independence, many important archaeological finds were unearthed in this area. The Jewish Quarter today stands atop the Herodian Quarter of Second Temple Jerusalem, which was home to the wealthy aristocrats and Temple priests. The Burnt House is the excavated remains of the home of a priestly family (as evidenced by the presence of stone vessels, which unlike earthen vessels, do not carry impurity). Discovered in the Burnt House was an iron spear; this led the museum curators to create a laughably ridiculous (but therefore enjoyable) film re-creating the last days of the Burnt House... in the movie, the eldest son of the family is a Zealot who rebels against the Romans (the dagger was involved in the final quarrel before the Romans set the house on fire).

I also visited the Jerusalem Archaeological Park at the foot of the southwest corning of the Temple Mount. The park preserves a number of Second Temple Period ruins. Visitors can see the famous Robinson's Arch (first picture below), the remains of a massive staircase and its supporting arches which was the main access to the Temple Mount during the time of Herod the Great. A number of huge rocks at the foot of the wall were originally part of this arch and the Temple Mount, but fell into the Herodian street below. One rock (second picture below) sports a Hebrew inscription indicating that it was part of the tower where trumpeters were perched. The remains of Crusader buildings on the Temple mount are visible at the southern wall (fourth picture below); note that the dome is Al Aqsa mosque.

Lastly, I visited the Church of St. Peter in Gallicantu, just outside the Old City. The church is built upon the spot where Jesus was supposedly imprisoned on Thursday of Passion Week; in the courtyard, Peter denied Jesus three times. The beautiful church is extremely modern. In the crypt, a water cistern and a serious of caves is believed the be the site of Christ's prison (it was quite creepy to visit alone!). The final picture demonstrates how the church was built on top of the remains of an earlier Byzantine church, complete with mosaic floors (not pictured).