Holidays in the Holy Land

Traveling. A style of living I’ve been exploring since I set off from the outskirts of Philadelphia six months ago. I’ve been a long-term guest, living out of a suitcase. I’ve settled into a home amongst strangers and have made them family. I have traveled for extended weekends in the same one set of clothing on trains, buses, and on foot everywhere from the pebbly beaches of the Black Sea through the snowstorm of a ski resort to the rain and mists of mountains almost forgotten by time. But for the first time ever in my life, on the reluctant edge of the holiday season, my friend Nathan and I shouldered our backpacker’s packs and we set off to fly into a foreign country with maybe plans, no reservations, and only a return ticket as a sense of definition.
We had decided while we were in this part of the world, we should take advantage of our one-month holiday from school, so Nathan and I chose to travel through Israel and Jordan. The Lonely Planet was our best friend. Advice from other friends who had traveled through the region led us to expect time consuming, forceful security checks everywhere in Israel, and we weren’t disappointed. Stepping off the plane in Tel Aviv, immediately after walking through the corridor to the building, before even entering Passport Control or Customs, we were stopped by two security officers who aggressively questioned us: where are you from? What are you doing here? Who are you staying with? (ummm…some guy we met on couchsurfing who we’ve never met before, and I can’t remember where he lives right now, but if you give me a second I’ll look up his address in my book) We made it through a few rounds of questioning like this in the airport. I really think it helped that the guys we were going to stay with and meet were named Goldfarb and Kotel.
We landed in Tel Aviv, an incredibly modern, gritty in some places, city that reminded me instantly of New York. Crashed in a hostel, enjoyed the best latte and chocolate pastry in recent memory on the beach of the Mediterranean, and departed straight to Jerusalem, planning on spending some time in Tel Aviv before our return flight.
Israel is an incredibly small country. Driving from North to South is a chore of less than half a day through mountains and the lowest points on earth. It took us only about an hour and a half to reach Jerusalem. I spent the ride admiring the infrastructure. It was the first time I had seen such beautiful roads (I never thought I would describe charging highways of concrete as lovely) since departing the states. I once again understood how smooth a bus ride could be. But the Western wonders didn’t end there; people carrying coffee in the streets? Many women driving? Families sitting in parks as their children romp with dogs? Frisbee? Bicycles everywhere? Extreme racial diversity? I had not realized just how non-European Georgia felt until I stepped into a “westernized” country again. The change in culture was palpable. But I must say, Georgia still has more beautiful McDonalds than Israel. One point Tbilisi.

The kosher McDonalds were blue and called McDavids

The Orthodox currently are pushing to re-segregate buses based on gender. These people didn't want that.

I can't believe I missed my chance

Landing in Jerusalem, we started our walk through what would soon become familiar streets to the home of the man I had contacted on couch surfing who had invited to let us stay for several days at his apartment. He lived on the south side of the city, so Nathan and I enjoyed quite a relaxing walk through an outdoor market, past many bagel shops (I never got around to eating a bagel because food was so expensive!!! We subsisted mainly on pita, hummus, and khalva bought from grocery stores), and through a street protest. Our host lived in a beautiful part of town; the sun was shinning on gardens in full bloom and the most domestic feral cats were wandering the streets. We settled in his living room, were generously given a key, and now had a home base to operate from.
Alright, now the lead-up is finished, I will leap immediately into descriptions and stories to carry through the fortuitous encounters and happenstance meetings that were these beautiful three weeks.
A place, with women and men as its body and buildings as its memories, has a massively strong influence on all who enter it, whether they be citizens or visitors. Jerusalem retains its core, the Old City — with its 16^th century walls and remnants of the Second Temple era lying under every layered street – insulated by a modern city all around, niched and cliqued into quite different neighborhoods: the ultra-orthodox live in semi-poverty, men walking the streets in their full regalia –long black coats, heeled shoes, side curls and cylindrical fur hats –past piles of trash in yards reminiscent of West Phily, young orthodox boys in sweaters and dress pants wrestling in the yards of schools; the Arabic-speaking population with lively markets and bars filled with smoke from the hookahs smoking men; American English from immigrants mixing with the scattered English of tourists on every walkway. A walk through a down-sloping park fills your vision with the spires of Churches, domes of synagogues, and minarets of mosques orienting the heavens above to rest upon this city on a hill. You enter the gates, and are almost crushed in the throng of tourists, stallsmen, faithful, and locals peddling and bargaining and cheating on the narrow stone streets. Market fronts hung with all bits of marketable nicks and nacks line each passageway in the covered winding maze. Here is where the city converges. Despite being quartered, the old city is the heart where each of these populations, scattered the world over, come to worship, come to tour, come to marvel and pray.





Nathan and I stood amoungst the chosen at the Western Wall at the beginning of the Shabat, the chanting and the praying immersing us as we paid our respects to this, the foundation of millennial hopes and supplications. The sun set, and the families reunited from their gender-separated prayers, and wove there way home. We climbed the Mount of Olives, and watched the lights of the city as the last call to prayer rang out.

Western Wall

Two things amazed me about this city; the Sabbath and the proximity of major sites. On that Saturday Nathan and I wandered through the deserted center streets; all public transportation ceases. Roads are closed off in the Orthodox areas. Most all shops rest as their owners respect a day of leisure, a day of family, a day for appreciating the busy week just had. The city slept as we footed our way through the churches marking many of the most important sites of Christianity. Within a thirty-minute hilly walk lie the Church of the Ascension, the Garden of Gethsemane, Mary’s tomb and location of her Assumption into Heaven, the Via Dolorosa (the way of the cross Christ walked to his Crucifixion), the location of the Last Super, and the Church of the Holy Sepulchre believed to contain Golgotha and the tomb of Christ. Hearing Bible stories throughout my American childhood, I believed the sites of these historic happenings to be quite far from each other. Walking the ancient streets where these events actually transpired, I was touched by a reality of the Bible I had never before imagined.
Jerusalem changes lives. Whether it’s the Jerusalem Syndrome (a documented psychological condition in which people become convinced they are the second coming), or, more typically, the sense of faith which permeates every community populating this crux of a city. Place, land, is more important than opinion, and all politics are birthed from the control of the land, holy to such diversities of faith groups. As a pilgrim on foot, carrying with me each day the beesewax candles to light and a list of names, living and passed, to pray for from my Georgian mother, it was impossible not to be alternated as a paced from Church to Church.