5/24 – 5/25/15. Jerusalem
Yesterday, it took me nearly seven hours to traverse forty kilometers of road and endless coils of red tape between Amman and Jerusalem. If not quite on par with the ordeals suffered by medieval pilgrims, I still felt that the experience sweetened my first glimpse of the Dome of the Rock, gleaming over the dull stucco and limestone of the old city. The shared taxi I caught at the Israeli border dropped me at the Damascus (northern) Gate, and I walked around the walls to the Jaffa (western) Gate. I soon found my hotel, ate a quick lunch in my room, and went out to explore this most fascinating of cities.
My first stop was the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, troubled heart of the Christian world. As the reputed (and probably actual) site of Jesus’ crucifixion and burial, the church attracts pilgrims from every corner of the world and Christian sect, each seeking to pray in the place that witnessed the Passion and Resurrection. I suppose that, for those who come to worship, the brick and mortar surrounding the shrines of Calvary and Tomb of Christ are unimportant, or at best incidental; it is the place and what it represents that matter – the promise of the Heavenly Jerusalem, not the sordid realities of its earthly counterpart. Architecturally speaking, however, the church is a mess. It is run by six bitterly antagonistic sects (of whom the Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and Apostolic Armenian churches are the most important), an arrangement that makes maintenance a challenge and repairs virtually impossible. Divided into jealous fiefdoms and cramped by sectarian ambitions, the building is cluttered and dirty, less attractive than the meanest medieval cathedral. In my time there, I found it more rewarding to watch the crowds of pilgrims, who seemed to care nothing for the monument to human pettiness around them, waiting only for their precious moment of contact with the stones on which Christ was crucified and laid. So far as I know, all Christians believe that the efficacy of prayer has no necessary relation to places or objects; in the end, only intention matters. But places catch the imagination in ways no abstract theory of divinity can.
Feeling a need for fresh air after the blended sweat and incense of the church, I decided to walk the walls of the Old City. Mounting the ramparts at the Jaffa Gate, I walked exactly halfway around the circuit, ending at the Lion Gate near the Temple Mount. In the course of my walk, I overlooked the entirety of the Christian and Muslim quarters. Much of the scenery was admittedly uninspiring: dingy backyards, blank walls, unremarkable alleyways, etc. But the few points that allowed a wider view were magical. I especially liked the viewing platform over the Damascus Gate, which afforded a clear view of the Dome of the Rock over a crowded marketplace.
After walking through the Muslim Quarter, I veered south into the Jewish Quarter, and, after passing through a metal detector, soon found myself in the broad plaza before the Western Wall. Although nothing remains of the Second Temple itself, much of the massive platform that supported its outer courts still survives, founded on great stone blocks quarried and carved by Herod the Great’s masons. The famous Western Wall is only a short section of this platform’s western retaining wall. Its significance derives from the fact that it was for centuries the only area near the site of the Temple at which Jews were allowed to pray. Such piety was very much in evidence during my visit to the plaza, which was dotted with Orthodox Jewish men in their black hats and coats, bowing rhythmically in the direction of the temple. A few particularly fervent worshippers were beating their heats against the Western Wall. A short section to the right was reserved for women, whose more colorful clothing stood out against the monolithic gray of the wall.
I ate dinner at a small bistro in the Muslim Quarter, and then followed streams of Haredim back into the Western Wall plaza, which was now almost filled with black-coated men. A festival was underway, and worshippers were streaming through each of the three gates leading into the plaza, many clutching devotional books. Feeling slightly out of place (I was wearing a blue t-shirt), I decided to watch the proceedings from a street above the plaza. From my vantage point, as the last sunlight lingered on the Dome of the Rock, the plaza resembled an unquiet sea, stirred by tides that lapped against and rebounded from the Western Wall.
After a brief visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher early this morning, I spent an hour in the Tower of David, a small castle that occupies the site (and is built partially on the ruins) of both Herod’s palace and the palace of the Crusader kings. It was here that Jesus was tried before Pilate; but thanks to extensive rebuilding, only the base of one tower and the meager foundations of the Hellenistic city wall predate the medieval era. Although some of the towers afforded expansive panoramas of the Old City, the museum housed in their lower rooms had a few too many dioramas for my taste. I was more impressed with my next stop, the Crusader church of St. Anne. Purportedly the birthplace of Mary, the medieval church was actually built atop the ruins of an ancient cistern and healing sanctuary, which survive as a jumble of moss-lined pits and tumbled walls in the churchyard. The church itself is simple but beautifully proportioned, a suitable conclave and monument for the soldier-monks who built it.
Shortly after noon, I took a tour of the so-called Kotel tunnels, a series of excavations along the base of the Western Wall. After winding through the Mamluk vaults beneath the Muslim Quarter, the tour route ran alongside the exposed first courses of the Western Wall, passing along the way one of the gates that once led up to the Temple itself. The stones used by Herod’s builders for the wall’s foundations are among the largest ever quarried, with some tipping the scale at well over a hundred tons. At the platform’s edge, the tunnels ran beneath the foundations and cisterns of the Antonia fortress, Herod’s bulwark against attack from the north. On emerging in the Muslim Quarter, I hurried back to the Western Wall plaza to get in line for the Temple Mount itself, which is only open for an hour in the afternoon. On the broad plaza of the Mount itself, the highlight was of course of the Dome, perfectly proportioned, gorgeously colored, and endlessly photogenic. Tourists are unfortunately not allowed inside, but the experience of being able to walk around such a beautiful monument was itself fulfilling. Less picturesque, but far more entertaining, were the modesty skirts which anyone (male or female) who appeared on the Mount in shorts had to wear over bare legs or shoulders.
After a pleasant hour wandering through the archaeological park along the southwest corner of the Temple Mount, where one can see the remains of one of the great staircases that once led up to the platform. Below, beneath a tangle of Byzantine and Umayyad ruins, the traces of the rough wall and a monumental building tentatively identified as a palace were visible, both dated to the Iron Age and possibly associated with King David himself.
Around four, I began the long trudge up to the Mount of Olives. The valley between Jerusalem and the Mount (variously called Kidron and Jehoshaphat) is filled with Muslim and Jewish cemeteries, sited on the basis of a tradition that those buried here will be the first to rise on the Last Day. Sweating profusely (the temperature was in the upper nineties), I climbed a series of twisting staircases between ranks of white tombs, finally emerging at the famous overlook of the Old City atop the Mount of Olives. The view was indeed spectacular, though my pictures were ruined by the low angle of the sun.
After a minute spend regaining my breath and savoring the view, I walked down a narrow street to the Church of All Nations, which was built with contributions from many European countries (whence the name) at the beginning of the last century in an ancient olive grove traditionally associated with the Garden of Gethsemane. Although the identification of the grove is disputed, it contains some of the oldest olive trees on Earth; a few of the oldest were cored recently, and found to be more than two thousand years old. Tourists are not allowed to walk among the trees (with good reason, as I saw a number of pilgrims trying to pluck leaves), but I sat a while against a wall on the shady brick path that surrounds the grove. The tranquility of the Garden was compromised by two tour groups, one from Zambia (of all places) and another from South Korea; I found refuge in the church itself, which, though modern, features a beautiful mosaic ceiling, framed with stylized olive branches and stars.
In a reflective mood, I walked back to my hotel along the Via Dolorosa, trailing an elderly nun who was dragging an enormous rock toward Cavalry.
