This is the olive column sculpture/statue/project at the kibutz, Rammat Rachel, or Rachel's Kibutz. It sits ontop of a hill on the edge of Jerusalem and an Arab village. From this place you can see a good chunk of that Judean desert. The trip to the columns happened thanks to a suggestion by Oren. He thought that I might dig the spot, I can't agree more, I mean I was in love up there. It was the first and only time I felt truly alone anywhere in Jerusalem. The city is shit! Yeah, I said it, the city is a pile of shitty stones that 2000 years of civilization have shat upon and created the mess that it is today. A bedouin cab driver might've said it the best: "the orthodox make the war, Arab and Jew." I think he might have a point, really, now don't get me wrong, I love Jerusalem, I really do, I mean I really enjoyed my time there and hanging out with Oren, but after today's drive through Maah Shaarim, the ultra orthodox neighborhood, I've decided fully, I hate them, I really do. Maah Shaarim is about as much a part of Jerusalem as Xanadu is a real place in the Coleridge's poem. It is an ugly ugly corner of the city where Ashkenaz Haceedes have settled and recreated a 200 year old Polish ghetto. There are signs over the arch ways that lead to the courtyards of these insular communities that forbid unmodestly dressed women from entering. The people within these walls do not serve in the army but demand the greatest protection. It seems like a bum rap for the average Israeli, if you ask me, who pays their stipends from the government for being holy and spending their days by the wall praying, not serving in the army, and having demonstrations, somewhat as potentially violent as across the line in that other Palestine, about the Meshiach, who according to prophecy will never arrive until there's a new temple. Well to build the temple on would have to obliterate Al Aqsa Mosque and the absolutely beautiful Dome of the Rock. Sounds like a plan no? Only the dome is the 2nd holiest site, behind Mecca, in all of Islam. Funny how it landed right here, in the middle of this mad mad city. It's a lovely city really, I mean dirty like any other major city, confused streets and what not, but lovely, except not. Let's think about this really... the rabinic movement, from what I've read in history, sprang up as a response to the destruction of the 2nd temple in 53 c.e. At this point the priesthood of ancient Jerusalem was effectively whiped out, thus new leaders were necessary and a group of "teachers" or rabbis took the reigns. This changed the fundamental face of Judaism. Another change came in the codification and preservation of commentary on the Torah in the form of the Mishna and Gemorah. This happened about 100 years after the destruction of the 2nd temple during an insurrection that left many of the Judeans dead in the wake of Roman reprisals. I've deviated from my original point, but if the Priesthood died and gave way to this new form of Judaism and heirarchy within, why the desire for the meshiach, he can't come unless there's a temple and a priesthood to welcome him as prophecy goes. This would end the rule of the Rabbis, wouldn't it? Or, do the Rabbi's become the new millenium's priests? Hm... I don't know, but I know that there'd be someone who would would stand to benefit from an all out war over the temple mount. That's for certain, cause that's the only way you get to build a new temple, is to get rid of what's there. Besides, what is the meshiach coming to deliver the jews from?

Ok, enough pontificating and back to my tales... so on my second visit to the wall, this was the next day after Oren took me of a night time tour of Jerusalem... I stopped and bought a kippa from Kippa Man, a shop, realy, I'm not lying, just down from Zion Square. He had a lovely selection, and I didn't care for the paper Kippa that kept falling off my head. So I figured I might as well add it to my walking kit of supplies that I'm going to refer to as my Jerusalem Survival Pack:

-Kippa or Yarmulke
-Pop out map of old city (know your quarters)
-Cigarettes & lighter (non child proof... yeah!)
-Coinage in the pocket
-Sense of direction
-Lonely Planet guide
-Camera and tripod
-Something to chew
-A sense of humor about these things
-Steinbeck, he reads well abroad.
-Warm Jacket, hat and scarf... just 'cause for the last one...

So as I approached the wall a bearded man sprang forth and said "Anglit? English?"

"yes, I speak english, do you speak russian?"

"No, hebrew and some anglish" smilling

he stuck out his hand and took hold of my slightly unwilling hand, the last time I gave my hand, a fat bearded man tied a red string to it and demanded money.

"blah blah blah (<---insert Hebrew prayer if at all here) Are you married?"

"No"

"well you should get married as soon as possible and have as many children as possible"

"Thanks, but I like where I am."

"Would you like to donate some money to the poor of Jerusalem?"

"No thanks, I'm a student, I'm poor." while wrenching my hand free of his grip and the eyes of his two pesa wearing children clustered around him. I glanced down at his shoes and noticed that they were some sort of dark Italian, and expensive something or other. He himself didn't have pesa, and the rest of his garb was, almost humble and even a little unkept, as if it was all sort of intentional. Yeah, it was at this point that my fascination with these quakers that will stone you for driving through their hood during shabat completely faded and became an active disdain.

Still, I truly didn't want this to deter me from enjoying what is otherwise an amazing city. The three most popular tourist attractions in Israel are Yad Va-Shem (holocaust memorial), the Wailing Wall and Masada (which I saw this morning.)



Now Yad Va-Shem is a truly amazing piece of memorium... I found it far more gripping and fascinating, and less disneylandish than the holocaust memorial in DC, I hate that one, avoid it at all costs. If you want to see something done well with both an impact and a sense of subteltey about it then go see the glass towers in Boston, those are lovely and poignant. However, Yad Va-shem... well even I felt a little weary in the heart by the end. The building is a giant triangle with rooms radiating off. You start at what is the beginning, a series of burned documents found on some victims, photos, remnants of their earthly life. From there you go back in time exploring historic examples and laws that formed the 20th century basis for anti-semitism, there are artifacts dating back to the medieval ages, and earlier, examples of laws that prevented Jews from holding office, barring them from living in certain places etc. etc.

The path of history weaves in and out of he main hall of the triangular building, the ceiling of which is a long piece of sectioned glass. As you weave left and right across the triangle, always advancing, you move rom the early 30s to 1938 and Kristallnacht, then the invasion of Poland, France and finally the all out war after Hitler decides he canfight the Russians in the East and the British and American's on the western front. You weave in and out of Warsaw and learn the history of the liquidation of the ghetto and the uprising which caught the Nazis off guard as Jewish rebels refused to go peacefully into that good night and fought in the ghetto until it was set on fire to root them out. From there it becomes ever more grizzly and you learn names that you never knew before, stories, video monitors present testimony, pictures drawn on 60 year old wax paper of ghostly figures standing in long lines of prison fatigues, already the walking dead, act as silent witness.

There's a model toward the end of the path, before the circular room of testimony, that Claude Lanzman used in his epic documentary, Shoah. I remember how well it was used in the film to demonstrate a kind of tragedy that can't be truly understood, or as Giorgia Agamben said, in Remnants of Auschwitz, to truly bear witness is to have perished in that place, so the witness isn't a true witness per say but a kind of leftover memory that hasn't come to the point of witness as it hasn't died. Death is the witness all others are survivors. Witness the act of survival, I suppose, that's a way you can look at it. Anyway, i don't want to talk about Agamben, he's problematic, but he came to mind when I began to think about Lanzman. There are snippets of Jan Karski's testimony in Shoah, he snuck into the Warsaw ghetto before its liquidation. He was working for the Polish government in exile as a courier and tried to warn people then of what was happening. He took a piece of that prison out with him hoping to rally sympathy that would turn into action, but that came too little too late for many...



You step outside and take flight. The image above is of the flight that you take, your spirit soars, perhaps in nothing more than sympathy, for the experience, and is liberated and perhaps rejoined with a lost relative/ancestor. The concrete walls of the complex become a kind of ramp from which you can fly and gaze out on the world outside. It's a really beautiful moment you can have there at the end, well planned I think.



The hall of names is a series of photographs over a hole in the ground, the circular room is surrounded by pages and pages of testimony from the survivors and their families. There are empty shelves, the book isn't closed per say, and there are stories to be collected about those that perished, stories about a civilization nearly destroyed and wiped out completely.

However, the one that really got me, was the children's memorial:



This one really cuts to the quick. You down a path and into a hallway that gets really dark really quick. Then into a room which is filled with candles and mirrors where you walk in a circle, as a voice reads the names of children killed in the holocaust in English and Hebrew. This one just sends chills up your spine, while the pseudo night of that room brings peace at the same time. It is a really moving and beautiful piece of work. Nothing can ever be enough for those that perished, and these things are really for the living, I'm not sure that they have a point at all, maybe Aeschylus said it best in his play, The Persians: "Death is long and without music."

New Year in Jerusalem was a mellow event. Oren and I met in the early evenning and travelled to Tanya's, class mates of his from the architecture program. We had some beer, some honey pepper vodka, a few cigarettes some laughs and then left to meet Sharon at the flat in Nachlot. From there it was off to this couple who live up the street for a quick l'cheim and a spot of Chocolate fondue and then off to Pacotek, a moving party, which was happening in some theatre. Well, we stood in line for about a half hour waiting to get in, to no avail. The party was effectively full and the door was shut. We rang in the new year in line, I called my folks, and we continued to wait. All of a sudden, something caused the entire crowd to turn around to the street behind us... a car came speeding by and someone from the window screamed "Allah Aqbar!!!!!" at full volume... this gave me an instant chill, but nothing came of it, just that moment, eh... I figure I have no room to complain or even express fear. I don't live here, and the tension that is in the air in Jerusalem is lived with by others on a day to day basis, so I don't feel quite right in saying it was a nervous moment, it was a moment that's not part of the quotidian as I know it. we left the line and took a cab back to down town and found a bar where we toasted the New Year, Oren got drunk off 1 beer and 1 chaser, yeah, shots are chasers, i know, it's completely backward, but Nili says this of the country all the time, so I'm ok with repeating it... so chasers are shots, and you chase your beer with the shot... wooooo....

Last day in Jerusalem was a blast and also the universe telling me it was time to go. The night before we tried to go eat Rachmo, it was closed, then we went to another place for the Kube soup, they had just served their last bowl... it was getting depressing this just out just closed thing... oh yeah, the Jerusalem mix place, up the street in Nachlot, relative died, family went to Greece, denied again... I might've mentioned this below, I can't remember now. So The museum, the National Museum in Jeruslame, with the dead sea scrolls, yeah, that was closed for the morning when I arrived. So I packed it up, after calling Oren and telling him G-d wants me out of Jerusalem, and headed to the gate at the Western Wall, I walked down the road into east Jerusalem and down to the garden of Gesthemene with the thousand plus year old olive trees, gorgeous I tell you, gorgeous... they'll be up shortly, so check back for infra red pics.

The church in Gesthemene was having mass so I stood around for a bit and watched it... Too many people were coming in and out to setup the tripod and take a picture, its not an old church, rather new actually, there's a Russian orthodox one above it up the slope of the mount of olives with golden domes, quite lovely and just on the other side of the road from the garden and the ancient olive trees, supposedly bearing witness to Jesus, (consequently, did you know that Olive trees can live forever? they only way to kill them is to uproot them and burn their roots, otherwise they're kind of like turtles... well, sorta, or redwoods, there, more like redwoods... giant ones) there's a grotto and sepulchre which is where Mary is supposed to have died, now we all know that she's burried in paris at the Louvre, the Da Vinci code told us as much... right? It too is a lovely place to walk down and pics are coming as soon as I have time to work on them....

Oh but realy quickly, on my last day, this was after the shlep to the olive trees etc... I went to the Shook, market, with Oren and Sharon, we made the Rachmo place, fantastic... and then they too me to see this Yemenite, the local witch doctor. People come with all kinds of problems, he gives them village remedies. He makes a kind of juice of herbs and roots, it's interesting stuff, can't say its great, but its not bad. He asked to see my hands when I came up to him, then he started putting stuff on them... he must've sensed I hate lotion... cause he made me put it on... and the smell of his home made lotion lasted with me all day long, not terrible, but not my favorite scent in the world... still, he was an amazing guy, you could just tell, there was something about him... realy.

I think I'm going to end this here, and tell the rest of the tale, which includes a soak in the Dead Sea and a trip up to Masada, another day, fingers are tired and I want to relax a bit before we head out to see a show tonight: the Israeli version of stomp... May Umana...