It is a few hours before sundown -less than that, really- and I am sitting in the lobby of Mount Zion Hotel, surrounded by a flurry of activity - families meeting to prepare for shabbat, a great hub-bub of talk, people making last-minute preparations. A father rushes to the bar to buy some milk for his child before the sun sets....
This is the tenor of Friday afternoons here in Yerushalayim. Earlier today, I was in the Machane Yehuda on Jaffa Street, an open-air souk mobbed with people buying provisions for their Sabbath meals - fruit, vegetables, fish, bread, sweets - the peddlars calling out their prices above the general din and press of the crowd. One merchant announces fresh fish for five shekels, whereupon the merchant across the way calls out "Fresh fish - four shekelim!", then the first merchant drops his price even lower. It is capitalism in the raw, in the region where it was invented. The press of the crowd is so great, that it is impossible to be polite; to get anywhere, one must push through, forcefully, with a muttered "slicha" ("excuse me") entirely optional.
Each of us in our party was charged with procuring something at the market for our havdallah picnic, which we will hold tomorrow night in the park below the hotel. My task is to find several dozen rugalachim - preferably chocolate. After checking out several bakery stalls, I find one which has the desirable treats, and wait patiently to be recognized by the vendors - a bad tactic, it seems, for others are constantly pushing to the front and calling out their orders. After a few minutes, I follow suit; I place my order in English, as I cannot at all recall how to say "two dozen" in Hebrew, if I ever knew. Taking the rugalachim, I stuff them into my carry-all, and go off to see what else I can find. Just outside the souk, there is a falafel stand, and since I have not eaten since morning, I order myself some falafel and a coke - I can order falafel in Hebrew, as all you have to do is say "Ken" or "Lo" ("Yes" or "No") as the vendor points to the various ingredients. Thus sated, I make my way around the market, breathing in the scents of spices and baked goods, until I can stand no more of the frenetic crowd and wander back toward Davidka Square, where we are supposed to catch our busses back to the hotel.
Already, many shops have closed; by the huge art deco sundial which dominates the façade of the Beit HaMidrash Zohorei Chai (founded in 1908), it is nearly 3:00 p.m. Crowds wait at the Egged bus-stop, otherwise Davidka Square is nearly empty. I cross the Square to find a news-stand and sundry shop still open, where I buy an ice-cream. Just as I finish my ice-cream, I spot one of our group, Valerie K. She's decided to walk into Mea Shearim, one of the larger ultra-orthodox neighborhoods, and asks if I want go along, and of course, I do. At the entrance to the nighborhood, are signs announcing "No entry for motor vehicles on Shabbos or Chagim". The buildings in the quarter are shabby and even the main streets are littered with waste papers and other trash. Men in black frock coats and women in long dresses, some quite chic, throng the narrow sidewalks. An immensely obese beggar lies sprawled in a doorway, his tremendous belly barely covered by a blue and white shawl which seems to be his only garment - the man must weigh 500 pounds, and I wonder how he has come to such a sorrowful state. Old women beg for alms on the street-corners while all about them, people in their Shabbes finery rush about on last-minute errands. Men in furred strumls and silken robes stroll past, deep in conversation. Down the back alleys, laundry hangs to dry in the harsh Jerusalem sun. We see a little boy washing down his family's marbeled patio ... We stop in an open shop selling various religious articles, and browse a bit, then make our way back up to Jaffa Street, where we hail a taxi back to the hotel (making sure to tell the driver to turn the meter on!).
There's a word in Hebrew, Balagan, which means -roughly- a big, crazy mess - chaos. In a way, that's what Friday afternoons in Yerushalayim look like - a Balagan Gadol before the sun sets and the Sabbath Queen spreads her wings of peace over the city and the Land.
We visited Yad VaShem in the morning - a powerful testimony in stone, in iron, in fire and living trees.
Silence.
Emotions beyond words.
Hope that lies beyond all hope.
Perhaps the most moving section is the Children's Memorial, through which the rest of the park is best approached. One enters by a gate of rough stones. Iron rebars pierce the top of the gate's arch in a jagged row. Next, one sees the faces of children projected onto a wall, and then - darkness. One enters a chambre of darkness and light - in reality, there is just one candle burning somewhere in the center of the chambre, but through a series of mirror that single flame is reflected over and over again, so that the dark room seems filled with infinite candles, infinite flame. It is as if one were cast into the void of outer space - the lights, stars, surround us in the dark void, above, below, and on all sides. This has the effect of completely disorienting the viewer until one knows not how one came into this place nor how one may leave it again. One is quite lost, standing in one Place of infinite shadow, infinite light.
The rest of the park is almost anticlimactic, for none of the other monutments can match the impact of the Children's Memorial. Just outside that memorial is a stark iron sculpture dedicated to Janusz Korczak, the head of the Warsaw Ghetto Orphanage, who chose to go with his charges when they were deported to Treblinka to perish, though -as a world-reknowned educator- he might easily have saved himself. Our tour guide, Yitzhak, stops before this monument and begins to speak at length about the Holocaust, but he is interrupted by another tour-guide who wants us to move along so his group can take pictures. It is an embarrassing moment; Yitzhak tries to assure the man that we won't be much longer, but the other then denounces him as "very rude". So, we move along, passing a tall spire of iron, and entering the Hall of the Eternal Flame. Just outside that Hall is a broad plaza, and at the end, a pair of bronze bas-reliefs which memorializes the resistance fighters. One relief shows Jews in traditional shtetl garb being herded onto boxcars; the other relief, in a very heroic mode, shows young Jewish Partisans, tall, muscular, and seeming to almost burst from the surrounding walls into life.
Everywhere, there are olive trees planted to commemorate the Righteous Among the Nations - gentiles who acted to save Jewish lives, some who are famed, such as Raoul Wallenberg, other -most- who otherwise lived lives of quiet anonymity. People have placed stones in the branches of the trees, in the way that Jews place stones on a grave, as a mark of repect. There are hundreds of these trees, each one commemorating a life lived bravely out of simple decency. Ruth P comments that, in the mid-day sun, these olives shelter us as did once those in whose names they were planted. I am in tears.
A bit further down the hill, there is an eery exhibit - a single train-car on a length of track jutting out from the hillside, so that the car seems suspended in mid-air, the track ending abruptly with nothing beyond but sky. We make our way down the hillside on foot, to the Valley of the Communities. Here, great blocks of stone have been assembled on a kind of make, and on the blocks of stone are graven the names of all the Jewish Communities that were destroyed during the Holocaust. From the air, we are told, this maze is actually a map of Europe. Most of the members of our group wander about the maze, trying to find the name of the community from which their pown ancestors came; I have no such community to search for, so I go inside the small exhibit hall there to escape the heat. Eventually, I go back outside, where we hold a simple ceremony to mark our visit, consisting of some brief readings, and a recitation of the Kaddish.
We then go back inside the exhibit hall for some debriefing in small groups, before boarding our busses again and departing. the discussion in the group I join, actually, centers around how difficult it is to verbalize our reactions to this place and the events it memorializes. Words fail us when we are confronted with the Tremendum Horribilis that is the Holocaust. Indeed, there's a long-standing debate within the field of literature - one on hand are those who, like Elie Weisel, insist that we must write about the Holocaust, that Humanity should never be allowed to forget it. But, there are those who say that after HaShoah it is impossible to write any more, that there is nothing which can be written that does not somehow cheapen the deaths of those who were slain. The late poet, Paul Celan, a survivor, wrestled particularly with this dichotomy, yet kept writing, trying through words and the remaking of words to come to understanding. I don't know if he succeeded, for he committed suicide before he turned fifty. Edmond Jabés, the Egyptian expatriate, came down squarely on the side of the Book as an aide to remembrance, the Word as a means of transcending the horror. And I think this is where we need to stand, else it is all for nought.
Now, it is evening, and as the sun begins to sink toward the western horizon, we board our busses at the Hotel and ride the short distance to the Damascus Gate. This is the gate through which the Israeli Army re-entered the Old City during the Six-day War; the façade is pocked with bullet holes. A large iron mezuzah, black and shapeless, is bolted on the side of the ancient gate. We walk in and turn onto Habad street, passing the Cardo, and then crossing Ramban Square before ascending a series of stairs to reach a small terrace overlooking the Western Wall. Thre, we hold our Kabbalat Shabbat service - not only does Israeli law prohibit us from holding egalitarian services, with men and women praying together, in the Kotel Plaza, but had we attempted to do so, we would probably have been mobbed and physically attacked by the Haredim who control the square, even on Shabbat, for they would believe the abomination of men and women audibly praying side by side outweighed the potential abomination of violence on the day of rest! So holding our service in sight of the Kotel, but outside the main plaza is the next best thing to praying at the Wall.
Below us, we can hear the rise and fall of hundreds of (male) voices in prayer - the Haredim, in black clothing, swarm about the Wall, seeming from the distance like so many ants. There are many different sects and congregations intermingled there, each following their own pace (in some cases, their own nusaf ), for as seemingly monolithic as their fundamentalism may be, the haredim are a diverse group! Occasionally one minyan or another begins a rousing ngun and we can see them dancing in a circle, hear the notes of their ngunim. So, of course, we closed our own service by linking arms and dancing together, men and women, to a popular Schlomo Carlebach ngun, in momentary solidarity with our brothers in black below. L'Shalom HaBeit Israel HaKol.
We then make our way through the narrow streets and out beyond the walls. It is only then that I realize that our busses are no longer waiting for us. Of course, it's Shabbat - We are going to walk back to the Hotel, which in itself is no great thing, it being less than a mile in the cool of the evening. However, without thinking, I have left my carry-all, with journal, camera, and some medications, on the bus! This perturbs me, but there is nothing to be done, for I discover that there is no way to recover the bag until Sunday morning - It's a good thing I didn't leave my passport in the bag as well!
Anyway, we walk back to the Hotel, where we
are served a Sabbath evening meal, and by then it is after 10:00
p.m., and so to bed.
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