Holy Christian City (Eric Dropkin & Becca Steinman)

JULY 7, 2008

Chapel of the Ascension
Today, we began our tour at the Chapel of Ascension located on the top of the Mount of Olives. The Mount of Olives, where the church is located, is holy for all three monotheistic peoples: Jews, Muslims, and Christians. All believe that the Mount of Olives has a part to play in the return of the messiah. The chapel itself is a beautiful place with a famous footprint located inside the church. This footprint is where some people believe Jesus ascended to Heaven. There used to be two foot prints but it is believed that the other was stolen as a relic. A reason for this is because Christian have made pilgrimages to sites containing relics in order obtain penitence and thereby be relieved of purgatory. In the late 4th century the Byzantines erected the church, but then in the 7th century the invading Muslims destroyed the church. Muslims usually left other holy sights alone but this church was an exception. Then the Crusaders rebuilt the church and later Saladin came into power and turned it into a mosque. You will see the color green all over mosques. This is because the color green represents the prophet Muhammad. The structure of the church is circular and used to have its center open to the sky to allow for Jesus' return to earth, but when it was turned into a mosque, a dome was erected to cover the open space. The building is circular because the holy site is on the inside, whereas in most other churches, the altar faces east; this faces inward toward the holy site of Jesus’ footprint. For more information, see http://www.sacred-destinations.com/israel/jerusalem-chapel-of-ascension.htm

Mount of Olives Cemetery
We continued out tour with the Mount of Olives Cemetery. There are an estimated 150,000 Jewish graves located here, including some dating back to the First Temple period. Between 1948 and 1967 the Jordanians were in control of the Mount of Olives and desecrated the cemetery. They would use the tombstones for building roads and steps. See the tour report The Jordanians even constructed a highway through the cemetery. In the cemetery we looked at the mass grave of the Jews who had held out during the siege on the Old City. Due to not being able to get anything in or out, they had to bury their dead within the city which some consider a huge sin. Later in 1967, their bodies were dug up and reburied in the Mount of Olives Cemetery and given IDF status post mortem. There was the grave of a 10-year-old boy who used his knowledge of the city alleyways to send messages back and forth. We were also able to see graves of soldiers, young and old, even the grave of the Rabbi.

The Jewish Settlers House
After going to the Mount of Olives Cemetery, we continued our tour by going to a neighborhood next door. Within the area of the Mt. of Olives, the houses are almost all exclusively Muslim. We were very lucky to get to see the home of a Jewish settler. The house was bought by a Jewish family in secret using off-shore brokers so the owner could claim no knowledge of the sale of his house to Jews. Whenever a house is sold to a Jew in an exclusively Palestinian or Muslim community, the high price paid for the house is usually accompanied by a plane ticket. This is because if the person selling the house does not flee the country, he can be killed because his neighborhood feels as if selling a house to a Jew is betrayal. In this case, the original owner did not use his plane ticket and he was found stabbed to death 10 days later. The Jewish settlers living there have their own security with guards posted around their home. The State pays for the security that we saw. This dates back to when Sharon was Minister of Housing and decided to pay for protection of Jews who had purchased homes and moved into the Muslim quarter of the Old City. This has translated into the state of Israel paying for all security for families that move into Muslim neighborhoods. We were able to sit and listen to the settler tell us about living in the neighborhood and how important his home is to him. He has one of the best views around! He overlooks the whole Old City and it was a breathtaking sight!

Dominus Flevit Church (The Cry of The Lord)
From the Jewish settler’s house, we continued our Journey down the Mount of Olives until we reached the Dominus Flevit Church. It was used as the second signal point to announce new months. The Pope built church 2,000 years after death of Jesus. He decided on this location because the church is located at the same height as the height of the second temple. Once they started digging they found remains of an early Byzantine church. The mosaics on the floor are intertwined with the originals that they found. The architecture is built to resemble a tear, and it faces west instead of east. Because the church is rarely used, the services are lead by pilgrims and very rarely lead by clergy. Here we also saw old gravesites. When a person died, usually within 24 hours, the body was put in a cave. A year later the bones were collected from the cave and then placed in boxes and buried. We were able to see many of these stone boxes and even a cave where they were found. For more information, see: http://198.62.75.1/www1/ofm/san/TSdomin.html

Garden of Gethsemane
We continued from Dominus Flevit Church to the Garden of Gethsemane (derived from the Aramaic words for "olive press"). The Garden of Gethsemane is located at the foot of the Mount of Olives. This is the place where it is believed that Jesus and his disciples prayed before the night of his crucifixion. This is also where the Church of All Nations was constructed. The church was built by donations by many Christian nations—thus the name. In the church there is no artificial light. The only light that is used is from the windows. Light imitates the sorrow. Here too a Byzantine church was found on the spot they chose and the original mosaics are integrated into the current design. From the Garden of Gethsemane we could see the Golden Gates through which it is believed that the Jewish messiah will walk . However, the Muslims built a cemetery in front of the Golden Gates because it is believed that the Messiah will not be able to walk through the cemetery because it is not pure. Therefore, this should stop the coming of the Jewish Messiah.

Via Dolorosa
We continued our tour by visiting the Via Dolorosa. Many people believe that this is the same path that Jesus walked on his way to his crucifixion carrying the cross on his back. The problem is that the city was destroyed after Jesus walked, so the route is not the same. The path goes through the Muslim quarter, so you have a Christian road surrounded by Muslim buildings. However, there are 9 sites on the Via Dolorosa, which are part of the 14 Stations of the Cross. The other 5 are found where the Via Dolorosa ends, at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Today pilgrims come from all over the world to walk the Via Dolorosa.

Church of the Holy Sepulchre
We concluded our tour by ending at Stations 10-14 at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Here each of the Eastern denominations and the Roman Catholic church (know here as the Latin Church, and represented by the Franciscans) has their own area to take care of within the church. Because of how holy this place is, there are many arguments about territory inside the church. There was a fight over the last step leading up to the room where Jesus was cleaned. However, it is not any domination that holds the keys to the church. It is a Muslim family and the keys have been passed down through the generations. Each denomination holds a ceremony to lock the doors. Because of the issue of territory within the church, in the nineteenth century the Ottomans implemented a status quo agreement, freezing in perpetuity the division of space and responsibilities within the Church. During this time, a group was using a ladder to renovate the outside. Therefore, the ladder was included in the status quo and the ladder is still sitting there today. It is now known as the Ladder of Toleration. We continued by touring the church. Everything was so beautiful with many pieces of art everywhere. We viewed two mosaics near Golgotha (the site of the Cross): both the crucifixion and the binding of Isaac, which Christians view as prefiguring the sacrifice of their Lord. We also saw parts that remained from a Byzantine church. Constantine changed the Roman Empire in the 4th century with the major support of his mother. She at the age of 80 came to search for holy sites of Jesus. She used a mix of faith and politics to uncover the different Christian holy sites. She looked for where pagan statues believing that the Pagans were trying to cover up holy Christian sites. She went into a cave and found 3 crosses. After she placed a dead boy on one of the crosses and the boy was resurrected, she came to believe this is the crucifix that Jesus was nailed to. We were able to see all of the different denominations within the church and were able to marvel at all of the history and beauty. For more information, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Holy_Sepulchre

Biblical Text and Natural Context (Zack Colman)

Biblical Text and Natural Context
3 July 2008, tour leader Barak Zemer
Submitted by Zack Colman

Today’s tour was dedicated to exploring the natural surroundings in the Judean Hills to the west of Jerusalem, and included a visit to the Avshalom Cave (also called Soreq Cave) and the biblical landscape reserve known as Ne’ot Kedumim.

The Stalactite Cave Nature Reserve is a 500-square-meter cave on the western slopes of the Judean Hills outside the city of Beit Shemesh. What would a cave chock full of stalactites and stalagmites have to do with the history of Jerusalem? Aside from the fact this cave has existed long before the time period we’re covering, it has pretty much nothing to do with our course. But we enjoyed it, although I’d venture to say the on-site tour guide, who managed to turn every curve and peak into an important historical figure, had far more fun. It’s interesting to put the time period of the cave and that of Jerusalem into perspective, though. As our regular tour guide Barak has so often pointed out, “America was born yesterday compared to Jerusalem,” but Jerusalem was created just as I typed these last words in comparison to the cave. Jerusalem, a city with thousands of years of history, is just a drop in the bucket compared to a cave that claims formations more than a million years in age.

After the caves, we traveled back to the Land of the Bible when we arrived at Ne’ot Kedumim, the world’s only biblical landscape reserve. The idea here is to link biblical text with natural and agricultural reality. To quote from their website (http://www.n-k.org.il/public/english/what/what.htm): “By reuniting text and context, Ne’ot Kedumim opens up before the visitor Israel's nature as the idiom of the Bible. The symbols, prayers, and holidays of the Jewish and Christian heritage, observed and preserved for thousands of years, blossom in a new and colorful dimension.” Everything here was grown in biblical times, including the seven species that symbolize the fertility of the land promised to the Israelites (Deuteronomy 8:8): wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and dates. We also sampled the fruit of the native sycamores (about the only thing ripe at this time) and the grapes (which, as we found out, were not so ripe… and had seeds). Led by our Israeli guide for the day, Galit (a PhD student in clinical psychology who has been working at the site for ten years), we collected herbs and plants that we were later able to incorporate in the biblical meal we prepared, including hyssop or za’tar) (which we ground up with a mortar and pestle), capers, grape leaves, After hiking about the landscape where we able to see an actual wine press, olive press, and cistern in operation 1700 years ago, we were set the task of preparing a meal over open flame and with minimal supplies. We learned what it was like to prepare a meal, which seemed an arduous process that could consume an entire day. Considering it took up to three hours to make flour, which was done by grinding wheat in between two large, stone circles, blood and sweat probably were significant ingredients to every meal.

Had we been making the meal in actual biblical time, though, it would have been more difficult for another reason. This year is the final year of the biblical seven-year agricultural cycle known as the shemitah (literally, “release”) year. Among the places in the Bible we find the procedures to be followed is Leviticus 25:1-7: "God spoke to Moses at Mount Sinai, telling him to speak to the Israelites and say to them: When you come to the land that I am giving you, the land must be given a rest period, a sabbath to God. For six years you may plant your fields, prune your vineyards, and harvest your crops, but the seventh year is a sabbath of sabbaths for the land. It is God's sabbath during which you may not plant your fields, nor prune your vineyards. Do not harvest crops that grow on their own and do not gather the grapes on your unpruned vines, since it is a year of rest for the land. [What grows while] the land is resting may be eaten by you, by your male and female slaves, and by the employees and resident hands who live with you. All the crops shall be eaten by the domestic and wild animals that are in your land." Thus, in accordance with Jewish law, fields in the Land of Israel must lay fallow. This happens every seventh year, much like Jews rest every seventh day. Nevertheless, beginning in Talmudic times, the Rabbis created halakhic (religious-legal) devices that allowed farms to remain economically viable while still giving heed to the biblical injunction. (For a brief overview of this complicated legal reasoning, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shmita). Luckily, contemporary religious authorities have also found ways to modify this policy because of the economic hardship it would cause the country, but not all farms are in full production. But we aren’t in biblical times, thankfully, because I think preparing a meal in biblical times is something many of us could hardly fathom doing–and then we did it. We didn’t quite make the wheat, grab the water from the cistern or smash the olives into olive oil, but we made everything from scratch and cooked it all over an open flame. It was definitely one of the big highlights of the trip thus far. Marc pointed such exercises are common in the Israeli context as a means of fostering group solidarity and leadership. After all was said and done, we had our biblical meal (all vegetarian, of course). We made everything from tehina to grape leaves to pita and bourekas from scratch. And Eric Mally cut a great watermelon.

It was truly a day to remember.

Jerusalem in Her Glory—The Second Temple Period (Eric Awerbuch)

Jerusalem in Her Glory—The Second Temple Period
2 July 2008, tour leader Barak Zemer
Submitted by Eric Awerbuch

Before beginning our tour of the Second Temple period in Jerusalem, we stopped at the site of a nineteenth-century synagogue known as the “Glory of Israel.” This once prominent edifice was first constructed in the 1860s by Ashkenazi Hasidim, who were starting to move to Jerusalem as a result of the dwindling of the once powerful Ottoman Empire. The synagogue was mostly funded by wealthy European Jews. Unfortunately, when the Jordanians took control of the Jewish Quarter in the War of Independence in 1948 they destroyed the “Glory of Israel.”

The First Temple period ended in 586 B.C.E., on the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av (hence the reason Jews fast every year on that day) when Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed the entire city and exiled the Jews throughout the Babylonian empire. Cyrus of Persia, who conquered the Babylonian Empire, allowed the Jews to reenter the city 60 years later. While many of the elite chose to stay in the Babylonian empire as a result of the strong infrastructure that they established and their comfortable economic standing, a small contingent of Jews eventually reentered their holy city of Yerushalayim and built the Second Temple. Construction began in 535 BCE and the Second Temple was dedicated in 515 BCE. Five centuries later, King Herod (“the Builder”) (73–4 BCE) greatly expands the Temple. (Thus, it is more accurate perhaps to speak of two Second Temples.) This Temple is destroyed by the Romans in 70 CE in the wake of the Jewish revolt against their rule.

The Second Temple period is the time period of the next museum we went to known as the Herodian Quarter. Under the modern Yeshiva constructed by the Israelis after reunification of the city in 1967 there are the remains of wealthy Jewish family homes from 2000 years ago. We learned that the owners of these magnificent Jewish homes from were most likely cohanim (priests). The homes featured mosaic tile, Romanesque carved tables, private baths, and even many private mikvehs (ritual baths). Many of these priests gained their wealth either from corruption or from having a monopoly on the ritual products over whose manufacture they had a monopoly. At one point, the cohanim became so corrupt that bribes were needed in order to become the High Priest.

These priests used many imported goods made of stone, for stone, as opposed to clay, cannot absorb ritual impurity. We also saw graffiti, but not of the usual kind. This graffiti was of the ancient menorah and is the earliest contemporary representation of the menorah used in the Temple. Furthermore, there was a room called a teraklin (from the Greek triclinium), whose origins are in Roman culture, where three people would eat reclining on the floor. We heard a story of a Jew so wealthy, named Miriam, that when she went to get married she asked the rabbis how much she should receive per day from her husband. They suggest 500 gold shekels per day for cosmetics, and she balked at the number and told the rabbis to keep it. As a result of the great corruption and influence that the Romans tried to force upon the Jewish inhabitants in Jerusalem, the Jews revolted against the pagans beginning in 66 CE. The Romans placed the city under siege and living conditions became very difficult. Eventually, on the 9th of Av (again) in the year 70 C.E, the Temple was destroyed, followed by the rest of Jerusalem.

From the traditional Jewish perspective, the Rabbis maintain that the cause for this destruction was that the Jews allowed the Roman culture to become too influential and engaged in baseless acts of hatred between Jews, which is one of the greatest sins in the Jewish religion. To illustrate the point, Barak related to us the story of Kamtza and Bar Kamtza as told in the Babylonian Talmud (Gittin 56): A certain man wanted to throw a party for all his friends, so he drew up a guest list and instructed his servant to send out the invitations. One of the men on the guest list was named "Kamtza," but the servant made a mistake and invited "Bar Kamtza" (literally, “son of Kamtza”) instead. Unfortunately, it turns out that Bar Kamtza and the host were actually dire enemies! When Bar Kamtza received his invitation, he was very grateful to think that the host had finally made amends. But when he showed up at the party, the host took one look and told his servant to immediately eject Bar Kamtza from the premises. When asked to leave, Bar Kamtza said: "I understand the mistake. But it's embarrassing for me to leave the party. I'll gladly pay the cost of my meal if you'll allow me to stay." The host would hear nothing of this, and reiterated his demand to have Bar Kamtza removed. Bar Kamtza appealed again: "I'd even be willing to pay half the cost of the entire party, if only I'd be allowed to stay." Again the request was denied, at which point, the distraught Bar Kamtza pleaded: "I'll pay for the entire party! Just please don't embarrass me in this way!" The host, however, refused to be assuaged and he threw Bar Kamtza out. The rabbis who had observed this exchange did not protest, and Bar Kamtza took this to mean that they approved of the host's behavior. The Talmud reports that Bar Kamtza was so hurt and upset, that he went straight to the Roman authorities and gave slanderous reports of the Jews’ disloyal behavior toward the Emperor. According to the tale, this so fueled the Romans' anger, that they proceeded to attack and destroy the Holy Temple.

After this museum, we went to the site of relatively recent excavations, where archaeologists are revealing new parts of the Western Wall and other outer walls of the Temple Mount from the Herodian period. The Temple Mount was and is still considered by Jewish tradition to be the center of the world. The first person to excavate this area during the decline of Ottoman power in the mid-nineteenth century was Charles Warren of Britain. We saw a contemporary picture in which Warren is sitting upon what appears to be a bench, but turned out to be the beginning edge of gigantic bridge leading onto the Temple Mount. When Herod was rebuilding the Temple, he was limited because the exact dimensions of the Temple are listed in the Torah. Therefore, he decided to built a gigantic platform for the Temple, supported by an extensive complex of underground vaults, and it is this vast area (the equivalent of twenty-seven football fields) that became known as the Temple Mount. To this day it remains the largest prayer compound in the world.

The outer walls of the compound (of which the Western Wall is the only extant remnant) are built all the way down to the bedrock, thirteen levels below where we stood on the level of the Roman street. There are three different sources that we have that have different figures on how long the temple took to build. Josephus, a Jewish Roman historian, claims that it took ten years and 18,000 workers. In the Talmud, the Rabbis maintain that it took only three years. The New Testament claims that it took forty-six years.

Outside of the Temple Mount is a mikveh, one of fifty that have been uncovered so far (there are hundreds more). These were meant to serve the masses of pilgrims who would gather on the three pilgrimage feasts. (According to one tradition, so many would arrive on Passover, for example, that on a single day of the holiday six million people would need to cleanse themselves. A Jew must use a mikveh to purify before ascending the Temple Mount in order to keep the Temple pure. On this same street we saw ruins of stores that existed 2000 years ago where Jews could purchase animals for sacrifice and not risk their being blemished over the course of the long journey. On one of the stones that the archaeologists found there is Hebrew text which states, “This is the house for the sounding of the trumpets before the sabbath.” It appears that at this time period a priest would stand atop the southwest corner of the wall surrounding the Temple Mount and sound a trumpet before the sabbath to alert the population that the holiday is near. Today, there is a modern parallel in the sirens sounded in Jerusalem at the onset of sabbath.

One very cool fact about the outer wall on the Temple Mount is that Herod built it in a very aesthetically pleasing way, with each story indented inward less than one inch so that when one stands underneath the wall it does not appear that it will fall on him. After the Muslims took the city back, they used stones from the Temple to build an eighth-century Umayyad palace outside the wall. The archaeologists have found a staircase just to the south of the Temple Mount where the mass of Jewish pilgrims would enter. (Jesus, as a Jew making the Passover pilgrimage, would most likely tread these very stairs upon when he came from Nazareth). From this staircase there are two sets of mammoth-sized entrances unto the Temple Mount known as the Hulda Gates.

When the Byzantines (Romans after they became Christian in the early fourth century) took control of the city in the 6th century, they kicked all the Jews out and allowed them only to reenter to pray on the 9th of Av, in order to demonstrate that the destruction of the Temple was the fulfillment of Jesus’s prophecy. They turned the area around the Temple Mount into a garbage dump. Real estate became very cheap and the poorest Christians would live in this area. Eventually, in the seventh century the Muslims conquer the city and allow the Jews back, but build the Dome of the Rock on the site of the Temple, in addition to placing the Mosque of Al-Aqsa’ on the Temple Mount.

First Temple—Where it all Began (Emily Adama)

First Temple – Where it all Began
30 June 2008, tour leader Barak Zemer
Submitted by Emily Adama

Summary
We began our first historical tour of Jerusalem by looking at the first time Jerusalem is mentioned in the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. Reading Judges 19, we discover it was mentioned in the story of the Levite and his concubine. At this time it was occupied by the Jebusites and was known as Jebus – a pagan village relatively unimportant in the grand scheme of things. The location of the Jebusite village was low in the valley, off the main road, and was not a strategic location for self-defense. We learn the reason behind its location is a spring at the base of the valley, which served as the only water source for the village. We are left wondering how this rather remote and provincial “Iowa”-type village became the capital of monotheism and the center of religious hope.
To answer this question we turn to the life of King David – the man who single-handedly chose Jerusalem as the Jewish capital and made it a religious center by having his son Solomon build the First Temple there. David is the archetypical Jewish king and according to Jewish belief, the messiah will be his descendant. However, he is by no means depicted in the Hebrew Bible as a perfect human being. We discussed the story of his relationship with Bathsheva, where he viewed her bathing, took her, and sent her warrior husband off to certain death.
We discussed the selection of the site of the Temple and the fact that is was located on the mountain peak above the City of David (cf., those Psalms that begin with “A song of ascents…”) where tradition records Abraham attempted to sacrifice his son Jacob. Being a man of the sword, David himself was not allowed to build the Temple; that task fell to his son (and daughter of Bathsheva), Solomon, who reigned after him and expanded the fledgling empire.
Why did King David choose Jerusalem? As the second king of the united tribes of Israel, David faced the challenge of ruling over the dispersed tribes from his location in Judah. To gain the favor of the other tribes, while keeping a close distance to his home tribe, David chooses Jerusalem, which is at the very northern border of the territory of Judah and at the time, was outside of their control and thus “neutral”; i.e., he wouldn’t be accused of favoritism toward his own tribe, but yet keep close to his power base. We read 2 Samuel 5:1-10 to hear the account of how David drove out the Jebusites to establish his city – the City of David.
We toured the archeology of the City of David to make sense of some biblical passages such as the story of Bathsheba and the “gutter” passage from Samuel. We then examined how the Jebusites, King David, and later King Hezekiah dealt with the problem of having the spring outside the city walls by constructing underground tunnels and diverting the water into the city and we had the opportunity to actually walk through these tunnels that date back more than 3,000 years and discussed their “discovery” by Western explorers, in particular, the American, Charles Warren, who explored here in the 1860s. We also discussed how Warren’s Pier, a near vertical shaft following a natural fissure down to the larger reservoir, which had previously been thought to comprise a place where the Israelites could let down pails to bring up water, was in fact covered by rubble during this period and so could not have been used in this way.
Our tour of the City of David ended with the half-excavated Siloah pool where Jesus healed the blind man and where Jews participated in ritual bathing before ascending to the Temple. We learned of the conflict that arises due to the presence of Jewish and Christian religious archaeological sites beneath Muslim-owned communities. To better understand this tension we spoke with a man from the Arab town of Silwan near the Siloah spring who is part of an association protesting the presence of Jewish settlers in his neighborhood. His perspective rested on the belief that “to dig a tunnel is to kill a village” and he expressed his reprehension for the idea that “stones are more important than human beings.” Afterwards, Barak explained to us some of the nuances of the situation that lead to a more complex understanding, and again return us to theme of myth and reality in the Holy City.

Highlights of the Tour
-Rachel laughing at herself laughing at reading “asses” from the passage in Judges 19.
-Walking through Hezekiah’s Tunnel.