The Rooftops of Jerusalem

It's 10:20 pm and I'm restless.

The world of new Jerusalem is snug in their houses relaxing after their Shabbat meal; they leave the city streets deserted.  I lie in bed, fully clothed and so bored I could slap myself with a pancake. What am I doing in here? It's a warm, crystal clear January evening with a full moon shining out there on those vacant streets: an introverted, day-dreaming wanderer's paradise.

So I go out:  no coat, no cash, no cell phone, no book in my pocket.  Just me and the world out there.

I decide to head north from my apartment, up the hill towards the Jerusalem Theatre.  But the moon is so bright it scorches one's retinas a bit to stare too long and I can't turn my eyes away.  And the man in the moon is unmistakably shining down on the Old City.  I walk just 15 minutes before the light of the moon and the gravity of that place take effect,  I about-face, and once again find myself wandering down through Yemin Moshe, across the valley and, at last, walking - nay, skipping - up the slopes of Mount Zion and toward the ancient gates of that city.

The moon is so luminous from the top of Mt Zion (I lied before, it is waning gibbous, not full) that I decide first to explore the Church of the Dormition, attached to the Greek Orthodox Seminary and holding the Tomb of King David. Of course the actual tomb of David -- if it be that -- is hidden behind a series of locked doors, screened off by ornate partitions with (I am making a guess) various Psalms in Hebrew written upon them, and behind that, a small, stone door through which (again,  I surmise) lies the tomb of the great King.

It's funny.  I've been reading Mark Twain's The Innocents Abroad which has fully redeemed Twain in my eyes after all that Huck Finn nonsense in high school.  It is all that I aspire to be as a travel-writer: informative, reflective, snarky as hell, and deeply American.  For instance, when Twain and his group of about 5 buddies get to Italy, they have endless fun toying with their French guide (whom they are paying far too much for, and whom they call "Ferguson" because they feel it a more apt name than the man's given one).  Here's an excerpt for your enjoyment.  Twain is getting sick of all the blasted art and incessant talk of the "Old Masters":

I never felt so fervently thankful, so soothed, so tranquil, so filled with a blessed peace, as I did yesterday when I learned that Michael Angelo was dead. 

But we have taken it out of this guide.  He has marched us through miles of pictures and sculpture in the vast corridors of the Vatican; and through miles of pictures and sculpture in twenty other palaces; he has shown us the great picture in the Sistine Chapel, and frescoes enough to fresco the heavens-- pretty much all done by Michael Angelo.  So with him we have played that game which has vanquished so many guides for us-- imbecility and idiotic questions.  These creatures never suspect--they have no idea of a sarcasm.

He shows us a figure and says: `Statoo brunzo.' (Bronze statue.)

We look at it indifferently and the doctor asks 'By Michael Angelo?'

'No -- not know who.'

Then he shows us the ancient Roman Forum.  The doctor asks: 'Michael Angelo?'

A stare from the guide. 'No - thousan' year before he is born.'

Then an Egyptian obelisk. Again: 'Michael Angelo?'

'Oh, mon dieu, genteelmen! Zis is two thousan' year before he is born!'

Later on, Twain and his group visit Genoa, and Twain explains how excited the guides there are to secure an American party, for Americans are so in love with any and all things related to Columbus. So Twain and his friends play their game once again when a guide (once again named 'Ferguson' by the American boys) says he will show them a document written by the famed explorer:

 [The guide] took us to the municipal palace.  After much impressive fumbling of keys and opening of locks, the stained and aged document was spread before us.  The guide's eyes sparkled.  He danced about us and tapped the parchment with his finger: 'What I tell you, genteelmen! Is it not so? See! Handwritings of Christopher Colombo! - write it himself!'

We looked indifferent - unconcerned.  The doctor examined the document very deliberately, during a painful pause. - Then he said, without any show of interest: 'Ah -Ferguson - what - what did you say was the name of the party who wrote this?'

'Christopher Colombo! Ze great Christopher Colombo!'

Another deliberate examination.

'Ah - did he write it himself; or - or how?'

'He write it himself! - Christopher Colombo! He's own handwriting, write by himself!'

Then the doctor laid the document down and said: 'Why, I have seen boys in America only fourteen years old that could write better than that.'

'But zis is ze great Christo---'

'I don't care who it is! It's the worst writing I ever saw.'

The guide gets mildly perturbed, but tries once again to show the party a bust of Columbus.

The doctor put up his eyeglass - procured for such occasions: 'Ah - what did you say this gentleman's name was?'

'Christopher Colombo!--ze great Christopher Colombo!'

'Christopher Colombo, the great Christopher Colombo.  Well, what did he do?' 

'Discover America!--discover America, Oh, ze devil!'

'Discover America. No - that statement will hardly wash.  We are just from America ourselves.  We heard nothing about it.  Christopher Colombo - pleasant name - is ... is he dead?'

'Oh, corpo di Baccho!--three hundred year!'

'What did he die of?'

 'I do not know! I can not tell.'

'Smallpox, think?'

'I do not know, genteelmen! I do not know what he die of!'

'Measles, likely?'

'May be-- may be-- I do not know-- I think he die of somethings.'

'Parents living?'

'Im-poseeble!'

'Ah--which is the bust and which is the pedestal?'

'Santa Maria!--zis ze bust! --zis ze pedestal!'

'Ah, I see, I see - happy combination - very happy combination, indeed. Is... is this the first time this gentleman was ever on a bust?'

Twain summarizes the game thus:

There is one remark (already mentioned) which never yet has failed to disgust these guides.  We use it always, when we can think of nothing else to say.  After they have exhausted their enthusiasm pointing out to us and praising the beauties of some ancient bronze image or broken-legged statue, we look at it stupidly and in silence for five, ten, fifteen minutes - as long as we can hold out, in fact - and then ask: 'Is... is he dead?'  That conquers the serenest of them.

Progress through the book to its climax -- the visit to Jerusalem, of course -- has taken me a long time. Not for want of enjoyment in reading it, but because (as is my wont) I've been reading about six other books at the same time.  Which ones, you ask? Lenin in Zürich by Solzhenitsyn (which I have dubbed a Marxist Screwtape Letters. Aren't I clever? Seriously, though - Lenin was a real ass.), The Dialectics of Secularization - essays by Habermas and Ratzinger on reason and religion, Beowulf translated by the late great Seamus Heaney, the collected poems of Robert Browning, and The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware (oh, by the way, Brett - I took your copy of The Orthodox Way by Bishop Kallistos Ware with me to Jerusalem. I hope you don't mind; your wife gave it to me. I'm enjoying your notes in it more than I can say; it's like having you in the seat next to me as I ride the bus to work every morning.  A particular favorite so far: in the margins next to Ware's explanation of the brightness of God's otherness, you wrote "--the luminous numinous".  Dear brother, you are priceless.)

Back to Twain: I'm finally getting to the chapters where he and his entourage of Pilgrims approach the Holy City, and Twain has an excellent sidebar explaining to readers what a shock the scale of Israel (he writes about Palestine, for obvious historical reasons) is to an American.  We grow up reading about the kings and prophets and battles of these lands, about the mighty fortresses of David and Solomon, the great city of Jerusalem, the light on the holy hill - and it's all walkable in about twenty minutes. Naught more than a very condensed, labyrinthian New York City block. Twain explains better than I can:

In a verse from the Bible which I have quoted above, occurs the phrase 'all these kings'.  It attracted my attention in a moment, because it carries to my mind such a vastly different significance from what it always did at home.  I can see easily enough that if I wish to profit by this tour and come to a correct understanding of the matters of interest connected with it, I must studiously and faithfully unlearn a great many things I have somehow absorbed concerning Palestine. ... I must try to reduce my ideas of Palestine to a more reasonable shape.  One gets large impressions in boyhood, sometimes, which he has to fight against all his life. 'All these kings.'  When I used to read that in Sunday School, it suggested to me the several kings of such countries as England, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, etc., arrayed in splendid robes ablaze with jewels, marching in grave procession, with sceptres of gold in their hands and flashing crowns upon their heads.   But here.. the phrase 'all these kings' loses its grandeur.  It suggests only a parcel of petty chiefs ... who lived in full sight of each other and whose 'kingdoms' were large when they were five miles square and contained two thousand souls.  The combined monarchies of the thirty 'kings' destroyed by Joshua on one of his famous campaigns, only covered an area about equal to four of our counties of ordinary size.

But this diminishing of the grandeur - which I confess to having felt on a daily basis when walking in Jerusalem and experiencing it day to day as a city much like countless others I have lived and walked within - this brings a further mystery, which again Twain describes better than I can:

One of the most astonishing things that have yet fallen under our observation is the exceedingly small portion of the earth from which sprang the now flourishing plant of Christianity.  The longest journey our Saviour ever performed was from here [Capernaum] to Jerusalem - about one hundred to one hundred and twenty miles.  The next longest was from here to Sidon - say, about sixty or seventy miles. Instead of being wide apart - as American appreciation of distances would naturally suggest - the places made most particularly celebrated by the presence of Christ are nearly all right here in full view, and within canon-shot of Capernaum.  Leaving out two or three short journeys of the Saviour, he spent his life, preached his gospel, and performed his miracles within a compass no larger than an ordinary county in the United States.  It is as much as I can do to comprehend this stupefying fact.  How it wears a man out to have to read up a hundred pages of history every two or three miles - for verily the celebrated localities of Palestine occur that close together.  How wearily, how bewilderingly they swarm about your path!  

Having read Twain's passage about 'all these kings' just that morning, I was prepared for the smallness of David's Tomb - the humbleness with which one encounters it as yet another small stone passageway among countless others.

I soon left Mount Zion and entered the Old City, winding my way without purpose.  I find this is the only way to walk in the Old City.  You will only become deeply frustrated in that eternal, ancient maze of paths, alleys, stairways and doorways if you have an end in mind; if you let the Spirit guide you, you find yourself in mode of continual discovery.  As it was with me this night.  I was meditating on which path to talk of three, when a mangy feral cat caught my attention by scampering up a shoddy metal ladder to the roof of the house nearest where I stood.  Intriguing... the rooftops of Jerusalem!

I had seen the tunnels under the Western Wall - the level of the city streets in Jesus' day- explored several times the modern-day street level markets and shops...but had not yet seen the Holy City from above.  I climbed the ladder slowly and, to quote Bert from Mary Poppins, "Koo wee, wha' a sigh'..."  It was like discovering the Old City all over again, walking from stone rooftop to stone rooftop. I had a clear view of the many towers and domes of the city - the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was within my reach! And, directly to the south, rising from a haze of sodium-lamplight and surrounded by menacing watchtowers, the Dome of the Rock.

As I stood there drinking in the view, I turned fully to my left and noticed for the first time a guard tower, manned by two Israeli Army men, with guns, not 15 yards away. "Idiot!" I hissed to myself as I dove behind a little stone wall and contemplated my next move.  No way was I getting down from the rooftops until I'd walked as far as possible toward the Dome of the Rock. It's been closed to the public a lot recently, and I hadn't yet stepped foot on the Temple Mount.  It has become my White Whale.

I sneaked along the rooftop until the guard tower was hidden by a little storage shed. There I stood up, and peered around the corner to see if the guards were looking my direction -- for I had to cross in full view of them to get to the next series of rooftops, and closer to the golden dome.  They were looking southward, and so I made my move, and leapt (not unlike a ninja, or panther, I should like to think) onto the next row of roofs and behind another shed.  I was well hidden from this vantage point, and spent a good time above this strange, sacred, small little part of the world.

I don't know how long I stood up there, but all at once I came down to earth again when a mother cat began loud, impatient discourse with her two kittens immediately by my feet.  I don't know if the windows on the guard tower were open -- or if they were, whether or not the sound of howling cats would even evoke the guards' attention - but I decided not to risk it and took reluctant leave of my secret spot above the Jewish quarter.

From there I wandered again to the Western Wall, and stood in the plaza watching both the men and women pray and bow, pray and bow, pray and bow at those stones.  It's funny, but each time I've visited the wall, there have been two lovely white doves perched sleeping on the women's side of the wall, in the very same same spot at dead-center.  There are nooks and crannies alike on both sides, but in my heart I feel that these symbols of peace and of the Spirit naturally choose to sleep amidst the sounds of the women's whispered prayers - where the words of these humble sisters, burdened in ways I cannot understand, quietly escape toward the heavens along that steep, white wall.

The atmosphere of a Shabbat evening as one strolls idly back and forth across the Western Wall plaza, is a hard thing to convey.  It is like the serenity of a deep green wood or standing atop a mountain in summertime, but with a palpable tension undergirding all.  It is wholly silent - yet the silence is thick, as they say.


I was in the middle of trying to describe it all to myself, and failing abysmally, when I realized (a) I had to pee - like, really badly, and (b) it was after midnight, and (c) I had no money for a taxi and would have to walk all the way back to my apartment in the German Colony in order to do something about (a).

And so I went home.  But you can bet your little winter boots I'll be climbing those rooftops again before you can say "chim chim cherie."