The Old Will Be Renewed

Day #8 –

Our day began with a drive to the outskirts of Jerusalem to visit the Chagall windows. The entrance to the windows which adorn the hospital’s Beit Knesset is through the hospital. For a moment the reality of our touring hit home. Here we were a group of 15 looking out the windows of a tour bus while pointing to historical sites and points of interest. Then we walk into a hospital where the elevator that is going to take us to our next visit is also carrying medical professionals and patients needing care. It was jarring and also a real reminder that Israel is not an archeological site to be discovered and studied for its layers of history alone. It’s a breathing, feeling, and living place too.

The windows were made even more beautiful by the exceptional guide. In addition to an expert description, we all learned that some of the windows were damaged from bombing. So, Chagall repaired them himself, and today there is a protocol to sandbag the windows whenever there is a threat of an attack. Most remarkable is that the sandbag duties fall on teenagers. How amazing is this country and people that would take great lengths to protect some artistic glass when it’s under threat?

We made our way back into the center of the city for our next stop, Yad L’Kashish.


http://www.lifeline.org.il/shop/front/category.asp?CategoryContains=3&ShopID=60

This was a real highlight for everyone on the trip. We were introduced to the organization by Rabbi Elyse Goldstein, a Rabbi who runs Kolel – a liberal learning institution in Canada – who was on sabbatical for the year. Yad L’Kashish, which means Lifeline for the Elderly, offers relevance and meaningful relationships to the elderly of Jerusalem. Elderly individuals from all walks of life are welcomed into the studios where they are employed to make high quality hand-crafted Judaica. The people are given meals throughout the day, additional health-care to what the State cannot totally offer, and joyful companionship. Nothing demonstrated this more profoundly than the two Ethiopian men we saw tying Tzitzit as a team when we walked through the workshops. There were smiles abound and a real sense of purpose for their task at hand that inspired us to go to the gift shop and support their efforts! 30 % of the proceeds from the gift shop go to the organization to ensure the elderly community is not forgotten.

We returned to the Old City for a more formal tour of King David’s Tomb, the Cardo and the Southern Wall excavations. We had so much fun at Yad L’Kashish that our time was limited in the Cardo, but we had plenty of time to eat at Jerusalem’s, nee Israel’s, best hamburger at Burgers Bar.

The Davidson Center and the Southern Wall excavations fill in the blanks for so many of us about the Old City of Jerusalem. There is an incredible virtual tour of the Temple Mount that allows you to imagine what life must have been like when the Temple was fully functioning. Our personal joy was seeing the UCLA logo in the upper right hand corner of the computer screen to acknowledge the technology for displaying the virtual Temple Mount was develop right here in LA! When you consider the Temple Mount is built to potentially accommodate 300,000 people, you get a better sense of how awesome the Temple must have been like in its heyday. After the model reveals the many new discoveries from their recent excavations, we were given some time to wander the ruins.

Besides knowing that the Southern Wall has become the choice location for non-Orthodox religious cermeonies, from B’nai Mitzvah to holidays, the notion that the Western Wall is not the only sacred space for Jews anymore was totally enlightening and somewhat discomforting. One could argue that the southern steps should be more sacred since they are the entryway into the Temple mount. Once you recognize that the Kotel is a retaining wall of the original Temple, it is a little more difficult to comprehend the devotion and attention it receives when you compare it to the other spaces we’ve now uncovered, including the Western Wall tunnels where they’ve purportedly located the closest proximity to the Holy of Holies.

Nevertheless, we finished our day with pictures in front of the Kotel as our group continued to celebrate our successful pilgrimage to Jerusalem.