EGAD

Eye of the Storm

Moonrise over Jerusalem. 2004:10:22 16:37:41 (IST from now on)

One of my major non-work projects is now complete, but I'm not going to talk about that right now. I have some time to post here, though.

Jerusalem. It's a name that evokes any number of associations. As can be seen in numerous medieval maps, it was once regarded as the physical center of the world. The place is steeped in faith and conflict and most of all time. Contradictions abound, and time itself provides the sharpest of them. Although Jerusalem was the ancient royal capitol of a minor kingdom when Rome was founded, and merits a mention in Egyption records centuries before the fall of Troy, the city is on the whole much younger than most old cities of Europe, never mind the Middle East. Waves of civilization and warfare have crashed over this place, and conqueroring armies have razed it to the ground at least three or four times. Perhaps because so few would want to live in such an unstable place, Jerusalem was a fairly small town from Roman times until influx of Jewish settlers that arrived with the Zionist movement.

But so far, we're relying on my knowledge of history. Now I've been there, briefly. Allow me to relate.

A typical scene on the western outskirts of Jerusalem, a half-mile or so north of Hebrew University and the government complex. 2004:10:22 16:32:37

My advisor offered to show me around, as he had a short meeting to attend Friday afternoon. The drive from Rehovot to Jerusalem is something I'll have to document another time, when I have a more developed sense of how to get around. It's worth observing, as my advisor repeatedly pointed out, that as the highway winds up into the low dry mountains of the West Bank, the last few miles thread a corridor of Israel proper only a couple of miles wide. During the 1948 war, the Israelis made a special effort to capture the city, driving a wedge deep into Jordanian territory to reach it. As a reminder of the cost, they left various ruined armored vehicles behind to rust along the highway.

Top: a standard street sign in the three official languages of Israel; Bottom: some graffiti in Hebrew which I think deals with Sharon. 2004:10:22 16:33:11 and 16:36:44

A reasonably detailed map of the modern city can be found here; I found it quite helpful to trace out where I'd actually been. Following the "Library" link from that page leads to, among other things, a quite thorough collection of maps relating to Israel. However, I haven't been through the site as a whole, so I make no claims regarding whatever other documentation it might host or claims it might make.

The outskirts of Jerusalem, somewhat depressingly, remind me strongly of El Paso: a modern city trying to look old as it sprawls along the main highways between the feet of arid mountains. However, there are plenty of images like these signs and graffiti to keep me feeling suitably alien. (A side note: I've studied various Romance languages quite a bit, and in the past Spanish has been the major foreign language to which I've been exposed; living in a country where I have absolutely no idea what things say is a new one for me.)

This fortress is the Knesset, seat of the Israeli government, as seen from across the parking lot, which is as close as they'd let me get. 2004:10:22 17:01:10

So my professor and I arrived at the Renaissance Hotel for his meeting; he assured me that West Jerusalem is harmless, I told him I'd see him in an hour, and we parted ways. If you're following along on the map I linked to, the hotel is somewhere around Qiryat Moshie, near the main highway in the northwest finger of town. Having only a general notion of my location, I figured I'd need to walk southeast to find anything interesting, which I proceeded to do along the major road that happened to be going that way.

The giant menorah across from the Knesset, just outside the public park. 2004:10:22 16:59:41

Turns out this road was a fortuitous choice for a quick sightseeing jaunt, for as you can see from the map is winds south between Hebrew University and the government zone. Eventually I hit a sign directing me to the Knesset, which I believe is the name of both the Israeli legislature and the fortress-like building in which it convenes. As it happens, they don't let you get especially close to the building. Actually, I believe the soldier who let me into the parking lot was under the impression that I wanted to see this gigantic menorah, and it seemed easiest not to argue with that. The park behind the fence is a wide green space separating the Knesset from the Supreme Court building; it would be the Washington Mall if only it were a great deal flatter. On my way back to the hotel, I hiked to the top of the hill in the park, where I found what I can only assume is an official helipad, and took a panorama. Once I've stiched it together somewhat, I'll see about posting it, but in the end it isn't terribly interesting.

Looking back on Jerusalem from the observation point on Mt. Scopus. 2004:10:22 18:05:35

Night had fallen by the time my advisor's meeting ended, and he was a bit crestfallen that I'd managed to find the Knesset all on my own, but he had a couple of sights to show me, anyway. The first was the building on the University campus that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls -- it looks like a clove of garlic, if you ask me. I can't say that I see the wisdom in housing all manner of irreplacible antiquities in a city as volatile as this one. Strikes me as positively inviting Daniel Hillis's prophecy to come true. But, many relics of ancient times as there are here, perhaps its just not worth the trouble. And there's politics, no doubt.

Driving through the center of town, there's no way to tell when you've crossed into Palestinian East Jerusalem. But when you hit the walls of the Old City, you're there. (Another aside: they're not all that old. The Roman city walls were demolished during the Crusades, and rebuilt by the Ottoman Sultan Suleiman in the 16th century. Check out the handy timeline.) From there, it was up to Mount Scopus in the northeastern corner of the city, from which the central city is laid out before you. From this vantage I took the time exposures above and below. If you count the Western Wall, purported last remnant of the Second Temple (ca. 500 BCE), you have here the result of 2,500 years of construction and roughly continuous habitation.

Zoomed in section of the above photo, highlighting a portion of the Old City wall, the temple mount, and the Dome of the Rock.

Two distinct phenomena stood out from my lookout point, as the night began. In the Jewish neighborhoods, cars had vanished from the streets with the beginning of Shabbat (from which we obtain our word, Sabbath). On the other hand, in the Arab neighborhoods bottle rockets were going off and music was breaking out, celebrating the end of the day's Ramadan fast.

We almost got in trouble with the former, actually, on our way out of town. Perhaps overeager to show me where he once lived, my advisor accidentally drove us straight into one of those othodox Jewish neighborhoods. Officially, the road was closed, but since it would be labor to put up a barrier or something, there's not much indication of that fact. Since it was a major artery that had been open just moments before, I think this system could probably use some work. So our first clue that we were out of place was the squeaky sound of young children shouting at us. "Shabbaz! Shabbaz!" -- the Yiddish form of Shabbat. Which means that we were obviously bad Jews for being out on the roads after the sundown. Not being a Jew, this doesn't much bother me, but it's always poor form to flaunt local religious custom, especially since I've heard the older kids will forego the shouting and just throw rocks.

On the short drive back through the central city, I probably saw all of the major forms of traditional orthodox Jewish attire. The Hasidics I recognize from New York, but I'd be hard pressed to come up with the names of any of the others.

My advisor called Jerusalem the heart of a storm, and I find the metaphor apt. The tranquility is deceptive; much of the violence spiralling around the globe these days can be traced back to the invisible lines criss-crossing and dividing this city. Here the tensions are more subtle. The fact that you can pick out Arab and Jewish neighborhoods from the top of a mountain. Or that there are places in Jerusalem where my Israeli advisor is afraid to drive, although he says I'd be fine, just a foreigner and a benign source of income. And perhaps most insidiously, the patchwork of new lights visible from the east-facing side of Mount Scopus, looking into the West Bank. They'd almost all appeared since his last visit, settlements like weeds spreading over the hillsides around Jerusalem in a desperate land grab against the chance that peace does come.