Del. Sandy Rosenberg's 2003 Israel Diary

 

I returned today from a ten-day trip to Israel that was sponsored by the Baltimore Jewish Council.  Most of the people in our group are political and community leaders, first-time visitors, and Christian.

 

I did the typical tourist things.  I walked up Masada.  I walked down the steps of a church and felt like I was descending into the darkness of the Middle Ages when the church was built - over what is believed to be (but probably isn't, our guide said) the tomb of Mary.

 

But this diary is not an account of everything I did and saw.  Instead, it discusses the special moments or insights of each day.

 

Saturday, October 25 - Photographic Odyssey

 

A family standing in front of the Western Wall.  Slushy snow on the streets of Mea Shearim, a religious neighborhood in Jerusalem. 

 

But the family is posing in front of a big photo of the Wall, on display at a Jewish Community Center in Suffolk County, Long Island.  And it's not unseasonably cold in Jerusalem.  To the contrary, yesterday's high was 91 degrees. 

 

Brooklyn is where I am today, viewing, pondering, and laughing at The Jewish Journey: Freedeeric Brenner's Photographic Odyssey of the Jewish Diaspora in over forty countries, on exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.

 

Some other photos of note: The Jewish peddlers of religious artifacts and trinkets in St. Peter's Square in the Vatican; they have the exclusive licenses to do it.  Jewish women in the former Soviet Union, who all look like Mrs. Khrushchev.  The twelve impersonators who all look like Groucho Marx; I think one was a woman. 

Most poignantly, the photos of families in the Diaspora, next to photos after they've made aliyah (emigrated) to Israel. 

 

Very much worth seeing, whether or not your next day is in Jerusalem.

 

Sunday and Monday, October 26 and 27 - First Time Seen

 

I am undergoing the security check at the El Al ticket counter in Newark:

 

Is this your first trip to Israel?  No.

 

How many times have you been?  Nine, counting this trip.

 

Do you speak Hebrew?  No.

 

Do you have family in Israel?  No.

 

The Israeli security guy was puzzled but let me through.  Perhaps I should have said to him what I said to everyone on our bus as we ascended the mountain unto Jerusalem from Ben Gurion Airport. 

 

Some of us have been here before, but for many of us this is our first time in Israel.  If all that      you do on this trip is look out upon the Old City of Jerusalem - see it, hear it, and feel it, and           then turn around and go home, your trip will have been worthwhile. 

 

The view this time is different for me than it has ever been before - from the south, instead of the east.  We are on a promenade at the site where Abraham first looked out upon Mount Moriah, where he was headed to sacrifice Isaac, his son, and the British High Commissioner last lowered the Union Jack in 1948, when Israel declared its independence. 

 

Our site for the afternoon's lone stop is also one that I have never seen before - excavations of King David's City, just outside the southern wall of the Old City of Jerusalem.  While Jerusalem may be the spiritual center of the universe for many, it is where it is because 3,800 years ago, there was water here.  We walk down several tunnels to come across what is still a flowing stream of water.  This source was not discovered until a few years ago, our guide tells us.

 

One of the books that I'm reading this trip - rereading, in fact, is Walking the Bible: A Journey Through the Five Books of Moses.  A guide to Mt. Ararat, where Noah's Ark is believed to have come to rest, tells the author:

 

If you believe something, you can see.  If you don't believe, you cannot see.

 

I'm a very rational person.  Explaining why a bill is needed in Annapolis.  Keeping track of balls and strikes at Camden Yards.  After all, my law school training teaches that everything depends on everything that went before.  In Israel, I see things more spiritually.

 

Tuesday, October 28 - Poetry Cleanses

 

Our day begins at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust memorial.  One document on display has a special meaning to me this trip. 

 

It's the letter rejecting a request that the U.S. military bomb Auschwitz.  It was signed by John McCloy, Assistant Secretary of the Army in 1944.  Nineteen years later, President Kennedy sent McCloy on a secret mission to Israel and Egypt, to get the two countries to set limits on their development and use of nuclear weapons.  (Support Any Friend, a book about JFK's Middle East policy, is also on my reading list this trip.)

 

In 1963, McCloy was also chairman of the Board of Trustees of my alma mater, Amherst College.  That October, President Kennedy spoke on campus at the groundbreaking of the Robert Frost Library.  McCloy no doubt extended the invitation to the President. 

 

Ten summers ago, I visited the Kennedy Library in Boston, en route to Fenway Park with my nephew.  The text of Kennedy's speech, with his handwritten changes in Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.'s text, was on display.  I later asked Kathleen Kennedy Townsend if she could send me a copy, which she did.  I sent a copy along to Amherst as well. 

 

This past Sunday, forty years to the day of President Kennedy's speech, Amherst inaugurated a new President, Anthony Marx.  He made several references to JFK's address, including the following: 

 

The President concluded, in words he penned onto his text as his cavalcade approached     Amherst, AWhen power corrupts, poetry cleanses.s

 

Our second stop today is at the military cemetery on Mt. Herzl.  The first grave is that of a 14-year old, a Arunners for the Army, who died the day Israel became a state in 1948, while under attack from its Arab neighbors.  Another is of someone who emigrated to Israel that year, only to die the next.

 

Free time this afternoon.  I ask our tour guide if it is safe for me to walk to the Western Wall by myself.  As a group, we aren't going to visit there until Friday, and I don't want to wait that long to experience the Wall again.  Walking there  by myself will also reinforce my sense of being at home in Jerusalem.  "It's OK,s she replies, Abut avoid the Arab market - because you may got lost in its twists and turns, not because it's unsafe."  I have no problem finding my way there. 

 

I had decided beforehand to take a taxi back to the hotel.  I share the ride with an Orthodox Jewish woman and  tell her that I am a member of Maryland's equivalent of the Knesset, Israel's  parliament.  In heavily accented English, she asks, "What are you in charge of?"

 

I try to explain to her that I chair a subcommittee, but I think it loses something in the translation. 

 

Wednesday, October 29 - Molding the Elite

 

We journeyed north today, with stops at places where the elite of Israel are molded in different ways.

 

Yemin Orde is a youth village.  Its mission - the education and counseling of Israeli children in need of its services, dates back to the early 20th Century and Henrietta Szold, originally of Baltimore.  I have been here once before - six  years ago, celebrating the Bat and Bar Mitzvah of my twin niece and nephew.  The overlook of the valley and the Mediterranean and the synagogue remind me of that visit. 

 

The success of Yemin Orde was crystallized for me by a brief conversation with a staff member.  I ask her why she works here. 

 

"I've been working with Ethiopian Jews for several years now.  They've been short changed by Israel.  However, a disproportionate number of their emerging young leaders were educated here."

 

Later in the day, we visit an Israeli Air Force base.  The planes that bombed the Iraqi nuclear reactor in 1981 took off from here.  Today, the fighter jets are in a 24/7 state of readiness: the Lebanese border is a minute flight away, Syria's two minutes. 

 

A 23-year old jet pilot tells us that 3,000 soldiers apply for his position every year but only 40 get to fly the F-14s. 

 

The base commander tells us that he lived at the foot of the Golan Heights during the Yom Kippur War in 1973.  Thirteen years of age, he stood watch in the water tower of his kibbutz.  Fate shone upon him, unlike the 14-year old whose grave we saw yesterday. 

 

"We recognize there will eventually be a two-state solution," says the commander.  "We are in a different place than other countries in the precautions we take to avoid civilian casualties.  The Prime Minister personally OKs any air strike on a terrorist in a civilian environment," he continues, "but the pilot has the authority to abort the mission if circumstances change and too many other lives would be endangered."

 

I ask him if it has always been the case that the Prime Minister approves each sortie.  His non-answer answer leads me to believe that Ariel Sharon's predecessors have not done so.  Another member of our group, who once worked for Stars and Stripes, concurs in my reading of this response.  (Shades of LBJ in Vietnam)

 

Thursday, October 30 - On the Borders

 

Our day begins with a jeep ride on the Golan Heights.  It ends at what was once a Greek  temple to the god Pan.  The site is now called Banias because there's no APs in the Arab alphabet.  Nearby are the remains of a mosque that was built on top of a synagogue. And if further evidence was needed that the neighborhood has changed, the nearby water springs were used by the Syrian Army for R&R, until the Israelis captured the Golan in 1967.

 

Two Israeli settlers provide us divergent views on their relationship with their neighbors.  Marla Van Meter was born in Texas but has lived on the Golan Heights for over twenty years.  The Syrians have observed the cease-fire there.  Her biggest worry is that her 19-year old daughter will be victimized by a terrorist while riding a public bus to or from her Army base, not during combat itself.  She spoke to us at lunch after spending the morning pruning eucalyptus trees. Her view: "We have made this barren land prosper.  Why should we return it to the Syrians?"

 

Mike Ginsburg was born in Brooklyn and spent his first years in Israel in a youth village, much like Yemin Orde.  For over 30 years, he has lived in a kibbutz right on the Lebanese border.  His greatest fear has already been realized.  Twenty years ago, terrorists stormed Misgav Am, taking several infants hostage, and killing one of them.  Mike is responsible for security for his kibbutz. His view: "If we don't make a stand here, we will have to do so wherever we retreat to from here."

 

Dinner tonight is with John Harmatz, whom I've known from elementary school days in Baltimore.  John lives at Kfar Hanassi, which used to be in range of the Syrian guns on the Golan. His 19-year old daughter, Shiran, three months into her service in the military, isn't optimistic about the prospects for a two-state solution.  But she doesn't want her comrades dying to protect Israeli settlers in the Gaza Strip, whom she considers extremists. 

 

Two weeks ago, there was a terrorist incident in Tel Aviv when his daughter was there, John tells me.  His 10-year old son cried until they learned Shiran was unharmed.        

 

Friday, October 31 - Blessed are the meek

 

I came upon a cave near where our Lord did his teaching.

 

So wrote another diarist, a nun from France, who came to the Sea of Galilee in 391.  The cave was near where Christ gave the Sermon on the Mount. 

 

That sermon is today commemorated at the Mount of the Beatitudes.  As has become my custom, I have borrowed the New Testament from Cas Taylor, former Speaker of the House of Delegates, so that a member of our group can read Christ's words.  I am no theologian - of Judaism or Christianity, but it is the words spoken and read here (ABlessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.s) that are the vision of Christianity that I take away from Israel. 

 

This is the area where Jesus spent the three years of his ministry.  Our guide tells us that the land on the shores of the Galilee looks very much like it did 2 millennia ago.       

 

We take the long way home to Jerusalem, to avoid traveling through the West Bank.  Security measures have been evident since the moment we stepped on our bus at Ben Gurion Airport.  Our group includes an amulet, the term our guide uses to describe our armed and omnipresent security guard.  Every restaurant we've gone to for dinner has security at the front door.  An American working in Israel tells us that where you go out to eat depends on  how safe the restaurant is thought to be.  

 

When I was last here two years ago, a suicide bomber struck a crowded pizza parlor in downtown Jerusalem a few hours before I arrived.  That act hung over my visit but did not dampen it.  No such incident this time - thus far.  And there are significantly more people touring now than there were then.

 

Jerusalem is not London during the Battle of Britain, but 30 months of the El Aksa intifada has seriously weakened the Israeli economy and stalemated the peace process.  Absent American intervention, that deadlock is likely to continue until the current leaders, Arafat and Sharon, have left the scene. 

 

Saturday, November 1 - Inside and Outside the Walls

 

Our four-hour walk of the Old City of Jerusalem can best be described by the facts and sights that caught my attention. 

 

The walls of the Old City have expanded over the course of history. Where Jesus was buried was outside the walls at that time because no one was buried inside the city, under Jewish law.  Today, however, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which has been venerated as the site of the Crucifixion and burial for nearly two millennia, is well within the Old City.  Five different Christian faiths control a portion of the church today.  

 

There were once 50 Stations of the Cross; now there are 14.  The Via Dolorosa, the Way of the Cross, has wound its way through the Arab and Christian Quarters for the last 800 years.  Prior to that, however, it was located in two different areas, depending upon which nation and/or religion controlled the route. 

 

While walking the Via Dolorosa, we passed a residence where Mecca and the Dome of the Rock, two of the holiest sites in Islam, were painted on the front of the house.  My reaction: a suicide bomber lived here.  The reality: the person who lived here had made the pilgrimage, the Haj, to Mecca. 

 

No one lived west of the City's walls until 160 years ago.  West Jerusalem has been under Israeli control since the founding of the state in 1948.  The Old City, on the other hand, was in Jordanian control until the Six Day War in 1967.  Jordan did not allow access to the Jewish holy sites, despite the requirement that it do so under the cease-fire agreement in 1948.

 

This afternoon, at an intersection in the heart of West Jerusalem, en route to the Israel Museum, our taxi driver tells us that we are in what was once an Arab part of the city.  I tell him otherwise - correctly so.  The rest of the way, he sticks to his driving and to complaining that we had insisted on paying for the metered price of the ride, instead of the price fixe he had proposed. 

 

On this Sabbath Day, the museum is officially closed but unofficially open.  An exhibit on Pioneers of Photography in Israel heralds the initial efforts to make the desert bloom.  AThe beginning of the heroic era in Israeli history,s says the text at the start.  Several of the photos bear a striking resemblance to contemporaneous Soviet photography of workers and farmers in the pre-World War II era.  In Russia, they were creating a workers paradise; Israel's founders, many of whom were Socialists, were creating a Zionist paradise.

           

Also on display at the museum is an amulet.  This one if from the fifth century B.C.E. and contains the words of Judaism's holiest prayer, the shema.

 

Sunday, November 2 - Get a shovel!

 

Jews have prayed for a return to Zion and Jerusalem, ever since the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 AD.  The Passover Seder, marking the exodus from slavery in Egypt, concludes with the prayer, ANext year in Jerusalem.s

 

It was God whose actions (the plagues) freed the Jews from Pharaoh, not a revolution by the Israelites, Rabbi David Hartman explains to us this morning.  Zionism was a rebellion against the view that prayer and the hand of God would restore Jerusalem as of old.  AStop praying and get a shovel!s declares Rabbi Hartman.

 

But choosing Palestine for the site of this modern, secular state forced the Zionists to have a dialogue with their past on this land, he continues. Today that conversation is carried on with regard to the occupied territories - the West Bank of the Jordan River to the secularists, the Biblical lands of Judea and Samaria, promised to Abraham and his descendants by God, to the religious.   The two-state solution means that a majority of this contested area will be controlled by the Palestinians. 

 

As an adjunct law professor, I know the wonderful feeling when you're connecting with your students.  As we're leaving, I thank Rabbi Hartman and tell him that we had made that connection, especially when he said:

 

I'm here in Jerusalem because we the Jewish people never left here.

 

However, I wasn't sure whether others in the group had been as moved as I was. Later in the day, I overhear our tour guide heap praise on Rabbi Hartman's presentation while speaking on her cell phone.  AYou weren't the only one with tears in your eyes,s she tells me. 

 

Monday, November 3 - Arafat Said No

 

One of the seminal events in Israel's history did not take place in the Middle East. 

 

At Camp David, Yasser Arafat said no.  Presented with the most generous peace proposal an Israeli government has ever made, Arafat rejected any serious discussion of the offer. Moreover, he retreated from his prior support for a secret, draft agreement.  Isaac Herzog, then the Secretary of Israel's Cabinet, now a Labor member of the Knesset, gave us this account of the 2000 peace talks.  Arafat's intransigence I was aware of; that it contradicted his prior commitment I did not know until today.

 

The euphoria of the Oslo Accords had outlasted even the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin, as devastating as was  his murder by a fellow Jew.  But since Camp David, Israelis no longer see Arafat as a legitimate negotiating partner. 

 

One response: There is no short-term prospect for  a peace settlement that resolves the intractable issues: to what extent do Palestinian families who fled in 1948 have a right to return to live in Israel and how will Jerusalem and its holy sites be governed.  "No one would say, 'I have a solution to Bosnia,'" political scientist Shlomo Avineri tells us.  Instead, he counsels, seek an end to the violence and establish a border to regulate travel between the two peoples, as is already the case in Gaza.