The Settlements

One of the most powerful and thought provoking experiences I've had thus far was touring Israeli settlements in the West Bank. Though most of the international community condemns this act, Israelis have been building communities in Palestinian controlled territory in the West Bank, which they dub "Judea and Sumeria." The US and UN have ordered halts in settlement building, but little real action has been taken. There are many reasons for the rise in the settlement movement. Some claim that since Judea and Sumeria were part of Biblical Israel, these lands are Israel's to claim. Some are making a political statement, trying to prove the absurdity of a two-state solution based on the 1947 armistice lines, considering so many Israelis now live past those borders. Some are just looking for cheap housing near Jerusalem. 

An Israeli settler led our tour. He's an American who worked for the NSA, then joined the Zionist cause and moved to Israel to be a part of the settler movement. We began our day at Herodian, Herod's summer palace, and his burial site, which overlooks many of the Israeli settlements. We then took a bus tour through about 5 different settlements. Some were newer, with only about 50 homes, many still temporary as permanent homes were being built. Some, however, were thriving towns with schools, grocery stores, and post offices, and looked just like the suburban neighborhoods outside of Jerusalem. 

The most surprising thing I learned was that most of the construction in the settlements is done by Palestinian workers. However, the workers must be supervised by armed Israelis at all times, and the cost of these guards is usually the responsibility of the Palestinian construction companies. Our guide described the settlements as an example of co-existence, since the settlers live side by side with Palestinian neighbors with few conflicts. He named off many companies within the settlements that were jointly Israeli-Palestinian owned. 

We then visited a nearby Kibbutz,and learned about the resistance fighters there during the 1948 War. Then, we got the opportunity to visit a woman who's son was serving in the Israeli army when he was killed during a terrorist attack. Through this tragedy, she has worked to see the good, building a memorial park in his name and working to honor his memory through acts of kindness. Yet there was also an obvious bitterness there behind her words, and a hatred of the perpetrators which unfortunately extended to all Palestinians. It was a hard visit to the settlements, for here the tensions between the Israelis and Palestinians was clearest for me. Both sides firmly see themselves in the right, and both sides see the opposing side as "other." Yet it was also obvious that there is a wide range of opinions within the groups on both sides, making negotiation even more difficult, since there is little consensus even within one group. The more we learn, the more complicated it all becomes.  

Shabbat and St. Peter's

Bored on a Friday night in Jerusalem with nothing to do? Never fear, just head on down to the Western Wall for Shabbat! There you will see the most eclectic assortment of people, praying, dancing, and singing ever gathered together.  People watching at its finest. First, you see all the ultra-orthodox Jews piling in, donning their fur hats and black garb. Next, groups of students from nearby Yeshivas come and dance and sing in circles on the plaza as more and more people pack into the fenced in area in front of the wall (men and women separated of course, but that rant will be saved for another post). By sundown, there were upwards of 5,000 people jammed into the plaza. Up front closer to the walls, the ultra orthodox were praying fervently  gathered around rabbis in prayer shawls. Groups of conservative and reform Jews stood further back, dancing in circles and singing songs. Of course, we were near a group of American birthright kids, singing the only song they knew, "Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel" (painful to watch). After watching the men for a while, some girls and I went down onto the women's side. The tone was much more pious on this side, with more praying and less dancing. A girl from New York came and gave us the Shabbat prayer book and showed us what prayers we were supposed to pray (after first asking how fast we read Hebrew, to which we replied, not at all). The Shabbat crowds were so full of joy. They would burst spontaneously into dancing and singing, grabbing passersby into their celebrations  Our group agreed that if church was more like Shabbat, we would attract a lot more people!  

 Today, on our first free weekend, we took a bus in to the Old City to explore. A girl in our group did a project on St. Peter of Gallicantu, a church just outside the Old City walls, so we decided to go check it out. This is the site where they think that Peter denied Jesus, and also houses an old jail cell underneath, where Jesus may have been held while awaiting trial. We spent the day exploring the church, with its gorgeous stained glass and mosaics illustrating the Last Supper and Peter's denial. After climbing through the pit and jail cell beneath the church, we entered the gardens that look out over the Old City and the Mount of Olives. We then wandered (got lost in) the Old City for a while, before going to a bookstore/coffee shop in East Jerusalem. All in all, a great first weekend exploring on our own!

Remember

Yesterday, we spent the day exploring Israel's past on Mt. Herzl. Mt. Herzl is to the secular Jewish state what the Temple Mount is to religious Jews. It symbolizes both the painful past of the Jewish people, with the Holocaust Museum and the Military Cemetery at the bottom of the hill, and the hope of the future for the Jewish state, symbolized by Theodore Herzl's grave at the top of the hill, the founder of the Zionist movement. 

We then spent the afternoon exploring the grounds and museum at Yad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Memorial. The museum is shaped like a triangle, and runs horizontally across the park. We wandered through the trees planted for the Righteous Among the Nations, including the one planted for Oskar and Emilie Schindler. The sculpture below memorializes those who fought back against the Nazi's in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. I've visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC as well, and though both are amazingly powerful, the experiences are distinctly different. The DC museum is darker, emphasizing the historical rise of the Third Reich, the degradation of the Jewish peoples, and the horror of the Final Solution in an beautiful use of space and artifacts. Yad Vashem, however, is stark in its simplicity. The design is very industrial. There is a heavy reliance on artifacts and personal testimony, and an emphasis on the resilience of the Jewish people before, during, and after the Shoah. The floor of the museum is sloped up on both ends, with the lowest point at the exhibit on the Final Solution and the camps. However, when you exit the museum at the other end, you are overlooking rolling hillsides dotted with neighborhoods, homes, businesses, and city parks, leaving you buoyed with a sense of hope, despite the dark days past. 

 Yad Vashem humbled me. Not only was it immensely moving, but it proved to me how little I truly know about this conflict in the Middle East. It becomes so easy to blame one side or the other. After spending much of this week within Palestinian communities, traveling through the checkpoint and behind the wall, its easy to blame the Israeli's. But Yah Vashem reminded me that the Jewish people's desire for a Jewish state isn't ridiculous after the hardships they've faced. After the Shoah, they longed for a place to raise their children away from persecution and the horrors that they had endured. However, the correlation between the Jewish ghettos and the Palestinian settlements becomes even more clear after a visit to Yah Vashem. Thus, I left Yad Vashem much more confused than I had been when I came in. The mark of a successful day.

Division and Hope

Yesterday, we continued our tour of the Old City in the Christian Quarter. Though Christians are a minority in this country, they are a vocal and strong group within the city. We began by touring a Greek Catholic Church. Yes, you heard me right. This is actually the most populous denomination of Christians in Israel, embracing most Catholic doctrines while allowing its congregations to maintain the look and feel of a Greek Orthodox Church. The only visible difference in the sanctuary from that of a Greek Orthodox was a confessional in the back. 

Then came the main event, the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. While a powerful and clearly holy place, as we traveled from Golgotha to the tomb, what struck me most was the division of the place. The Catholics, Orthodox, Armenians, Syrians, Franciscans, and others all have a stake in the Church. As such, each group controls, cleans, worships, and maintains a certain portion, with the Holy Sites resting in shared, common areas.  As such, arguments arise over things such as: changing a light bulb in common areas (someone from the State Department does it in secret at night so no argument arises), removing scaffolding around the tomb (its still there), and maintaining the roof of the Church (its caving in). Our Jewish tour guide sees the Church as an example for the Middle Eastern peoples: though these groups don't agree on much,  they cohabitate in relative peace. However, I was struck by the extreme division in a place that is supposed to represent our oneness in Christ. 

Our cultural immersion continued as we undertook the seemingly normal task of trying to grocery shop in a foreign country. Everything is cheaper the further away you get from Jerusalem, so we took our first foray into Bethlehem, across the checkpoint, to get groceries. The checkpoint in an experience all its own. You feel like you are entering another country, which you basically are, as you walk through multiple turnstiles  down narrow hallways, and around 30 feet high concrete walls covered in barbed wire. While we were able to walk straight across without even opening up our US passports, most people spend a couple minutes having their papers examined and fingerprints taken. It really is another world. Grocery shopping wasn't too bad, as they had many American brands we recognized. I mean, my staple diet of pasta and tomato sauce can be found anywhere. Our biggest challenge was carrying eggs back across the checkpoint without breaking them.  

Today, I headed back across the checkpoint to go to my service project for the first time.  As part of my program, we each are assigned a non-profit group within the community, working to increase our cultural and language immersion as well as supporting local groups within the community. I was thrilled to hear I'd been placed at Jerusalem American School in Bethlehem. This school was founded in 1997 by a Christian group and serves both Christian and Muslim Palestinian students, grades K-12. The school has both American teachers from the States and local Arabic teachers. While today was mostly getting acquainted with the school and students, I get to help tutor high schoolers in American Literature as well as design a curriculum and help teach World Government Systems to the 12th graders. The kids have already warmed my heart. They are so full of life, light, and hope, despite growing up in a world constantly marred by violence and conflict. As I saw them running around at lunch, playing games and horsing around regardless of religion, ethnicity, or gender, I was struck by the fact that these kids are our future. It is not the hardened politicians of today who will solve the crisis, but these bright faces of tomorrow. And I was filled with hope. 

The Old City

We spent time the past few days exploring the Old City of Jerusalem. What an overwhelming sensory experience! We entered through the Damascus Gate into the Arab Quarter and were immediately surrounded by shopkeepers and marketplaces on all sides, selling everything imaginable: spices, nuts, plastic kids toys, high end jeans, traditional costumes, jewelry, fruit, purses, trinkets. Above is a picture from the roof of the Austrian Hospice in the Arab Quarter, one of the best views of the Old City you can get. 

Next, we ventured into the Jewish Quarter. We saw the Western Wall, see below, the Ruined Synagogue,  Herod's steps, excavation of the wall Hezekiah built in around 1000 BC, and learned the history of the construction of the temple. While you see much more intermixing in the other quarters of the city, the Jewish Quarter is the most homogeneous. The presence of the Orthodox community is most striking here.  

We then were split into 3 groups for a scavenger hunt around East Jerusalem. We had to find a place to eat lunch, exchange money, find a bookstore, visit the American Colony Hotel, buy stamps, find the price of fruit  along with other activities to help us get oriented, including finding our own way back on the bus to our apartments. My group decided to add to the adventure by convincing the guy in our group to get a traditional Palestinian haircut at a barber we found! He was a good sport, and we made friends with the barber, who finished his cut with glitter hairspray, win. Our bus ride back was a little more exciting than usual, for we had Israeli soldiers board and check everyone's identification papers.  While nothing happened to us, since being an American gets you a free pass anywhere, it was a unique glimpse into the daily lives of many Arabs living around Jerusalem. It's been an eye opening experience already, and we've barely begun! 

Highlights from the first 36 hours

1. Arriving to Israel on the tail of the worst storm in over a decade, meaning that we arrived to a snowy Jerusalem!
2. Moving into our apartments in Beit Safafa, which are WAY nicer than my campus apartments. Sorry SPU!
3. Taking a driving tour of Jerusalem.
4. Standing on the Mount of Olives, looking down into the Old City and the Garden of Gethsemane.
5. Seeing the Dome of the Rock, even from afar, for the first time.
6. Proximity: seeing the proximity of the Jewish and Palestinian settlements, literally across the street from one another.
7. Driving past the Knesset.
8. Taking a walking tour of our neighborhood.
9. Having the best Middle Eastern lunch of couscous, lamb, chick peas, humus, and pita.
10. Looking out at Bethlehem from our apartment window this morning while sipping coffee. 

Leaving on a Jetplane!

Tomorrow is the day! The day I leave for the adventure of a lifetime! I'm leaving the Pacific Northwest for 3.5 months of studying abroad in the Middle East. I'll be studying at Tantur Ecumenical Institute, a site run by Notre Dame University outside of Jerusalem. I'll be practicing my Arabic again, studying the current conflict, the history of Islam, and the cultures of the Middle Eastern peoples. The last 3 weeks of my program, we travel around to Islamic Spain, Morocco, and Turkey. After my program is over, I'm meeting my mom in Frankfurt, and we'll spend 10 days traveling around Europe, destinations TBD. I'll have internet access for most of the trip, so check back here for updates on my adventures! وداعا!