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lethargic_manIn my first postcard, I explained how I had found the נוסח class not what I had expected, and had switched to private study whilst R. Goldfarb saw if he could organise something for me and the other person not interested in weekday נוסח, on Shabbos נוסח.
In the end he got something ready for the second session, but that was too late for me, who was only present at the first one, and for the last few sessions of the נוסח timetable slot, I decided to leave the yeshiva and go see some of the sights I couldn't otherwise, as I wouldn't have time to get there before closing time.
One of these was King Hezekiah's water tunnel; a second was the archaeological museum on the עוֹפֵל (Ophel), the oldest part of the city, just south of the Temple Mount.
Once again, I decided to head off immediately for a look around the site, rather than stopping to see any presentations in the museum, as I had arrived only half an hour before the site shut at 5:30. (As it happened, they didn't kick you out then, and I was able to spend an hour and three quarters looking around.)
This time, I wasn't quite as lucky as last in terms of appending myself to a tour group. I did run across a tour group at one point; they had five minutes' interesting information given to them by an Israeli, followed by a lot longer talk that wasn't telling me anything new given by their own מַדְרִיךְ, so I left. However, I did learn from their Israeli guide the significance of the alternation of long and short steps leading up to the Temple Mount on the south: it was to prevent people from running up them, which would be disrespectful when approaching the Temple.
She also pointed out a gate into the Temple compound I had not previously noticed:
In the talk on the Holy Land model of Jerusalem in 70 CE, the speaker mentioned the Ḥulda gates into the Temple, named after a prophetess mentioned in the Bible, based on which Prof. Avi-Yona, who constructed the model, had supposed there was a Tomb of Ḥulda located nearby. Primed by the talk, I now knew the significance of these gates when I saw them:
(They're easier to make out if you click through to the high resolution image.)
The Ophel area today is a hotchpotch of buildings of different eras: palaces from the Arab period intermingling with Byzantine housing, the main Herodian cardo, and even some houses dating from the First Temple period:
On the southern edge of the west side of the Temple Mount is Robinson's Arch, now just a stub, but once a bridge across the Herodian cardo (main street) with steps coming down to street level on the far side. When identified by Edward Robinson in 1839, it was at ground level; the photo shows how far archaeologists have had to dig down since to get to the original Roman-era ground level:
If you zoom in on the high resolution image, you can see the distinctive border around the stones of the Western Wall—the retaining wall that Herod had built to enlarge the hilltop—that marks the masonry as Herodian. You can also see where the original masonry gives way to later construction at the top.
The big pile of stones at the far end are from this wall, and are presumably from where the retaining wall turned into the wall of the buildings of the Temple complex itself. The Romans threw the stones down when they destroyed the Temple, and they have been lying there ever since. I suggest you zoom in on the high-resolution version of this photo to get an idea of the scale of them:
Speaking of which, I went to a fascinating talk on Tisha BeAv by Prof. Martin Goodman on his book Rome and Jerusalem: The Clash of Ancient Civilisations, the subject of which was that the destruction of temples was not a Roman thing, and it was a peculiarly unfortunate combination of Jewish history with Roman history that resulted first in the destruction of the Second Temple, and secondly in the fact it did not get rebuilt; but I did not take notes, as I thought it would not be appropriate, and shall not blog further about the book until I have read it myself.
The wall pictured above is part of the כּוֹתֵל (the Western Wall), and has become known as the כּוֹתֵל מַסוֹרְתִּי, as it is where egalitarian groups (both Masorti and points further left) can daven following a compromise deal with the government.
The yeshiva had not originally planned it, but following general acclaim, they organised a bus for us the following morning so that those who wanted could daven שחרית there:
(FWIW, I took this photo right at the beginning of פסוקי דזמרה then put my camera away and got on with my own davening!)
Davening at the כּוֹתֵל מַסוֹרְתִּי was a profoundly different experience from davening at the main plaza just north of there. It was quiet and peaceful—we could hear birds calling—and we could do our own singing, and a world away from the circus that goes on at the main plaza.
I personally didn't feel it was any more spiritual than davening back at the yeshiva, but then I don't feel that the כּוֹתֵל in general—the outside of the Temple complex—is particularly holy. I did not go to the main plaza in front of the כּוֹתֵל once the whole time I was in Jerusalem (and I was rather bemused by the fact that during our davening as pictured above, we were facing not towards where the Holy of Holies once was, but where the administrative buildings at the south of the Temple complex were). Nevertheless, one person in our group was evidently very moved, and burst into tears afterward.
Of course, one mustn't get the impression, either from a three week holiday experience, or from reading my notes about it, that it's easy being a Masorti Jew in Israel. It is much easier in the UK, but I am green with envy over the demographic leverage most of the others on the course took for granted, living as they did in the States and Canada.
On the 'plane on the way home, I got talking to the man sitting next to me. He asked me what I had been doing in Israel, and I told him I had spent three weeks studying at the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem. "Conservative? What's that?" he asked, so I said, "What we in the UK call Masorti." This then led him into a rant against non-Orthodox movements, in the process of which he talked about how in Orthodoxy women don't take services or leyn, and there should be clear gender segregation in roles.
At which point I pulled him up and said, "Ah, but you're wrong there; you're taking מִנְהַג here for דִין. Last Shabbos I davened at a shul called לבנות ולהבנות, which was left-hand edge of Orthodox, and yet they had women leyning, and being called up, and I believe they also have women taking פסוקי דזמרה, though they didn't the week I was there." And he absolutely refused to accept it. He said if women were doing all these things, they absolutely couldn't be Orthodox.
He then goes into a rant about the state of Anglo-Jewry and how it's impossible to find anywhere in the UK now to be an Orthodox Jew, and how in thirty years time there's going to be nobody left except the charedim.
Well, I'm not surprised he thinks there's going to be no one left, if he's not admitting any form of practice of Judaism apart from the extremely narrow one he adheres to himself. At one point I managed to catch the eye of Rabbi Joel Levy, minister of Kol Nefesh Masorti and an advocate of egalitarianism in UK Masorti, who was sitting behind me; he was greatly amused by my predicament, but, though he offered some useful advice afterwards about things I could say in such a situation in future, he wasn't getting into it himself.
Finally, I managed to cram in a surprising amount of cosmopolitanism for a trip to Israel: I had an Italian experience, and a Syrian one, and an Armenian one and a Yemenite one; and then on the 'plane home, managed to get in two more.
The first was when I looked out the window and saw we were flying over lots of little islands. I've never been to Greece myself, but I felt I was having a miniature Greek experience looking at the islands, and seeing how small the ones with roads and villages got, and looking at the boats motoring between them.
Then a very obvious caldera, broken into two parts, with a lagoon in the centre, comes into view, and I say, "Ooh, I wonder if that's Santorini." R. Levy didn't know, but I google-mapped it when I came home, and it did indeed turn out to be Santorini.
Which brings us back, of course, to Israel, because there is a theory it was the cataclysmic eruption of Thēra (the original name for Santorini) 3500 years ago that was responsible for the Ten Plagues; and also a theory that this eruption was responsible for the Israelites being able to cross the Reed Sea (in this theory, on the Mediterranean coast, and not the Red Sea) on dry land, when the sea level had dropped in advance of the oncoming tsunami; and the tsunami itself which had then drowned the pursuing Egyptians.
And finally, a little while later I had a Venetian experience, when the pilot pointed out we were flying over Venice. I've been to Venice myself, when I was little, but I hadn't realised until I saw it from the air, just how small the city is.
Santorini
Date: 2007-07-30 10:24 am (UTC)