Week 4 Water, Sand, and Salt

Happy Last Week of January! 

Last Friday, we welcomed in the Sabbath at the Western Wall.  This was the students' first time at the Western Wall plaza in the evening, and it was a full gathering of Jewish people of all types.  The men's size was full of black hats, furry hats, or kippas.  The women's side was full of elaborate head dresses or scarves or natural-looking wigs, not to mention strollers and small children.

We took this quick selfie before sunset, while photos and electronics are still allowed.  After sunset, we put away our cameras to not offend those who consider electronics to violate the laws of the Sabbath. (Remember the clay and spittle in John 9?  I'll get back to that at the end of this post).

The Western Wall operates as an open-air synagogue; usually in synagogues people would read or recite the prayers and texts together, sometimes with call and response.  Here, most people were reading or reciting individually, holding prayer books, often nodding or swaying, at a certain point stepping forward or backward, always very intense and focused on their devotions.  At the end, the men often sing and dance  to a "Lecha Dodi," Come my Beloved, a 16th century poem welcoming the Sabbath as if it is an honored guest.  Other themes in this service include judgment tempered with mercy, psalms praising God and the Sabbath, and the creation of the world.  

Our main field trip this week took us to the Negev, which is a dry, desert area south of Jerusalem.  Since this is the rainy winter season, we actually saw more vegetation than usual, including agricultural crops watered with irrigation, but also wild grasses and shrubs.  

We started in Arad, a very old site.   The lower city dates to the time of the Canaanites and contains rocky foundations of houses plus a collection basin in the center of the bowl-shaped plaza.  

The upper city of Arad has a very imposing gate structure!

The upper city was from Israelite times, and it has a special set of rooms identified as a temple.  An outer courtyard has an altar made of unhewn stones, then a broad room served as the holy place, and a niche in the far wall was the holy of holies.  This room contained two incense altars, and scholars debate whether it contained one or two stones represented one or two dieties within the holy of holies.  Below is a picture of Dr. Strathearn in the holy of holies.  This temple was decommissioned at some point by laying the standing stones down and covering them with dirt.  This may have happened when temple worship was standardized and centralized in a way that far-flung "satellite" temples were no longer authorized.  

I love the way this site reminds us of the ancient, deep rooted desire for people to connect with a force greater than themselves.  They lived knowing that they were in the hands of a universe with powers beyond their control, and they desired to achieve greater conformity to the desires of God to increase their chances of survival and to bring meaning to the ups and downs of their life.  This is timely since we are learning this week about how Adam and Eve were separated from God's presence by the Fall, and how they followed God's plan to overcome that separation, including by offering sacrifices.  They didn't have a full understanding of what their sacrificial experience meant, but they knew that it was what God wanted, so they did it willingly, and the understanding of the symbolism (including the symbols of Jesus Christ) came later.  My own experience with the temple started as obedience to something not fully comprehensible, but over time it has come to mean a great deal to me and I see Jesus Christ in the temple more and more over the years.  

The temple is a part of the fortified acropolis (the part of a city built on a hill).  There is also a water collection cistern cut into the rock, which usually creates a great place to sing.  

.  I heard some LOTR dwarf chants on the way down.

Our next stop was Avdat, which was on the spice trade route between Petra in Jordan and the port of Gaza.

This location has evidence from Nabatean, Roman, and Byzantine (Greek-speaking Christians) time periods.  And there are signs that each succeeding civilization reused the sacred spaces of the previous one.  For example, the doorway below has Nabatean capitals, topped by a Greek design with Latin writing, and around the corner is a Byzantine cross-shaped baptismal font.  

Here is a picture of the winged/horned Nabatean capitals from Petra, (in case you doubt me, haha!)

Each site we went to today had some type of water collection area, and here is one from the top of Avdat.

Water was important because this area actually had lush vineyards around it at one point ,so every drop was channeled and collected and used when needed for agriculture or for wine production.  Avdat has a huge grape pressing floor.  I didn't get a clear picture of it, because all of these wonderful people are standing in it, but that gives you a sense of the size!

Avdat also had cool tombs cut into soft, chalky limestone.  We brought a lot of dust and sand onto the bus after this stop!

After Avdat we went to a site near Sde Boker overlooking the Wilderness of Zin.  This is where the first Prime Minister of Israel, David Ben Gurion, is buried.  Other heads of state are buried at Mt. Herzl, but Ben Gurion loved the desert (he even left government temporarily and went back to kibbutz life!) so choose this desert overlook for his final resting place.  

Here we discussed the children of Israel wandering in the wilderness.  Moral of the story: if there are giants and big walls causing fear, and also huge grapes and other rewards for having faith and obeying God, don't just fixate on the giants and the walls, but go pick some grapes! (Numbers chapter 13).

Then we drove to Tel Be'er Sheva (bare-SHAY-va).  Also spelled Beersheba, it means well of seven, or well of oaths.  The famous well dug by Abraham was a few miles away, but the place we visited has lots of cool old ruins...starting with this (replica of an) altar of hewn stones.  Archaeologists found the altar disassembled, with stones reused in a storehouse.  They think it was torn down during the reforms of King Hezekiah, possibly because the altar was supposed to have been made with unhewn stones, as we saw in Arad.  

Even though this isn't the famous well dug by Abraham, it's a great well outside the gates of the well-fortified Tel.  It's a very deep well.

A modern tower helps visitors get the big picture of Be'er Sheva.

From the top, you can see the temple area which was oriented east-west.  Where Frank is standing may have been the outer courtyard area where the altar was originally assembled.  

In our travels we saw a few tanks being transported and also heard lots of aerial drills overhead.  This underscores the fragile nature of peace here.  The news tells of continual small scale military operations happening here and there, unfortunately. 

The next day after our Negev field trip, there was a demonstration in Jerusalem by Ultra Orthodox (a.k.a. Haredi) men who were protesting the court's decision to order autopsies for 2 infants killed in an unlicensed daycare facility.  The demonstration was organized and scheduled as required, but when major traffic arteries in West Jerusalem were blocked by protestors, they were eventually dispersed with water cannons, and traffic was paralyzed in the city for the rest of the day.  Last I heard, the autopsies were cancelled.  

Later this week we drove down the now-quiet Haneviim street to follow a self-guided walking tour of the Nachlaot or Mazkeret Moshe neighborhood west of the Mehane Yehuda Shuk.  This neighborhood was the original gated community, with thick outer walls that were gated in its heyday.  The tiny alleys wind here and there around community parks, synagogues, and remnants of underground cisterns now covered and capped.  Here is someone else's blog post about some of the interesting local character of Nachlaot. 

We learned from this tour that the building which houses one of our favorite Kosher Quesadilla restaurants was considered cursed in the 1970's.  Apparently a rabbi cursed the building because it was rumored to have a movie theater in it.  Or maybe because it blocked the view from his balcony.  Either way, businesses and residents of the building allegedly had unnaturally shortened life spans.  A few decades later, another rabbi performed some sort of ceremony to reverse the curse, and now, voila, we have been eating here for months with no ill effects...except bad breath from all of the spicy food.

This tall, thin building is the Zohorai Synagogue, and it has had a few mishaps in its past, including fire and earthquake.  The sundial was useful for keeping track of how much time before Sabbath would start, and the tall design allowed rabbis to calibrate the sunrise without having to send a lookout to the Mount of Olives.  It has two front doors, unusual for such a narrow building.  

There is a lot of history here that I have unknowingly walked past many times.  The walking tour guidebook gives only a sliver of one piece of multiple narratives here, but it's a glimpse that says there is more to the eye than just the present hustle and bustle of the modern city. 

Speaking of glimpsing a sliver of a narrative from the past, we visited the Pilgrim's Way, which leads from the Pool of Siloam and the exit of Hezekiah's Tunnel up to the Davidson Archaeological Park at the south end of the Temple Mount.  In the past, we made this same ascent by walking stooped over through a dim and muddy drainage tunnel too small for a hobbit, with stone walls coated in a nice patina of green fuzz.  But now we can walk upright along an ancient walkway (still leading under what, the road?  homes?) in safety and comfort.  There are still some drippy places, a few muddy spots, and a bucket conveyor lines parts of the route, but compared to the earlier ditch coated in green fungus, this is pretty boujee, in current lingo.

You can see stones that covered a water channel, not the same one we used to walk through.

Here is the bucket conveyor.  It carries pottery and other finds that may have archaeological value.

We love seeing what is uncovered by archaeology, but this excitement is tempered by the fact that archaeology here is often politically problematic.  Someone has to decide what gets dug up, someone decides when to stop digging, and someone tells the story of what has been uncovered.  For instance, it is exciting to see (and easier to travel on) the Roman era roadway between the Pool of Siloam/the City of David, and the Temple Mount area.  When Jesus healed a blind man with clay and spittle, he sent him to wash in the Pool of Siloam (John 9).  He could have walked down this very pathway!  The other side of the story is that this walkway is currently under an East Jerusalem neighborhood which is already feeling threatened by an increasing presence of tourists and archaeological activity that seems to promote a one-sided narrative.  So that's complicated.

Speaking of narratives, we had a really great forum speaker named Raef Zreik this week.  The Forum lecture series takes place several times a month, and the speakers are chosen to enhance what the students are learning.  There is a careful effort to include a balance or at least a range of topics and speakers over the course of the semester.  Mr. Zreik is a lawyer, professor, and author and very articulate.

The lecture started with Mr. Zreik saying that you should try to identify with the point of view you are critiquing intellectually or emotionally.  If you can't explain the other narrative with empathy, then you don't understand it well enough to critique it.   Mr. Zreik then proceeded to give a thoughtful and reasoned summary of the Jewish perspective on the establishment of the state of Israel, followed by a thoughtful and reasoned summary of the Palestinian response to the establishment of the state of Israel.  You can read my notes from this lecture here if you have time or interest.

The topic of narratives reminds me of Fiddler on the Roof when Tevye agrees, "He's right."  And to the one who disagrees, "He's right."  When someone points out, "They can't both be right," Tevye says, "You know, you are also right" (link to clip here). 

And for my last trick, I will open a bag of salt and pour out something that tastes like sugar!  Actually, that is the trick I accidentally tried to do but failed.  I was baking and talking with dear friends at the same time (it was a zoom book group on "Both of These are True" by Kate Holbrook.)  I was making a triple batch of cookies to give to students who were taking their first midterm, and after I added the chocolate chips, I tasted the batter to find it completely inedible!  I had measured a cup of salt instead of a cup of sugar!  

 

Horror, regret, humiliation, revulsion, they all flashed through my brain at once!  And what if I hadn't taste tested before serving the cookies!!!???!!!   No amount of adding or diluting would fix this.  The whole triple batch went into the trash can, and I started over.   Thankfully I had just enough flour, eggs, and butter, and I chopped up a chocolate bar to cover for the lack of chocolate chips.  

The panic and cringiness subsided when the next batch was successful, and I can now laugh at this egregious mistake.  

One lesson is, things look a lot alike when I'm distracted!  Another lesson is, sometimes I just have to admit I messed up and try to start over.  Starting over and second chances are not something that can be completely avoided, as much as I wish I could sometimes.  Figuring out how to start over quickly and more gracefully is better than pretending the mistake isn't that bad, adding a little more vanilla, and hoping no one will notice!  

A scripture from this week's Come Follow Me ties in here:  "And the Lord God called upon men by the Holy Ghost everywhere and commanded them that they should repent" (Moses 5:14).  President Nelson said it this way: "Nothing is more liberating, more ennobling, or more crucial to our individual progression than is a regular, daily focus on repentance."  So here's to second chances, and all we learn from them!