Out and about in Jerusalem on Jerusalem Day

Today I went out to explore Jerusalem, starting on the Mount of Olives just outside the Old City gates. My original plan was to visit the Mount of Olives in the morning, looking for the site from which Jesus processed into the city in his "triumphal entry" on what we now celebrate as Palm Sunday. In keeping with my roughly chronological tracing of Jesus's life through the places he inhabited (first to Nazareth, then to the Sea of Galilee, and finally to Jerusalem), I planned to do the "triumphal entry" today, the Upper Room of the Last Supper and the Garden of Gethsemane tomorrow (on Thursday), and the Stations of the Cross on the Via Dolorosa on Friday. My plan for today was to go to the Mount of Olives and then visit the Dome of the Rock and the mosques and the Islamic museum on top of the remains of the Temple.

I had no idea when I set out today that today was a significant day in the history of Jerusalem. Thousands of Jews would be descending upon the city and the Western Wall today to commemorate "Jerusalem Day," the day Israel captured the Eastern part of Jerusalem during the Six Day War in 1967. As one could imagine, the Palestinians living in that part of Jerusalem would not be too happy about these demonstrations, since to them that day was not a day for celebration but the day that Israel "conquered" what they considered to be their land, and they refer to the area still as "Occupied East Jerusalem." But slowly, throughout the day, I started to get the picture that something significant was going on today.

The first clue was the large groups of Jewish students and leaders marching around the Mount of Olives waving enormous Israeli flags and singing and chanting things. Then, as I neared the "Dung Gate," where one enters to go to the Western Wall, I saw the side of the road covered in tour buses. That in and of itself didn't seem necessarily unusual, but there seemed to be an especially large number of people there. Instead of going back in the Lion's Gate where I had exited the city to visit the Mount of Olives, I had walked along the promenade along the outskirts of the city that has a view of the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, mistakenly thinking that I could re-enter the city by the Dung Gate, walk by the Western Wall, and go on to climb to the top of the Temple Mount area to the Muslim sites.

Ah, my idealism and naïvité! No such luck. The entrance to the Western Wall area is entirely closed off from the rest of the Old City, so far as I could tell, and had extensive security surrounding it. There was only one entrance to the entire area, which was guarded by armed guards and metal detectors. Everyone entering the Western Wall area had to be screened. (A sign by the metal detectors assured pilgrims that the rabbis had ruled that walking through a metal detector did not violate the observance of Shabbat, if one wanted to visit the Wall on the sabbath.) I decided not to go in, since I was planning to go on Friday with my new friend Rachel, a Jewish doctoral student from the U.S. who I met at my hostel Nazareth (and who had also been staying at the same hostel I was staying at in Haifa, although we did not meet each other there), and I didn't want to mess with all the hassle of the security today. I'm glad now that I didn't, since apparently going to the Wall is a highly politicized action on this day.

Entrance to the Western Wall

I continued walking around the outside of the city walls, toward the Zion Gate, feeling sad that such extensive security measures and blocking off of this Jewish holy site were necessary, mourning the loss of this idea I had in my head that I could move seamlessly between Jewish and Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem and watch people of different cultures and religions mingling with one another peacefully. After all, surely all the press about conflicts in Jerusalem were exaggerated and the "regular people" who live here get along, right?

As I walked up the sidewalks beside the city walls, just past the Dung Gate and the Western Wall, I saw two Jewish women and a little boy in a yalmulke standing on the side of the road. One of the women grabbed the boy's hand and said to him, "You stay close to me, okay? There are lots of bad people here, you understand? You stay close to me. There are lots of Arabs here. They like to kill Jews. You stay close to me. They like to kill Jews."

My heart sunk. I thought of my new friend Ghassan Manasra back in Nazareth, marching to protect the Basilica of the Annunciation and involved in interfaith dialogue with an organization founded by a Jewish rabbi. So he "likes to kill Jews" just because he is Arab? I silently willed the little boy not to listen to his mother, to make friends with Arabs, be they Christians or Muslims, and realize that they do not all "like to kill Jews," that he might grow up to be an ambassador of peace rather than reinforcing all the old stereotypes and hatreds.

Demonstrators outside the Jaffa Gate to the Old City

There were "no entrance" signs at the next gate, the Zion Gate, so I continued (after a visit to the Upper Room, the Tomb of King David, and Dormition Abbey) to the Jaffa Gate to re-enter the Old City, almost two-thirds of the way back around to where I had started. Outside the Jaffa Gate there was a large crowd of demonstrators, waving black flags, blowing whistles, and shouting things in Hebrew. They were holding up signs, but they were all in Hebrew, so I couldn't tell what exactly was going on. There were a handful of Israeli soldiers standing around monitoring the demonstrators, holding their uzis (Israeli soldiers are all over Israel, carrying these huge machine guns... I still haven't gotten used to seeing such large guns carried out in public, and it sends a shiver down my spine every time I see them). I debated about whether to go near the crowd or even to enter by that gate, since at any moment I figured the protest could turn violent. I decided to go ahead and enter there, but walked behind the guards and their machine guns, so in case they suddenly decided to start shooting protestors, I wouldn't be in the line of fire.

As I walked through the Christian Quarter of the Old City, I stopped in a shop to look at the stoles they were selling, hand-made by Palestinian Christians in the West Bank. As the shopkeeper bargained with me and tried to sell me more and more things, he kept telling me, "Business is very bad today. The Jews, you know, are coming to pray at the Wall, and it is causing lots of problems. We close soon, and business has been very bad. So I give you good price. You understand?"

My new stoles. The middle one is reversible -- green/white

In the end, I bought three stoles from the man (after much negotiating and drinking of tea), which although it was more than I intended to buy it wasn't as many as he wanted to sell me. ("Look! This one too! Then you have the whole set! You be good priest! You have the whole set!") And at least I didn't go crazy and buy a $2,000 rug like I did on my trip to Turkey!

These were the first official clergy attire items that I have purchased; I have shied away from buying clergy shirts or collars or stoles from the companies that come through the seminary every year selling these goods, figuring it was too early to be buying those things, and that I should wait until I was a bit closer to ordination and further along in the process. But now, with two years of seminary behind me and with official status as a Candidate for Holy Orders, and with, God willing, a diaconal ordination approaching in December, it felt like it was time.

Somewhere along the middle of this trip, I began to feel God making me a priest. As I tried on the stoles, I thought about wearing them at future celebrations of the Eucharist, remembering the Palestinian women who made them and taking with me the memories of this day in Jerusalem, and sending up prayers for the peace of Jerusalem with every fiber of my being.