Jerusalem-Updated

I had an afternoon in this magnificent city hosted by friend and business associate, Avi. We drove the hour or so from Tel Aviv talking about work, the problems in the country: politics and strife as well as interesting bits and pieces making up everyday life.
He's an impressive guy and his left of center views gave me pause for thought. As often happens, the preconceptions and views I hold are probably as off the mark as those of someone who never really thinks about the region.
I'm not going to embark on a discussion of Israel and the Palestinians in this post.
I'll just give you a flavour of the city and drop in the occasional political comment now and then.
The majority of my time was within the walls of the old city. Up until the 1860s this constituted the entirety of the city. The Old City as its called now is traditionally divided into 4 sections ; Armenian, Christian, Muslim and Jewish. The whole city is only .35 of a square mile but is packed with winding alleys and sites of huge religious significance for the three great monotheist religions: The Western/Wailing wall for the Jews, Church of the Holy Sepulchre for Christians and Dome of the Rock for Muslims.

Outside the walls modern Jerusalem continues to grow and appears much like any modern city hustling its way through the business day. Arabs live in clusters in East Jerusalem and there are pockets of settlers setting up shop, surrounded by army protection. As anyone who has watched CNN knows these outposts are flash points in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. I don't propose to comment on this as I saw little of it. It rates mention here as it was Avi who pointed these enclaves out as we looked east from the walls of the old city. Without putting words in his mouth I think it would be safe to say he isn't a fan of the settler segment of the political landscape.

We started the day looking out over the old city from an Arab area which Avi told me many of his colleagues were afraid to visit.

I felt no sense of menace and the tourist buses lined up to take in the vista convinced me that my inner radar was on the mark.

What is not immediately apparent to a western conditioned soul like myself, is that the Old City is a "lived in" place. I approached it as I've usually experienced similar places, expecting it to be a series of preserved historical landmarks, clean swept with gates thrown open for the tourists . The tourists are there in abundance ( traffic jams and impossible parking as a result of of the dozens of the buses attest to that), but it is first and foremost a place where people LIVE. The picture above of a school playground perched just inside the old wall was my first glimpse of this.
From the wall of the Old City you can catch a glimpse, in the distance of another wall of more recent vintage.Thats two walls documented then.

Here is the third and most famous; The Western or Wailing Wall.

The Western Wall, or "Kotel" ( a rough translation of the Hebrew) is a retaining wall dating back to the time of the Second Jewish Temple ( 560BCE-70CE). It is also part of a bigger religious site The Temple Mount ( to Christians) or Al-Haram al-Qudsi al Sharif (to Muslims).

It is the holiest place accessible to Jews for worship as it is believed to be in close proximity to the Holiest of the Holies.

At any time day or night men and women can be found praying here.

According to the Judaic religious texts ( forgive me if I get this wrong) the wall constitutes the remaining structure of the Second Temple of Solomon destroyed by the Romans in the first Jewish Roman War.

British observers gave it the name "Wailing Wall" 2000 years after this event from watching devotes praying and weeping in lament for the destruction of the Temple .

That's one explanation of the name anyway.

"Jews have prayed at the Western Wall for hundreds of years, believing that the Divine Presence (Shekhinah) rests upon it and that the gate of heaven is situated directly above it. The tradition of placing a prayer written on a small piece of paper into a crack in the Wall goes back hundreds of years.
Included in the thrice daily Jewish prayers are fervent pleas that God return the Jewish exiles to the Land of Israel, rebuild the Temple (i.e., build the Third Temple), and bring the messianic era with the arrival of the Jewish Messiah.

The site is also holy to Muslims, who believe Solomon to be a Holy Prophet of God. Muslims also believe that Mohammed made a spiritual journey to "the farthest mosque," which they hold to be Jerusalem, in 632 CE on a winged creature from God named al-Buraq, a journey which is referred to as Isra and Mi'raj. While there, it is believed he tethered the horse to a wall, which some Muslims[citation needed] believe to be the Western Wall. Hence the Arabic name for the wall is the al-Buraq Wall. To commemorate the same belief, in 687 CE Muslims built the Dome of the Rock and the nearby Al-Aqsa Mosque ("the farthest mosque") on the Temple Mount, encompassed by the wall.
The theory that the Western Wall was used for this tethering is, however, disputed. The eponymous Al-Aqsa Mosque is adjacent to the south wall, and Islamic scholars in the 11th and 17th centuries thought the tethering occurred there. The scholar Shmuel Berkowitz explains that Muslim attribution of holiness to the Western Wall began only in the last 100 years. The official guides published by Waqf in 1914, 1965 and 1990, do not attribute holiness to the wall and the entry "al-Buraq" in the Encyclopedia of Islam does not make the connection either. [3]
Historically, el-Mabka, meaning "place of wailing," was the Arabic term for the wall. The designation "Wailing Wall" which found its way into many European languages stems from this name. "

(Wikipedia)

It's traditional for people to push little paper messages into the cracks during their prayers. I'd been told that these had recently been cleaned out and if so they're certainly catching up with new messages. One of the enduring images for me was the presence of so many guns at the wall. Likewise, I didn't expect to see so many soldiers praying there.

Men and women worship seperately at the wall. When I was there a couple of hundred school girls were taking over the woman's section.

From the wall we worked our way through the passages of the city along the "Via Dolorosa". The translation from Latin is "way of grief". Tradition holds that this was Christ's route as he carried his cross. The way is marked by nine of the fourteen stations of the cross.

Station VII pictured below is the site of Christ's second fall whilst carrying the cross. Some say (though not officially recognised) that the hand print in the picture below was the imprint left as he steadied himself. I couldn't really make out a handprint but its obvious many a pilgrim has placed his/her hand in the same place and worn the rock down.

The end of the route takes you to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre or Church of the Resurrection. Christians believe this is "Golgotha" or Hill of Calvary where according to the New Testament, Jesus was crucified.The church isn't that impressive from the outside when you think of the huge cathedrals in Europe marking less auspicious events. When you get inside however its HUGE and seems to go on and on. It's really a series of churches built by different denominations.

This is where things get interesting.

Since 1555 control of the complex has gone back and forth between Franciscans and Orthodox. Squabbles and even violence between the groups was common.

In 1852 a law was passed dividing control between the primary custodians: The Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Armenian Apostolic Churches.

In the late 19th century the Coptic Orthodox, Eithiopian Orthodox and Syriatic Orthodox churches acquired lessor authority.

The result of this multi-denominational power sharing has been chaotic and border on the absurd.

Consider the following:

"On a hot summer day in 2002, the Coptic monk who is stationed on the roof to express Coptic claims to the Ethiopian territory there moved his chair from its agreed spot into the shade. This was interpreted as a hostile move by the Ethiopians, and eleven were hospitalized after the resulting fracas.[3]
In another incident in 2004 during Orthodox celebrations of the Exaltation of the Holy Cross, a door to the Franciscan chapel was left open. This was taken as a sign of disrespect by the Orthodox and a fistfight broke out. Some people were arrested, but no one was seriously injured.[4]
Under the status quo, no part of what is designated as common territory may be so much as rearranged without consent from all communities. This often leads to the neglect of badly needed repairs when the communities cannot come to an agreement among themselves about the final shape of a project. Just such a disagreement has delayed the renovation of the edicule, where the need is now dire but where also any change in the structure might result in a change to the status quo disagreeable to one or more of the communities."

A visual reminder of this state of affairs is the ladder on the ledge over the church's entrance. It was placed there sometime before 1852 when this area was designated common ground. Here's the scene when I visited in September 2007.

Nothing can be changed or rearranged without unanimous consent. This ladder seems destined to remain as it stands into eternity!

The church itself houses the spots where Christ was crucified, body washed and buried. When I was there the Fillipinos stood in rapture before the shrine of the cross and Russians thronged around the grave.

I wonder what that means?

Outside there is the usual "stuff being sold.

There's a sucker born every minute..........

It was a blistering day, but inside the alleys and tunnel like passages the air was cool and pleasent. The Arab quarter was the most interesting and chaotic. Avi commented that his Jewish friends would be uneasy there.

I felt no sense of menace. That's it for now folks.

I'm in Budapest having been in Austria and London and will be here until Friday.

Back to London for the weekend with my daughter and parents then Mexico and maybe NYC next Friday.Love to all

T