A Journey Through Society

(I posted "A Journey Through Society" last year. It seems to me that now in the "Days of Awe" between Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur that its message fits the season, fits what we have been studying and fits "Real Deep". My tenth graders below started 11th grade 2 weeks ago.)


My tenth graders set off on a journey last week. It's not the first time they've been in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem, but this time they visited places and people that perhaps they had heard of, but could barely imagine. They traveled to the farthest corners of Israeli society; dark places most of us Middle Israelis never see.

And the first step was a question: If on one side is equality and on the other is 'survival of the fittest', where are we Israelis? Part of the answer is a rundown neighborhood in south Tel Aviv ironically named Shikunat Hatikvah ('Neighborhood of Hope'). Our guides did their best to to explain what it's like to live in an island of poverty in a party town like Tel Aviv, but they weren't nearly as convincing as the locals we met by chance. "It's not as bad as they say it is", they explained, but the subtitles read otherwise.
.
.
A few streets over is a slum that doesn't appear on the map, but has a name – 'Crate Town' (my translation). Not recognized by the authorities and therefore free of building codes and municipal services, people build their homes out of odds and ends. Pitch dark at night, flooded in winter and ruled by criminals, the people living here probably would have been left to their own devices except that to their misfortune they are sitting on some of the most valuable real estate in the country. Rich contractors buy up the ground from under their feet turning them into squatters on land they have lived on since the nation was founded. The rich getting richer use a combination of goons and city ordinances to force the poor getting poorer out of their homes.

Our next stop was the 'slave market' near the Central Bus Station. The street is a kaleidoscope of human beings of all colors and races, foreign laborers living on a pittance and often just one step ahead of the law. Exploitation draws exploitation – a few blocks over is the red light district (We didn't go there of course.)

A 15 minute bus ride away is Kikar Hamedina. It's Tel Aviv's Central Park, a circle of watered parks surrounded by chic boutiques that only the very wealthy can afford to shop. Again it was the passersby that underlined the message, casually mentioning how much they invest in the manicured dogs they're walking – more than what an entire family lives on in the neighborhoods we had been only minutes ago.

Walking back to the buses, I asked Odedah what she made of what we had seen that day. She's 16 years old, so learning that she was shocked didn't surprise me. She thinks that social justice has to start with people with money.

"Because people follow people with money."
"Do you have money?"
"No."
"Neither do I."

Oh well………….

We spent the night in a hostel in Jerusalem. An overnight school trip where we don't sleep in tents in the desert and have showers and teachers too tired to know or care what they're up to all night (see 'The Lowest Place on Earth'). The kids were very excited.

The next morning we invaded an ultraorthodox stronghold called Mea Shearim. I use military terminology because that is how the people living there see us creatures of modern society – the enemy. They reject modern culture, modern kids and the modern state that spawned them. They say that only the Messiah can redeem the Jewish nation in the promised land. The state of Israel is an abomination. We were asked not politely to leave.

Something odd occurred to me. Our guides were obviously not religious. That's why they wanted us to see the nasty side of religious Jews. Yet, for two days they were preaching about equality and social injustice.

There are two explanations for everything in the world. The first is called evolution. By random chance and natural selection, things are what they are. Survival of the fittest. The other, less popular, notion is creation. God created stuff for a reason.

Now if you believe in evolution, then the strong survive. There's no way around it. And if you believe in equality, then it's because we are created beings. There is a God.

So I thought it was odd a bunch of people trying to show us that God is bunk, but talk equality – and a another bunch of people that think they are better than everyone not like them, but talk God. I know there's some rational explanation, but I just thought it was odd, that's all.

Nevertheless, after two days of seeing poverty and crime and exploitation, I was wondering if those snobs in Mea Shearim aren't right. Maybe Israel is an abomination.

The plan was for my tenth graders to finish the day on Mt. Herzl, where the dreamer who wrote the blueprint for modern Israel is buried. They are 16 or almost 16 now, and the idea was to give them their identity cards in a ceremony at a place symbolic of the society they will be joining before long.

But once again, something not on the program underlined why we need Israel, warts and all. Just before loading the buses taking us to the ceremony, one ambulance siren, then a second, then dozens. In Jerusalem, that can mean only one thing. Terror. Another Palestinian that hates Jews more than he loves his own life.

Israel hasn't succeeded any more than the rest of the family of man in establishing a just society. But time and again, the world has turned on Jews, and providing a haven, not social justice, is why Israel has to exist.

On the way back home I remarked to Odedah that our journey reminded me of the Gospels. I mean, Jesus was on a journey in society. He rubbed shoulders with the poor, broke bread with the rich, was rejected by religious hypocrites.

"You know, like, not much has changed here in 2000 years."

"And it won't until He comes back", she replied.

I doubt if human beings will ever be able to create a just society. I know that Jesus didn't even try. He didn't come with a social agenda; He didn't come to change mankind. He came to save men.

So in a way, as much as I hate to admit it, they're right in Mea Shearim.
Redemption will come with Messiah.

Sunday School

When I was a kid, we used to compete at Sunday School to see who could memorize the most scripture by heart. Besides John 3:16, the all time favorite was John 11:35, "Jesus wept." The shortest verse in the Bible; only two words. A freebie.

It's about how a friend of Jesus, Lazarus, gets sick. His sisters run off to fetch Jesus, but by the time Jesus can get away from the Messiah business, poor ol' Lazarus has died in the meantime. When Jesus finds out that his buddy Lazarus is dead, he's real broken up about it. "Jesus wept."

Now everybody is real impressed with the show of emotion, but his friends take Jesus aside. "You know, the sympathy is really nice, but you being the Messiah and all, we were hoping for a little more." Jesus takes the hint and then and there raises Lazarus up from the dead. Once again, Jesus saves the day and everybody's happy. (Especially Lazarus and his sisters.)

All this happened a few years before the rebellion against Rome. It didn't go well for the Jews, and Jerusalem didn't fare any better than Gamla and the rebels in Galilee. The Romans took their sweet time and then finally stormed and took the holy city, destroyed the Temple and slaughtered anyone that had managed to survive the siege. Jerusalem was leveled, and then to add insult to injury, less than a century later the Romans founded a pagan city on the ruins and called it Aelia Capitolina. They built a temple to Zeus on the temple mount to rub in their victory over the Jews, and another temple to Aphrodite on Golgotha (Where Jesus was crucified.) to stick it to the Christians, who they liked only a little more than the Jews.

The Romans built fortifications for their new city Aelia Capitolina, included 4 gates – and no wall. Not only that, only one was at the entrance to the city. Another one stood half a kilometer north out of town and two more so called "gates" were in the city center. Our guide Nachum claims that this was something the Romans did to demonstrate power, but to me it looks like a bureaucratic snafu – someone budgeted for 4 gates and forgot to allocate funds for the wall. Despite my objections, Nachum maintains that the Romans did this all over the empire, including in Rome. I counter that it only proves that they were consistently incompetent, no more. My friends duly noted Nachum's opinion and not mine because he claims to be one of the examiners for the exam to be certified. (But then, if he's inventing tales glorifying inept Romans, then it's likely that he's not above impersonating an examiner.)

Nevertheless, the city gate was very impressive. One main entrance was flanked by two smaller ones, and on the other side was a huge half circle plaza with a statue of the emperor or Zeus on a pillar. Today the Damascus Gate built by the Ottomans 500 years ago stands on the ruins of the Roman/Byzantine one, but you can still see one of the minor gates below serving as foundation for the 16th century one.

And then in one of those strange twists of history, the Romans converted to Christianity. Most people don't realize that the Byzantines were no more than the same mean ol' Romans that had simply switched from idols to icons. This brings us to the Byzantine period.

When you are studying the land of Israel in the Roman Period, Jesus doesn't figure in. He wasn't a player; working miracles and being the Messiah don't cut the mustard. But when you come to the Byzantine Period, it's a different story. A lot of things had changed since Lazarus rose from the dead.

One of the first things the Byzantines did was change the name of Aelia Capitolina back to Jerusalem. It was confusing for little Byzantine kids in Sunday School, memorizing Bible verses about Jerusalem and then the grown ups had to explain that it meant Aelia Capitolina. Changing the name back to Jerusalem made it a lot easier for everybody. Not only that, they built churches.

Now everybody knows that Constantine the Great was the first Byzantine emperor, but it's a little know fact that he never went to Sunday School. When he was a little boy he didn't have to go because he was a heathen, and even after he got saved he was just too busy running his empire business.

One Sunday morning his mom, Helena, dropped by the palace.
"Constantine the Great, Sweetie, I think you should come to church with me this morning."
Constantine saw where this was going. The last thing he needed was for the palace guard to see him tagging along behind him mommy to Sunday School. In no time they would have him memorizing Bible verses.
"Mom, I've got a better idea. I think you should go to the holy land."

So Helena went to Jerusalem. She walked through the gate, took one look up at the statue of Zeus and told the city fathers to pull the dang thing down and put up something more appropriate to the city of our Lord. In a jiffy they had the statue down, sawed off the lightning bolt, and drilled a hole in its place and then inserted a golden staff. They shaved off the helmet and a sculptor chiseled away until it looked like long hair. By the time Helena left town, a statue of the Good Shepherd was standing on the pillar as good as new, without making a dent in the city wall fund.

Helena's mission was to find the very places Jesus had been, in particular the ones connected with his crucifixion, and to build churches there. She marched down the Cardo, which is Latin for "Main Street", and stopped smack in front of the temple of Aphrodite, which is Latin for Hustler magazine.

"Isn't this Golgotha?"
"Yes, ma'am." The town fathers blushed. (Who would have thought that the old bag was so well informed on holy places.)
"What in carnation is that abomination doing on the passion of our Lord?!!"
A few town fathers snickered.

Helena demanded that they tear down the temple, get rid of those outrageous statues of naked women and build the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. Someone dared suggest that if they left the statues it might be easier to get the kids to go to Sunday School. Helena wasn't amused.

Which brings us to my course in the 21st century. The subject for our day in the field was "Byzantine Jerusalem". This means for the most part going to churches, and being a Sunday, I couldn't help getting a little de je vu from my childhood years in Sunday School, but for most of my collogues church is about as familiar as the far side of the moon. (Somehow I got separated from the group at the Damascus Gate, so I headed for the Holy Sepulcher hoping to catch up with them. When I didn't find them there, I back tracked and found them in the museum that's under the gate. Miron, our course coordinator, asked me where I disappeared. I just shrugged. "I went to church.")

.

.

.

.
We took the Via Dolorosa, the same route Jesus was lead to Golgotha, to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. There are stations along the way marking every detail of Jesus' way to the cross.
.

If there is a time and place on earth that is the focus of the Christian religion, it's what happened here 2000 years ago. Its heart is an empty tomb. It has been embellished, and a dome built over it, but that's what it is. While ancient churches always were always oriented, pointing east, the Holy Sepulcher's basilica points west, towards the place that Jesus rose after 3 days in the grave.

One cannot but be impressed by the emotion, the awe, the passion, of worshipers from all over the world that make the pilgrimage. The sepulcher itself is covered with soot and wax, and the air a thick haze, from hundreds of candles lit around the base every day. It's as if an aura of holiness has been bottled and capped inside a grand Roman vestibule.

Yechiel, the other American taking this course, is an observant Jew. This was no doubt the first time he went to church. As we were leaving, he remarked that he can see why Christians that visit the Holy Sepulcher are moved.

I agree; no Christian can be apathetic, but not always in a positive way. I couldn't help but recall my brother Barry's remark after visiting the place: "This is the first time I've seen idolatry in real life." Barry's gut reaction to the religion the Romans created by dressing Jesus in the vestments of paganism is understandable. And anyone who's been to Sunday School knows that if Jesus is who he says he is, the last place you are going to find him is in a grave.

The last place we visited in Byzantine Jerusalem was in the parking lot of the Jewish Quarter in the Old City. Nachum pointed to a spot on the pavement and explained that we were standing on the northwestern corner of the Nea, a church in honor of "The virgin Mary, mother of God" built by the Byzantine emperor Justinian. It had a sanctuary bigger than a football field and towered over the Temple Mount.

The Nea would have been just another VERY big church if taken out of context. Its location and size were no accident. One of the curiosities of Byzantine Jerusalem was that one vast stretch of prime real estate, the Temple Mount, was left in ruins purposely as witness to Jesus' prophesy that the Temple would be destroyed; that not one stone would be left on another. (Luke 19:41-44) Pious women all over the empire were asked to save the soiled rags after their monthly cycle and the church sent special deliveries of these "offerings" to be thrown on the Temple Mount. The Nea had no connection whatsoever to the life and ministry of Jesus; building a monument of grandeur to dominate the Temple site, and degrading the mount with refuse was a statement of the triumph of Christianity over the Jews.

Today the Nea lays under a parking lot. Jews park there.

Yechiel remarked about the Nea Church on the way home.
"They built this huge monumental church out of hatred, to humiliate the Jews and to one up the Temple. Was this what Jesus had in mind when he said that there wouldn't be one stone left on another?"

And my Sunday School lessons served me that moment. I recalled the story of how Jesus had come into Jerusalem a week before he was crucified. He came up over the Mount of Olives on a spring day, and as he made it over the top, the city was spread out before him in all her glory. He saw the Temple and the mansions around it. No doubt he knew that there were people there already plotting to take his life, and that same blind hatred would one day take them deeper, to murder one another while the enemy stood at the gates. He saw the Romans pulling down Jerusalem's Temple, raping her women and butchering her babes. He saw the abomination the Gentiles would make of her, and how one day they would built monuments of hatred in his name. Perhaps he even realized that the same Roman Empire that crucified him would twist his words and convince his people that he had planned all this.

That Sunday School story popped into my mind when Yechiel asked about Jesus' prophesy.

Did Jesus prophesy about Jerusalem in a spirit of spite and superiority?

"No", I said, "Jesus wept."

.

By All Means

"I am made all things to all men, that I might by all means save some." (I Corinthians 9:22)

It is little known that nearly a full century before Theodor Herzl wrote "Der Judenstaat" (The Jewish State), a group of Evangelical Anglicans (which apparently is not an oxymoron) called the London Society for Promoting Christianity Amongst the Jews were promoting the idea of a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel in anticipation of the Second Coming.


Fortunately for the Christian dreamers of Zion, in England the head of the church is also head of state and it was only natural that religion oil the wheels of Empire and visa versa. Patronage of the Jewish community in the Ottoman province of Palestine was both the pretext and modus operandi of British intervention in Turkish internal affairs in the Middle East, while the LSPCAJ lobbied for the venture at home.

The Ottoman firman permitting a British consul within the walls of Old Jerusalem paved the way for the Mission. The church was allowed as a personal chapel for the consul, although proportionally this was like strapping the engine of a 747 on a VW Bug and calling it a turbo. Since the British compound is due west of the Temple Mount, the church faces the rising sun as prescribed by Christian tradition, but like a synagogue the direction of worship is also towards the Holy of Holies. In order to disarm Jewish suspicions, there are no crucifixes or images in the sanctuary (Although cleverly, the church itself is built in the shape of a cross.) Instead, verses from the Old and New Testament written in Hebrew adorn the alter and an ark.












While those Pre Zionist English dreamers didn't live to see the fruits of their labors, they played an important part in its cultivation. They promoted Jewish settlement in the city and in the development of the modern neighborhoods outside the walls in West Jerusalem. For more than a century and a half there has been a Jewish majority in Jerusalem.


And while the dream of a Jewish state is today a reality, the vision of a mass conversion of Israel failed to appear. Well, almost. Today Christ Church is primarily a guest house, but its still a church. Messianic Jews use the sanctuary on Shabbat, sanctuary in both its meanings as within the walls of the compund it is most likely one of the few places they can meet without interference. And I understand that there is a regular English service (Mass?) held there on Sundays. Our second night there, a small group of Christian Arabs met in the patio under our window. I knew they were worshiping from the sound of hymns, even though I didn't understand the words in Arabic.
.

A friend of mine, an Anglican, once told me that their religion is Catholic in practice and their faith pivots on obedience. A fresh convert, 'saved' from her Evangelical upbringing, she painted her new religion in black and white. It seems to me that the Anglican Church is able to change color like a chameleon, turning its skin to fit circumstance. I'm sure that obedience is the rule for followers, but expedience is the keyword for their leaders.

I am not the one to judge if Christ Church was the product of cynical statesmen or a sincere attempt to bridge the gap between Christians and Jews. I suspect it was a little of both.


Christ Church is one of my favorite places. The compound with hidden gardens and the rooms with the original stone floors and domed ceilings; waking in the early hours to the sounds of church bells and Muslim calls to prayer in the old city – it takes you back to 19th century Jerusalem and somehow the experience feels more authentic than in more modern accommodations.




















Christ Church belongs to a bygone age, born out of the politics of Empire and not so Catholic currents in the Anglican stream. It is an anomaly; unlike any other church of its day, and an island of tranquility in a city known for turmoil. It is certainly worth a visit.

(First posted at My People)