Old City and Temple Mount

We spent a fascinating day in the Old City. I'm sure I can't do justice to all of the things we saw and experienced, but I'll give it a shot. We started in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. As we approached the kotel we heard drums and singing. Mondays are very popular days for bar mitzvahs at the Kotel (since the Torah is read on Mondays and Thursdays) and many of them have a procession to the kotel with hired celebrators - men who sing and play drums and shofar and generally make for a very festive and celebratory mood. They stop periodically in the streets of the Old City on the way to gather around the bar mitzvah boy and celebrate him. It's impossible to hear it and not feel the joy of the occasion and the family. We followed one such group to the Kotel, enjoying a bit of their festivities. Planning to return later, we then found our way to the wooden ramp which leads up from the Kotel plaza to the Temple Mount.

There are very restricted hours for visiting the Temple Mount and non-Muslims are not allowed in the Al-Aqsa mosque or Dome of the Rock. The first thing you see as you go up the ramp is a sign saying that going to the Temple Mount is forbidden by Jewish Law (lest you accidentally step on the site of the holy of holies). So, essentially, the Muslims would prefer we didn't go up there and the Jews would prefer we did not go up there! We went anyway. The security was VERY tight. Unlike most of the security checks

points where the guards briefly tear their eyes away from their cell phones to glance at you, at this check point, they looked us up and down carefully and went through our bags thoroughly. As we were carrying our picnic cooler, they asked if we had any meat or alcohol (not allowed to bring either onto the Temple Mount). We got to the top, and our first impression was how big and crowded it was. It was the last day school and there was a huge group of school kids having a festival outside. They were playing a game with balloons, making paper chains and fans, singing songs, and they people in character of a duck and a bunny entertaining the kids, leading them in little parades, etc. In some ways it was completely adorable and sweet. However, as we continued to watch, we noticed that there was definitely an edge to the whole event. Some of the boys used the fountains meant for ritual washing outside the mosque to fill the ballons with water, which they kept threatening to throw at passers by (others were throwing firecrackers). If you listened closely to the songs, you could distinctly hear the words Allah (god) and Jihad (usually translated as "holy war"). And periodically, the duck and bunny would lash out and start kicking the kids or dumping them in trash cans. It was a bit surreal to see this mostly happy event tinged with an undercurrent of aggression that went beyond what you would see with even an unruly group of American school children.

We walked around by the Dome of the Rock, which is an absolutely gorgeous gold-domed, colorfully-tiled shrine to the place where the Muslims believe Allah ascended to heaven. An Arabic inscription on the building says it was built by Caliph al-Ma'mum in the year 691. The problem with that is that al-Ma'mum didn't live until 120 years later. Apparently, he painted over the real builder's name (Caliph Abd al-Malik) but forgot to paint over the date! It was awesome though to see this building close up (we have seen it from a distance for the past 2 weeks) and to walk on the site of the former Temple (which was supposedly 2 1/2 times the height of the Dome of the Rock - it must have been very impressive!).

We also walked over by the Al-Aqsa mosque (a less impressive, but actually more important, building on the Temple Mount). We passed groups of men sitting together and studying the Koran and groups of women praying together. We weren't able to go too close to the mosque (unless we were willing to pay a guy a ridiculous price to give us a "tour"), but we saw the outside, the shelves for placing shoes before going in to pray, the huge umbrellas outside to create shade outside on days when many worshippers are there. We saw the area where King Abdullah of Jordan was killed by a Muslim assassin in 1951 (for trying to make peace with Israel -- just as Rabin was killed by a jewish assassin for the same reason).


As the visiting hours to the Temple Mount ended, we headed back to the Kotel below to witness more of the bar mitzvah celebrations. We also saw the end of the school year celebrations of several of the Jewish schools in the area. Ella, Sylvia, and I struggled to watch the festivities from behind the barrier between the men's and women's sections (along with the mothers, sisters, aunts, etc of the bar mitzvah boys who threw candy over the partition and wobbled on high heels while standing on flimsy plastic chairs to see). Sylvia kept saying to me, "me no see Torah." Perceptive, huh?


We then left the area of the Kotel, picnicked in a spot we like in the Jewish Quarter, and then visited the Wohl archeological museum. This underground museum exhibits the remains of six houses from the time of the Second Temple (70 CE) which were found when Israel reclaimed the Old City in 1967. There is evidence that at least one of the homes belonged to one of the high priests. There were stone dishes (instead of cheaper clay) because stone dishes are easier to keep kosher. There was also part of a fresco that depicted the a drawing of the menorah and sacrifice tables in the Temple (which only the High Priests would have seen). Some of the houses were more modest, while others were fancier. One was a mansion with many, many rooms, beautiful mosaics, several mikvahs, lots of store rooms in the basement, etc. It gave us great insight into the challenges of rebuilding the Jewish Quarter for modern living, while preserving the artifacts of the past.

We also visited the Burnt House - a smaller house that also belonged to a priestly family and was burned by the Romans when they destroyed Jerusalem. They had a great multimedia video presentation in the space that told the (fictional) story of the family in the days before the destruction. It depicted the son who wanted to join the "zealots" in fighting the Romans and the father who wanted to go along with the Romans and believed they would never destroy the Temple or hurt the priestly families. Israeli museums really have the knack of bringing these ancient times to life for kids (and adults)!

Finally, we went in search of (and found) a cute bakery we had seen but not stopped at during an earlier visit to the area. We also stopped to check out the "Cool Globes" exhibit on the promenade by Mamilla Mall - an exhibit about global warming presented through artistic globes. Home, a little R & R, fed the kids dinner before Abe and I went out to dinner for a much needed date night. Focaccia  in the German Colony - delicious and great ambience. Ate outside under the heat lamp. Chilly but so nice. Who would have ever imagined beng chilly in Israel in July!