O Jerusalem, Jerusalem

When I made it back to Jerusalem I immediately set to work trying to either a. locate my phone or b. cancel my service if I couldn't get it back.  I first tried calling it from Skype and someone who didn't speak English actually picked up.  Since I was calling from Skype, though, I don't actually know if I had to right country code so I may have very well been calling a foreign number.  After that whenever I tried to call my phone it went right to voicemail.  I also tried to send a text message to the phone, but never got a response.  I finally accepted the inevitable and suspended my account.  Since I was close to the end of my contract I was fortunately eligible for an upgrade so my dad helped me out by agreeing to go to the store to get a new phone and send it to me in Israel.  There was nothing else I could do after that point, but wait.

On Sunday morning I made a last minute decision to join the group tour of the Old City that was leaving from my hostel.  We met up with a larger group at the Jaffa Gate where I started talking with another American guy, Dan, who had overheard me telling someone else that I was from Connecticut (he grew up in Guilford.)  Shortly after we got there, it started to rain, but we decided to forge on.  The tour started at the Tower of David then went past the Armenian Quarter into the Jewish Quarter then the Muslim Quarter and finally the Christian Quarter.  The guide kept trying to find covered walkways and overhangs for us to stand under as he explained the history of the city.  He showed us a replica of the Jerusalem map mosaic that is located in the Byzantine Church in Madaba, Jordan, and then brought us down one of the oldest commercial streets in the city, which is lined with the remains of a row of columns.

From there we walked to the Western Wall where Dan's friend, Justin, decided to bugger off because he could no longer stand the cold and rain.  It was too wet for us to actually go and walk up close to the wall so, after a bathroom break, we walked to the Muslim Quarter where we bought these yummy pizza pastries and sahlab, which is a hot pudding drink topped with cinnamon, coconut and chopped pistachios.  It was a nice way to warm up since we were all soaking wet and freezing.  After making our way to the Christian Quarter, we stopped at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre where the guide brought us inside to explain the history.  He even took us into a chapel where they had uncovered some biblical-era tombs that proved the area had once been used as a graveyard.  The guide told us he normally didn't bring people inside the church on this tour, but he decided to make an exception because of the inclement weather.  By the time we made it back to Jaffa Gate at the end of the tour, only 12 of the original 24 of us who started out were still remaining.  I think the guide appreciated that we had seen it through, especially since he makes his living off of customer tips.

Once the tour ended Dan and I discussed heading to a museum after I stopped to get some more money.  We started walking up Jaffa Street and after getting some cash decided to go get a bagel before deciding where to go next.  While we were in the bagel shop it started to pour down rain again.  We didn't want to go back outside in a downpour so we continued to wait inside until it became too late to actually make it to a museum that day.  We decided to part ways and meet back up at my hostel later that night to grab a drink and some dinner.  When I got back it felt so nice to get into a hot shower and warm, dry clothes.  Justin ended up coming with Dan to meet up with me so we hung out at the hostel bar for a while and then ventured out to find a place to eat.  It had started to rain again by the time we had finished so I was glad once more to get back to the hostel.

On Tuesday morning, Dan met me at my hostel and we took tram out to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum.  It was a very foggy day, but fortunately not rainy so we started out by walking around the grounds where there are very monuments and memorials, including the hauntingly beautiful Children's Memorial dedicated to all the young victims.  We then went into the art museum where we saw works of art created before, during and after the Holocaust by Jews of all ages, many of whom didn't survive.  One of the saddest cases was of a precocious, young 14-year-old boy who painted, wrote poems and worked on a literary magazine, but was eventually killed in one of the concentration camps.  It's hard to think of the amazing things this talented kid could have done if only he had survived to adulthood.

When we went back to the main building to stop for lunch, we ran into Justin who had spent the morning trying to sort out his visa for India.  We walked together to the actual Holocaust History Museum, which tells the comprehensive history of the various ghettos, camps and rebellions that cropped up over the course of the war.  The actual artifacts and written material were supplemented with archival newsreels and other films that gave firsthand accounts of the genocide.  I thought the museum did a good job of outlining the history of antisemitism that started growing in the 19th century and built up to the point where an event this abhorrent could actually have been allowed to happen.  The museum ends with the circular Hall of Names where thousands of books are stored containing two million "Pages" with a short biography of each Holocaust victim.  I thought the whole complex was very well done, but there was such an overwhelming amount of information that it was hard to take it all in.  Even though we had spent the whole day there, I felt like it hadn't been enough and there was still more to see.

The following morning, I met Dan outside the Zion Gate because he wanted to go around to see more of the Old City that he had missed because of the rain.  I brought him first to the Church of the Dormition where I pointed out the old cranky German man (who was still there) and demonstrated how I had been right.  From there we walked to David's Tomb to try to find the Room of the Last Supper, which Dan's guidebook said was up a flight of stairs from the courtyard (the reason I hadn't found it before.  We saw a set of stairs with an arrow that pointed upwards next to an eye.  We thought we'd try that spot, but by the time we walked all the way to the top it appeared to just be a lookout point from the roof.  On the way back down the first set of stairs, a couple pointed to a door and told us that was the right place.  We walked in, but it didn't seem to match the description in Dan's book.  We continued to wander around until someone from David's Tomb told us to go around to a staircase right outside the entrance. We walked up the stairs, through a room with a guard and then realized we'd been in the right place all along.  There was absolutely no sign anywhere so unless you had asked you would have no idea where it was.  As we looked around Dan joked that it would be a really nice place for a banquet, though clearly even if it was the actual site of the Last Supper, that original building would be long gone by now.

After coming back down the stairway, we walked over to the Dung Gate and went into the Western Wall again.  Dan hadn't had a chance to put a prayer in the wall so he went over to his spacious men's side and I went over to my cramped women's side to put add another prayer request.  In the afternoon we wanted to go into the Temple Mount where the Dome of the Rock is located, but non-Muslims are only allowed in between 12:30pm and 1:00pm and it was only 11:50am at that point.  We checked to see if there was already a line to get in, but since there wasn't we decided to go over to the other side o the Western Wall to get some tea and coffee.

Unfortunately, once we did get back over to the entrance right before 12:30pm, there was a line so we had to wait 15 minutes to pass through the metal detectors and finally get inside.  Non-muslims aren't allowed inside either of the two mosques in the complex: Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.  That''s a bit unfortunate since not only is the "rock" inside the Dome of the Rock the supposed location of the Prophet Muhammed's ascension into heaven in Islam, but is also considered the Foundation Stone in Judaism where God created Adam and Abraham was going to sacrifice Isaac.  However, non-Muslims at one point weren't allowed into the Temple Mount area at all so I guess I couldn't really complain.  Since we didn't get inside until nearly 12:45pm we weren't sure if we would be kicked out right at 1:30pm, but unfortunately we were sort of walking near the exit at that point and a guard who saw us called to us and told us we had to leave.  Oh well.  At least we made inside at all.

Once we went out through the gate into the Muslim Quarter, Dan went off to catch a bus to Bethlehem and since I had already been I decided to spend the rest of the day at the Israeli Museum.  It took me about 25 minutes to walk there and once I arrived, I discovered it didn't open until 4:00pm that day.  I had about an hour to kill so I went over to the Parliament Building across the street and wandered around the rose garden next door where (shockingly!) there were very few roses blooming in the middle of January.  When 4:00pm finally rolled around, I went back over to the museum and spent a few hours going through the Archaeology Wing, which started with the dawn of man and all the way through to the Ottoman Empire.  I saw the world's oldest known piece of artwork--a stone figurine--and learned a lot about the settlement history of the region over time.

I spent so long in that one wing that I didn't have any time to check out any of the other galleries before it was time to leave to meet up with Dan and Justin.  I did decide, however, that I couldn't miss the Shrine of the Book, where a number of the Dead Sea Scroll manuscripts that were discovered in caves near the Dead Sea in the 1940s and 50s are housed.  By this point, I was really late, but on my way out I stopped by the model of the Second Temple and the Old City of Jerusalem from the era of King Herod.  The Second Temple was located in what is now the Temple Mount and was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD.  The only piece of the Second Temple complex that remains standing is the Western Wall, which is why that site is so sacred in Judaism.

When I got back to my hostel where Dan and Justin had already been hanging out for quite a while, they tried to convince me to go with them to the Dead Sea the following day.  Although it was a nice offer, since I had already spent nearly two weeks down there I decided to stay in Jerusalem since there was still so much for me to see.  In the end, I got kind of a late start on Wednesday so I didn't have time to do much sightseeing.  Instead I spent the day going around to a few real estate agencies to talk to them about casting opportunities for my old show.  On the way back to my hostel I did a little bit of shopping on Jaffa Street to replace some items of clothing that had been either lost or ruined somewhere along the way.  I also stopped at the Mahane Yuhuda Market, which is a popular outdoor food market.  I picked up some fruit and a glass of one of the fresh-squeezed juices that are popular in Israel.

Shortly after I got back to my hostel, Dan and Justin arrived and somehow convinced me to go on a pub crawl that the hostel was sponsoring.  Dan and Justin weren't even staying at my place, but I feel like they spent almost as much time there as I did since they didn't really have anywhere to hang out in their hotel in the Muslim Quarter.  The first two stops on the pub crawl where at bars located in the Mahane Yuhuda Market where I had just been.  At the second place, Dan and I shared a glass of what can only be described as warm sangria (though it wasn't called that), which sounds pretty disgusting, but was actually really good.  The last place we went was basically a dance club located right off of Jaffa Street.  Some of the people we were there with started to get pretty drunk and thus rather annoying, but we still had a good time.  By the time, I left to go home I was really tired.

The next morning I was scheduled to go on a tour of the Temple Mount Sifting Project, which I thought was located in the City of David archaeological park.  I had planned to walk there, but since I had to finish packing and check out, I ended up running late and had to grab a cab.  The driver didn't speak any English and didn't seem to understand where I wanted to go.  I couldn't tell he didn't want to drive me, but by that point I was in such a rush I didn't have time to get out and find another cab.  It was partly my confusion because I thought the site was located in the City of David, but also remembered a reference to Hebrew University, which was apparently nowhere nearby.  The driver called someone to ask and then tried to drop me off at the Tower of David, but I since I knew vaguely were I was going I told him to keep going.  At one point he veered off the to right and I knew he was going in the wrong direction so I told him to leave me right there.  He was trying to charge me what I thought was an outrageous price and when I asked for more change we got into an argument and he threw my money back at me.  I should have just left at that point, but I felt guilty and ended up giving him back the money, though I did stoop to calling him a "f***king a**hole" as I slammed the car door shut and stomped away.

I knew the direction I had to walk, but since the main road was up a big hill, I tried to take a short cut down a dirt road that led I had no idea where.  When I got to the end of the road I realized I was not at all in the right place.  I knew that I was in the Palestinian East Jerusalem, but I had essentially ended up in the outskirts of a neighborhood.  There was a group of people working to build a staircase and luckily one of the guys spoke English.  He looked at me as if to say, "you are clearly not in the right place."  I knew he wanted to help me out so when I explained where I was trying to go, he pointed out the direction of the City of David, but then told me that the Temple Mount Sifting Project was in a completely different location.  He showed me on my map and then let me go up the stairway to get to the main road since the road I had come down was a long way around.  When I got to the street I found a cab driver who spoke English and he knew exactly where I was trying to go.  He even pointed out different sights along the way up to the Tzurim Valley National Park on the bottom of Mount Scopus.

When I finally got to the site, I was nearly 40 minutes late for my appointment.  Luckily they were still able to accommodate me and I got an explanation about the project from one of the archaeologists.  Basically what had happened was that in 1999 the Islamic Waqf who manage the Temple Mount conducted a construction project in the southwest corner of the complex that uprooted thousands of years of archaeological evidence.  Some archaeologists found out where the dirt from the construction work had been dumped and eventually got permission to sift through it in search of artifacts.  Volunteers can now come and help sift through the soil.  After learning a bit more about the history, I was put to work sifting through buckets.  In the first two buckets I found mainly pottery, pieces of glass and metal, bone and a few mosaic stones. I actually missed a piece of what was likely a ceramic weight that the archaeologist had to point out to me.  I swear it looked just like a rock.  Then in the third and final bucket I found a few larger pieces of metal and when the archaeologist came over to check on my work, he said that one of those pieces of metal was actually a Crusader arrowhead.  The Crusaders had occupied the temple area when they invaded Jerusalem in the 1100s.  Apparently it was a pretty important find so I had to fill out a piece of paper with my name and e-mail address to indicate that I was the volunteer found it.  It may not have been the Holy Grail, but I have to admit that I did feel just a little bit like Indiana Jones at that moment.
 
Even though I had arrived late, the archaeologists still allowed me to stay for the whole allotted two hours, which was nice.  When it was time to leave I decided to walk back to my hostel and along the way I made a stop at the Rockefeller Archaeological Museum.  I'm not sure if it was free to go in, but no one asked me to pay so I got in for no fee.  The museum was smaller and less well-curated than the Archaeological Wing of the Israeli Museum, but it covered the same basic time periods.  I was able to get through it in a couple of hours just before they were starting to close.  It was then time for me to head to the station to catch my bus to Tel Aviv so I went back to my hostel and grabbed my bag.  I didn't remember my bags feeling so heavy when I had walked to the station last time, but this time I nearly died and should have taken the tram.  Once I got to Tel Aviv I caught another bus to Herzliya where I am now staying with family friends for a bit before making my next move, which I'll tell you about soon. 

Here is a link for more information about the Temple Mount Sifting Project.

Note: I'm really tired so I'm going to proofread this in the morning so I apologize in advance if there are any blatant errors before I get a chance to fix them. 
 

“Remember only that I was innocent
and, just like you, mortal on that day,
I, too, had had a face marked by rage, by pity and joy,
quite simply, a human face!”

Benjamin Fondane, Exodus
Murdered at Auschwitz, 1944