Wisdom from an Israeli writer

In Hebrew class today we read part of a poem by an Israeli writer, Yehuda Amichai, entited "Tourists":

פעם ישבתי על מדרגות ליד שער במצודת דוד, את שני הסלים הכבדים שמתי לידי. עמדה שם קבוצת תיירים סביב המדריך ושימשתי להם נקודת ציון. "אתם רואים את האיש הזה עם הסלים? קצת ימינה מראשו נמצאת קשת מן התקופ הרומית. קצת ימינה מראשו". "אבל הוא זז, הוא זז!" אמרתי בלבי: הגאולה תבוא רק אם יגידו להם: אתם רואים שם את הקשת מן התקופה הרומית? לא חשוב: אבל לידה, קצת שמאלה ולמטה ממנה, יושב אדם שקנה פֵּרות וירקות לביתו.

Once I was sitting on the steps near the gate at David's Citadel and I put down my two heavy baskets beside me. A group of tourists stood there around their guide, and I became their point of reference. "You see that man over there with the baskets? A little to the right of his head there's an arch from the Roman period. A little to the right of his head." "But he's moving, he's moving!" I said to myself: Redemption will come only when they are told, "Do you see that arch over there from the Roman period? It doesn't matter, but near it, a little to the left and then down a bit, there's a man who has just bought fruit and vegetables for his family."

We as American--and Canadians, and whatever else we are--could learn a lot from this piece of writing. We come to Jerusalem because it's a holy city, but is that really what Jerusalem is? What should we be focusing on when we come here, Jerusalem as it was or Jerusalem as it is? Jerusalem isn't frozen in time; it's a modern city with modern citizens, modern life, and modern problems. When I go to Women of the Wall, it's the people I'm focusing on, not the history. The wall itself isn't what's important; the treatment of women there in modern-day Jerusalem is what matters. The same goes for any human rights issues you might look at--the problems of the Palestinians, the problems of the GLBT population, etc. These are real people living today; can we really come to this country and ignore them? If we do that, Israel is nothing. "Next year in Jerusalem" will always be just a saying, whether or not there really is a place called Jerusalem and whether or not Jews can come there. We have to look at today, not just yesterday. Tomorrow all of this will be history--is this really what we want to see?

Beersheva

Pesach Break served as a time to travel, since I don't really have any other chances to do it before I leave Israel. I've already posted about my trip to Tzfat; my second trip was only a day trip, but in some ways it seemed even bigger.

I wanted to go to Beersheva for what seemed like the coolest shuk in the entire country:

On the south side of Beersheba, in Elat Road (Derekh Elat), the Bedouin market is held every Thursday. It is frequented by Bedouin from far and wide, and its colorful bustle of activity attracts many tourists. The main wares of interest to visitors are carpets, finely embroidered cushions and camel saddles, copperware and numerous other craft products; the local people, on the other hand, come to buy articles of clothing, domestic requisites, skins and also live goats and hens. (from this site)

Other descriptions mention the sale of camels and sheep, which I just think is cool. I mean, it's not like I'm going to buy a camel and bring him home with me, but I've never seen a place where they're sold before. There's also a place near Beersheva where you can ride camels, so it seemed like the ideal trip--that is, until my usual travel luck took over.

Lynley and I got up early on Thursday, ate some matzah for breakfast, and headed to the Central Bus Station for the hour and a half ride to Beersheva. We made it there by 10 and walked to where the Bedouin Market was supposed to be, only there wasn't really a market. Instead there was this city festival thing with exhibitions, food vendors, music, and kids' crafts, which wasn't quite what we'd come to see (and also not particularly up and running at 10:30am). There was one Bedouin guy who set up shop--a tent and a bunch of stuff spread out--but that was it.

(Photo courtesy of Lynley)

One tip about Bedouin markets: never ask the price of something that you have no intention of purchasing. Curiosity may not kill you, but it will sic a very persistent salesperson on you who won't leave you alone until you either buy something or walk away--and in my case walking away wasn't an option, as Lynley was partaking in some hooka and pretending to be a dragon:

Actually, smoking hooka in a Bedouin tent might not be such a good idea either. Bedouin salespeople can be very creepy. The same guy who pushed me to buy also insisted on sitting down next to us and attempting to persuade Lynley to marry him for a full five minutes, or until we left--and I'm pretty sure he was serious.

Apparently Lynley has "magical eyes," though he'd used that line on me not five minutes before as a bargaining tool. (Bedouin markets also mean haggling. Bigtime. I paid 1/3 of the originally offered price for what I bought, and I still think I was probably ripped off.)

After we left the Bedouin Market--what there was of it--we headed down to the Beersheva Visitor's Center, which is located near Abraham's Well. This is where we discovered that Beersheva really isn't a tourist place. The visitor's center was just a small room with a few pamphlets, all in Hebrew except for one random pamphlet in French. The only English in the entire place was a misspelled sign next to Abraham's Well, which you have to pay 5NIS to see:

In actuality that's not really Abraham's well but rather a Turkish one, and there are no signs of explanation anywhere other than the Biblical verses. How was the well discovered? When? What's the wooden thing for and how does it work? No explanations anywhere. A bit disappointing.

After visiting the really unhelpful visitor's center we headed for lunch in the old city. Beersheva is supposed to be "the heart of the Negev," and if Beersheva is the heart of the Negev, the old city should reasonably be the heart of the heart--which is the case in both Jerusalem and Tzfat, the other Israeli cities I know that have old cities. Wrong! The old city of Beersheva was like a ghost town. Most of the restaurants were closed for Pesach, the buildings were run-down and graffitied, and the only people we saw were a few blue-collar workers, one of whom seemed to be chasing after us screaming but was really trying to get the attention of someone in a car. It was really sketchy, and we abandoned it for the mall food court very quickly.

After lunch we set out for the Negev Camel Ranch, or in other words, Cameland. I always love it when the bus drops you off by the side of the road in the middle of nowhere, but luckily there was a map on the Camel Ranch website that I'd copied down and a nice big sign once we'd walked 100 meters down the road. Of course, from there it was a loooooong walk to the ranch because this is Israel, and this is the desert. But when we reached it--there were camels! Lots of camels! And these pictures are only the ones they don't take out on rides for tourists!

After waiting for about an hour--the day was full of waiting, since we were also crowded out of our first bus for Cameland--we ended up with a private camel tour just for the two of us. This is where I learned that camels are really slow and desert looks like desert looks like desert. However, I definitely got to ride a camel. That was completely worth the trip.

After riding camels it was time to go back to Jerusalem, since it was already 5pm. Of course, as I mentioned earlier, our bus stop was out in the middle of nowhere, on the side of the road, without any signs whatsoever:

Also, the bus back to Beersheva only runs every hour and a half. This left Lynley and me by the side of the road for an hour, watching cars go by. We weren't necessarily trying to hitchhike back, but we wouldn't have minded it, and it's funny what drivers do when they see people standing by the side of the road. We got a lot of people putting their hands up like "What am I supposed to do?" and some people honking at us. The entire time we didn't even see a taxi pass and the bus was 20 minutes late, so we had this plan of walking to Dimona--the nearest town, about 5 minutes drive away--if the bus didn't show. While the bus did finally show, it was only after a car pulled over and a really nice couple offered to give us a lift to Beersheva. We took it. It sure beat walking to Dimona. From Beersheva it was an easy ride back to Jerusalem and the Kfar, though I didn't get back until after 9pm. Then it was pretty much bedtime. Tourism is exhausting, especially when it involves hour-long camel rides.

Tzfat

I spent this past weekend in Tzfat, one of the four holy cities (the others being Jerusalem, Hebron, and Tiberias). I was there once before, in high school, and I remembered it being beautiful. As someone who goes to Friday night services pretty regularly, I love thinking about the fact that this is where Lecha Dodi was written, and really Kabbalat Shabbat as a whole was formed. The city has a lot of spiritual meaning.

The trip started out on Thursday by discovering that the 982 bus to Tzfat doesn’t actually leave from the Central Bus Station, even though that’s where you buy your tickets. Also, the big “23” on the ticket dosen’t mean “gate 23” but rather a zone. So… Lynley and I missed our bus and had to wait two and a half hours for the next one. Yay. At least I finally got to check out the mall that’s in the Cental Bus Station, and obtained something that you’ll probably only find in Israel—haggadot in a dollar store.

We finally made it to Tzfat around 7pm after a three and a half hour bus ride up and down and around lots of mountains. (It’s Israel.) Guidebooks tend to only spend a page on Tzfat as part of the section on the Galilee, so we got off the bus and had to wander around until we found a sign for our hostel, Ascent. “Go up the stairs and follow the map,” it said—what map? There was no map! Thankfully I remembered that someone at the office had called my phone to confirm our reservation, so the number was in my phone and I was able to call them for directions.

The thing about Tzfat is… even with a map, you get lost. It’s one of those places that maps can’t really handle, like the Old City of Jerusalem. For example, this:

That’s a road. There’s no signs and no stores or houses on it to indicate that it’s a road, no street numbers, but it’s very definitely marked on the map as Ma’alot Olei HaCardom. Such is Tzfat.

The first place we tried to go for dinner, Café Bagdad, kicked us out saying that they were only serving coffee, even though they were open for another half hour. (This was 8:30pm.) So we went to the next place the people at Ascent recommended, Café Milano. There we discovered that even though Tzfat is mainly known for kabbalah and art, there’s actually another piece to it: cheese. According to the faulty map there was entirely a whole cheese museum! (In actuality, no such place exists.) Anyway, this meant that there were a lot of cheese dishes at Café Milano. Lynley ended up getting something called “halumi salad,” which was actually pasta in teriyaki sauce with cashews, bell peppers, and halumi cheese. I got a cheese platter with roasted vegetables. Lynley very much got the better deal; her halumi salad was amazing. (I know cause I got to try some.) Take a look:

My cheese platter was okay. I really liked the labane, but of the other two cheeses one was okay and the other I didn’t really like. The veggies were also okay, not wonderful. But Lynley’s halumi salad… wow! Amazing. Just amazing.

After dinner we headed back to Ascent and went to bed. Then on Friday we woke up early and went to explore Tzfat before everything closed for Shabbat. Our first stop was Safed Candle Factory, where they really make art out of candles. Like, for example, the Temple:

or a whole bunch of penguins:

There was also one of David and Goliath and one of Samson tearing down the Philistine temple, but I wasn’t so interested in those. While we were there we also eavesdropped on a tour guide teaching a family a bit about how regular havdallah candles are made, basically by dipping string into melted wax multiple times and then weaving the tapers together while they’re still hot. It’s pretty cool. I actually spent as much money at the candle factory as I did for two nights at Ascent, which either says something about how cheap Ascent is or how impressive the candle factory is. Maybe both. And no, I did not buy a penguin—their faces were too weird.

From the candle factory we poked our heads into the Ari Synagogue (looks like a normal Orthodox synagogue, minus the women’s section) and proceeded to a street lined entirely with galleries of more conventional art—paintings, jewelry, and Judaica. There were some really beautiful things there, all of it expensive. There was even one shop where we got to watch weavers at work, which was really cool although I don’t understand why anyone would spend more than $100 on a really plain-looking matzah cover.

And of course we had to go find the cheese. There are signs all over the place saying “Tzfat cheese à” or “holy Tzfat cheese à” all of which led to another and then yet another sign. Reaching the cheese factory is like going thorough a maze, literally. When we get there it was just a little place—a table covered with different cheeses, a few tables for sitting down, and a room with vats in it that are used to make the cheese. Unfortunately we didn’t get to find out how cheese is made (we’d have to come back on Sunday for that, except that we were leaving Tzfat on Saturday night), but we did get to try every single one of his cheeses. They weren’t expensive, either; I got small pieces of feta and the special Tzfat cheese for only $10. That plus the four rugalach I’d brought from Jerusalem were more than enough for lunch.

Cheese:

So Friday was good. Shabbat… not so much. It’s odd because when I said I wanted to spend a Shabbat in Tzfat, I was warned that Ascent was really, really Orthodox—which is true. However, I’ve spent Shabbat with the Orthodox before, and as long as I know I’m there for Shabbat and not for a long period of time, I even sorta enjoy parts of it. Organizations that reach out to non-Orthodox students tend to be really concerned about how you’re doing and completely willing to talk to you about Orthodoxy. They have this kind of excitement to them. The people at Ascent… didn’t really. There was a shiur before Shabbat, but it didn’t really go anywhere. After that was supposed to be “Candlelighting and orientation,” but in reality it was just lighting on our own and sitting around until time to go to services. Dinner wasn’t with families in Tzfat, as it usually is at Ascent, but all together in a room in the hostel with not so wonderful food. Saturday was more of the same, if not worse; downtime until lunch unless you got up in time to go to 8am services at a synagogue of your choosing, a meal in which there was no vegetarian option (brisket and potatoes that were cooked together with the brisket), more down time until 4:45, an hour-long tour of Tzfat, and then more down time until dinner and even more downtime until havdallah!

Honestly, if I wanted to stay in my room and read and eat crappy found, I could have stayed in Jerusalem. I wasn’t too pleased with Ascent Shabbat. Usually they pay attention to us. Usually there’s singing and words of Torah and decent food when Orthodox organizations try to draw people in (and presumably the rest of the year, too), and that’s what I was expecting. That’s what I paid for. I feel like it would have been different if we’d gone to families for meals, but the website made no mention of the fact that Shabbat HaGadol isn’t a Shabbat where we get hosted. If it had, we probably would have come another weekend.

It all just seems very odd to me. They asked us twice if we were vegetarian—once on the registration form, and once when they called to confirm our registration. There was at least one other girl in our boat, too. If you know more than 48 hours in advance that 3 out of your 10 English-speaking guests are vegetarians, how in the world do you justify ignoring it? Apparently they expected us to just eat the salads, with no warning that we wouldn’t be able to eat the main dish. Thank you very much for your consideration. I really appreciate it.

I think, in the end, I’m still glad I went to Tzfat for Shabbat. As much of a let-down as it was, as much as it was so not worth the 200NIS we paid for it, if I hadn’t done it I would have wished I had. I would have just continued to have this fantasy of Shabbat in Tzfat and regretted never experiencing it. And there were some good parts to it. I discovered that while no one drives on Yom Kippur, the Shabbat of Shabbats, in Jerusalem, no one drives on Shabbat in Tzfat, period. Not a car moving that I could see, at least not on HaAri Street or Jerusalem Street, the only two streets we walked on where cars can actually go. I also discovered that there are basically no cats it Tzfat. The entire time we were there, we only saw two—as opposed to the rest of Israel, where they’re everywhere. These things are interesting to me. They’re unique, the same way the history is unique. I just wish all of Shabbat was like that.

Architecture mixed with a bit of politics

Today marked my architecture class's second trip to the Old City, and the last trip for a while. For the most part it was nothing remarkable--just a tour through a Herodian mansion and a visit to the Southern Wall of the Temple Mount. However, current events dictated that we must try to take a look at the newly rebuilt Hurva Synagogue, which we did.

Long story short: the Hurva Synagogue was originally built in the 1860s and was destroyed twice. In 2002 the Israeli government decided to rebuild the synagogue, and it was rededicated last Monday night. This was part of what lead to the "Day of Rage" riots among the Palestinians last Tuesday. The New York Times explains why they're so upset:

The synagogue’s new white dome blends in with the city’s ancient monuments holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews. Because of the topography, seen from certain points around the city, it rises above the Islamic shrines of the compound revered by Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, and by Jews as the Temple Mount, including Al Aksa Mosque.

In Damascus, Khaled Meshal, the exiled leader of the Islamic militant group Hamas, said the synagogue’s dedication signified “the destruction of the Al Aksa Mosque and the building of the temple,” according to Agence France-Presse.

Okay, so that sounds a little bit drastic. Really, the rebuilding of one synagogue is going to lead to the destruction of the Temple Mount as we know it? However, take a look at this (also mentioned by Ha'arez):

According to a centuries-old rabbinical prophecy that appears to be coming true, on March 16, 2010, Israel will begin construction of the Third Temple in Jerusalem. During the 18th century, the Vilna Gaon, a respected rabbinical authority, prophesied that the Hurva Synagogue in Jerusalem, which was built during his day, would be destroyed and rebuilt twice, and that when the Hurva was completed for the third time, construction on the Third Temple would begin.

And the Third Temple will logically be built on the Temple Mount, and thus Al-Aksa Mosque will be destroyed... it makes sense. Except for the whole "we're going to build the Third Temple now!" part. I don't see the moshiach anywhere; do you? Besides--according to Ahuva's recent sermon, we weren't meant to resume the whole animal sacrifice thing anyway.

Anyway! The brand-new rebuilt synagogue is entirely locked, but we got to go in and see it anyway. See, our teacher is Israeli, and Israelis are pushy and tend to get their way when they're only up against a couple of custodians who answered a classmate's very insistent knock at the door. The synagogue is beautiful. Take a look:

The outside photo is not mine because silly me expected to be able to find a recent photograph online, but apparently not. They're being very secretive about this place, probably because of all the riots and such. But really--how hard is it to take a picture of the outside?

I don't know what to think about the controversy surrounding this synagogue. Sometimes it seems like people--Palestinians and (particularly haredi) Israelis--will riot over just about anything, given the chance. It's not like we're in a position to build the Third Temple, no matter what the Vilna Gaon said all those years ago. Yet--the fact that the dome rises above everything else does make a certain political statement. I read it somewhere--"We're here to stay," it says. The Israelis are here to stay, in the heart of the Old City, in the heart of East Jerusalem, in the heart of Eretz Yisrael... can you blame them for being upset?

A trip to the City of David

An update about the start of the new semester and my class schedule will come soon; we're three weeks into the semester and my schedule just got finalized today. However, this semester promises many more class-sponsored tourism than I got last semester due to one class: Jerusalem's Architectural History. We had our first field trip today, a visit to the City of David. Possible little known fact: the Old City of Jerusalem today is nowhere near on the same land as the Really Old City of Jerusalem, aka the city that King David built. The only overlap is really the Temple Mount--everything else is outside the current walls.

Another possibly little known fact: Jerusalem architecture is ugly. There's this way of building one house on top of another because that's how you build on the side of a mountain--okay, I get that. But why does everything have to be so blocky? It's just ugly, and it's all over Israel. Really, why? The below photo is of Sirwan, an Arab neighborhood across the valley from the City of David, but it's just one example.

These particular houses obviously weren't there in biblical times, but they were still built one on top of the other--thus how King David saw Batsheva bathing. However, what was there was Warren's Shaft, (probably) the passage through which David and Yoav originally invaded Jeursalem back when it was a Canaanite city. We got to go down there:

Of course, the metal stairs weren't there originally, but it was still pretty cool. We also went through Hezekiah's Tunnel, which involved lots of water and a soaking wet skirt. I couldn't take video in there because I needed my batteries for my flashlight, but I stole someone else's video off Youtube:

This class includes four field trips like this. Today was First Temple Period Jerusalem, next week is Second Temple Period, and in the future we have post-Christianity and Islam Jerusalem and Modern Jerusalem. Pretty cool. Hopefully by the end of the semester things will stop looking like one piece of Jerusalem stone after another... which is really all I can tell of Jerusalem right now.

How not to plan a trip

* Plan the entire trip between midnight and 2:30am the night before you leave.

* Stay up until 2:30am when you have to get up at 9:30am. Repeat the next night, substituting "2am" and "7:30am." Survive the trip with the help of caffeine pills. Be really crabby because of it. Travel with another person who's doing the exact same thing.

* Plan to meet someone and then have one digit wrong in her phone number.

* Plan your entire trip around websites about gay Tel Aviv, and then find out that there's nothing to see or do until night.

* Fail to realize that there are two shuks in Tel Aviv, and then go to the one that's mostly food and not random fun stuff.

* Fail to look up each and every relevant bus route.

Read: The one big important lesson I learned from my trip to Tel Aviv and Haifa with Ahuva is that I'm really not cut out to be a traveller. Going to places I'm unfamiliar with is too stressful.

Beit Shemesh

I've been debating how much I want this to be a touristy blog. After my post about Chevron that's what it feels like, but I don't think I can really write about my year in Israel without the touristy bits. Thus, I will attempt to catch up after a busy weekend of tiyulim and midterms without sounding too much like an American tourist. (Yeah, right.)

This weekend I went on a mini-Shabbaton to Beit Shemesh, a city about forty minutes outside of Jerusalem. It was mini in the fact that there were only ten of us, including two students from Tel Aviv and a Hebrew University alumna who's friends with the rabbi. It was nice that way, though; the remaining seven included my roommate Estie and Naomi, a aquantence from our first Shabbat at school. Because there were so few of us, it wasn't cliquey, which was nice. I tend to wander on my own when I'm with a big group.

Our first stop on Friday was the caves outside Beit Shemesh where the Jews lived during the Bar Kochba Revolt in the 130s CE. I'd thought I'd explored the caves already, when I was in Israel on Muss, but what people refer to as the Bar Kochba Caves aren't actually the anything--there are a bunch of systems of caves. The cave systems are really amazing; there are false tunnels and holes in the ground (read: ancient bathrooms / Roman soldier traps) and massive rooms where people lived. and Rabbi Seigel, the organizer of the Shabbaton, thought he knew these caves inside out, but we discovered a room he didn't know about before. Whereas I think we could walk through much of the tunnels we visited with AHA, most of the time we had to crawl through these and I was quite literally covered in dirt by the end.

As fun as it was squeezing through tiny passage ways, I think the best part of the caves came at the very end, when we turned off all our flashlights and sat in one of the large rooms in silence. I could just imagine the Jews sitting there, scared, listening for the sounds of Roman soldiers. It was a very powerful moment, and I love how it's possible to connect with history like that in Israel.

Shabbat was spent in Beit Shemesh proper, in the south part of the city--which, for a city, was very spread out and had an amazing amount of grassy areas. We were split into twos and sent to families which agreed to let us sleep in their apartments and host us for Shabbat lunch. The food part was really good--you can't beat home-made challah and potato kugel, and they made tofu that I actually liked. (Dev, being a bad vegetarian, has never actually liked tofu before.) Other than that... I wasn't particularly impressed with my host family. I'm banking on them not finding this; lashon hara lamed hey, blah blah blah.

There are four kids in the family, the youngest being a six-year-old boy who looks a lot like Simcha in Lost Luggage. Only... not so cute in the behavior aspect. He must have ADHD or something like that, because he spent all of Saturday running around screaming his head off--ear-piercing, headache-inducing screams. And his parents didn't stop it! During Shabbat lunch he sat down to eat a few bites, and then off he went to run wild, shooting us all with a lego gun snd screaming, and his parents just paused when he was too loud and went on with the conversation whenever he stopped, as if nothing was happening. At one point I got up to take excedrin and by the end of the meal I was wincing when he screamed, and his parents didn't take the hint. Only when we went to bentch did his mother lock him in a room so we could do so. I don't understand. The rest of their kids--a fourteen-year-old boy, a seventeen-year-old girl and a nineteen-year-old girl--are all perfectly nice. What's with this kid, and why don't his parents do something? My parents would kill us if we behaved that way, especially if there were guests in the house.

The rest of Shabbat was also mixed. Kabbalat Shabbat was not particularly fulfilling, since the only thing that was sung was Lecha Dodi. Typical of Israeli synagogues, I've been told--the focus of Shabbat here is on the family, and people want to get home to their families and dinner ASAP. Dinner and Seuda Shlishit were at the Seigels', but I couldn't enjoy dinner because I was half asleep after the day in the caves. Both meals at the Seigels were very crowded--there were the ten of us, the Seigel family, and another family. For Seuda Shlishit I ended up on the couch with the Seigels' cat, Cleopatra, on my lap, which made me happy. I never did get a seat at the table--I wasn't about to move and disturb the cat, and things were crowded enough that I was within arm's reach of the table anyway. Poor kitty ended up with crumbs in her fur before I managed to get a plate, though.

The best part of Shabbat, like in the caves, came at the very end. We went around the tables and everyone was given a chance to give a small d'var Torah, or to pass if they wished. I passed, but there were a lot of interesting commentaries that came up. I wish there was more of that in my Shabbats. Good singing, good food, good conversation - that's all I want. I'm still working on finding it here.

Tour of the tombs

Today Jeff Seidel took sixty of us on a tour of biblical gravesites. Before anyone freaks out, I would like to mention that yes, they are in the West Bank. The areas we went to are also patrolled by the IDF, and we were riding in a bullet-proof bus. Well, the whole bus thing is actually not reassuring at all, but I am happy to say that we were not shot at during our trip. Not that I thought we would be; I don't think the rebbitzen of the center would bring her two-year-old and five-year-old daughters anywhere she thought was the slightest bit unsafe, let alone a busfull of students that they're liable for.

The trip included visits to Rachel's Tomb outside of Bethleham and the Cave of Machpelah (the burial site of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah) in Chevron. I was surprised by the difference between the two places. Rachel's Tomb is a tiny place, but heavily protected. In the photo below--the view outside the building of the tomb--you can see a large white wall; this wall spirals around and around, so the tomb is entirely protected. The building itself is tiny, intimate. It's like the Kotel in that it's separated into a men's section and a women's section, and people are gathered there praying. It's beautiful, in a classical Judaism sort of way. The video below is one that I took today of the women's side of the tomb.

The Cave of Machpelah is supposed to be holier than Rachel's Tomb - it's second in holiness only to the Kotel - but if anything, it seemed to be more commercialized to me. In Rachel's Tomb I felt compelled to daven, even though I had no siddur with me; I started mincha--what I know of it by heart--and it led to my own prayers, free-form, which I very rarely do. But at Machpelah, even with a siddur, I couldn't concentrate of the prayers. I wasn't compelled to pray; it felt like any other Orthodox synagogue. I felt more connection when I touched the wall near where our ancesters are actually buried (see below) than when I was inside the structure.

There's also an amazing difference in the outsides of the tombs. Rachel's Tomb is heavily protected, but Machpelah is completely out in the open. Note that the sound at the very beginning of the video is the end of the Muslim afternoon prayer; the whole thing played on speakers above our heads.

I think the number of tourists at these sights is particularly telling of the situation in Israel right now. These are extremely holy places, but we didn't see a single other tourist on our trip. There were people there, but they were ordinary Israelis, davening and studying. These places are in the West Bank; tourist groups don't dare go there the way they go to the Kotel or Masadah. Yet, take a look at one last picture:

This is the view of Chevron from the top of the Chevron Yeshiva. If this was just a random picture that I posted, wouldn't you think it was just another shot of Jerusalem?