Israel--When Worlds Collide

Jerusalem, Israel, Tuesday Morning, 12:23 a.m. Holy City Time

Viewed through the El Al jet's window, ocean waves wash up on the shore; green fields glitter off to the right as the aircraft swoops down. The heart quickens. Worlds collide. After landing, modern moving walkways guide travellers down wide, stately ramps cutting-edge in design
and construction. Yet the flow of people on the ramps, and the stone facing on the walls creates echoes of the ancient Temple in Jerusalem at pilgrimage season. Shining glass and rough-hewn pink\gold Jerusalem limestone; ancient and modern; rock and green plants, cool morning air and warm sun, blue sky, and smoke, they are all present here in Israel, in a heady mix and contrast. Nothing is half way. On the surface, so much seems in conflict, but from another perspective, perhaps a dynamic harmony exists?

Someone once said that Israel is the newest of places and the oldest of places.
On the shared taxi-van ride from Ben Gurion International Airport to Jerusalem, the contrasts keep coming. Skirting traffic jams on Highway 1, our driver takes the Northern route, highway 443, heading upwards and Eastward, past seemingly ageless Arab towns and villiages on the left, and the spanking-new Israeli boom-town of Modi'in on the right. Minarets rise to the left, construction cranes to the right. Steel power grid towers jut skyward, anchored in terraced olive groves cut into the hillside two thousand years ago.

Israel contains many worlds at one time.

As we near the checkpoint just past the Tomb of Samuel the Prophet, we are within Jerusalem City Limits. Two passengers in the van, a young husband and wife, ask to be dropped off on Yishayahu Street, (Isaiah Street). The next passenger, a young soldier toting his M-16, requests the Ministry of the Interior in the city center. Climbing the ridge Eastward towards the morning sun's glare, the van turns right. We enter the city by the Ramot Road. For much of the trip, the security fence was on our left. Mostly wire fence and patrol roads, this fence is one reason that Route 443 is safe and passable. Seven years ago, during the Second Intifada, Palestinian rocks and gunfire drove Jewish traffic away from this road. Today, no one even blinks. Drivers main concern is the heavy traffic.

Coming from the North, we pass through ultra-religious neighborhoods of Sanhedria and Meah Shearim. The streets are clogged with cars and trucks, and the sidewalks teem with men, women and children, most of them striding, purposeful in the brisk morning air. Book stores, yeshivas and synagogues adorn the streets between apartment buildings, food and appliance stores. The hum of modern commerce meets piety. On a balcony, three teenage girls hold small books and sway in prayers. One stops, looks down and smiles and waves to someone passing by. A women dressed in long skirt, overcoat and headscarf nods her head silently, ipod earbuds in her ears. What is she hearing? A Hebrew billboard touts the latest edition of Talmud Tractate Bava Batra. And English flyer offers weekly trips to Hebron and Rachel's Tomb. Another poster promotes "Heimishe Tours."

Moving into the city, the van weaves through 19th-century buildings with a European look to them. Remnants of colonial outposts, the Russian compound buildings now are woven into the government infrastucture. Above these mildly exotic relics of an earlier age, modern business towers cut the sky. Cranes are working, even in this recession. Earth is moved, concrete is poured, steel is laid. In Mamilla, just West of the Old City walls: "On this site, The Palace--of the Waldorf Astoria Collection, completion in 2010." Another massive luxury hotel and residential complex on the way. It will join "King David's Crown," "The David Citadel Hotel" and the "Mamilla Project." Since the days of David, Solomon, Herod the Great, and Suleiman the Magnificent, successive builders and developers have vied to leave their mark on this city. Successive generations seek to bring the City of Gold "up to date." I squirm in the presence of these sleek retail/residential complexes, stores that seem more at home on Rodeo Drive than on King David Street: TommyHilfinger, The North Face, up-scale jewelers and Havana Cigars. The inexorable drive of commerce intrudes upon more romantic notions of a timeless city. (And yet, Jerusalem has served as a commercial and retail hub since the days of the Jebusites. And why do one-hundred-year old residential/commercial buildings seem more authentic than those built today? Still, something seems off about the luxury mall just below the Old City walls. This contrast holds no charm. It feels like mixing milchigs and fleishigs.

Alighting in the Southern neighborhood of Baka, details emerge, signs of change: a bistro here, a tony botique that had not been there three years ago, more, newer automobiles. Baka consists of many pre-1948 buildings in Arab style, some renovated, with new construction filling in between them. The hotel is one of these renovated homes. An air of youth and hipness is apparent in the neighborhood's inhabitants and in the stores, coffee bars and patisseries they frequent. Young students stride past homes for the elderly, luxury dwellings rise next to empty lots (though there are fewer and fewer of these). The contrasts abound, and here they feel right.

A brisk walk back into town, past City Hall and the Old City walls leads to Lifeline for the Elderly to deliver tzedakah funds and schmooze with Nava Ein Mor, the Director. Lifeline provides dignified work, hot meals, community and a bus pass to over three hundred elderly men and women in Jerusalem. The workers rebind books, make cartons, and create handmade Judaica gift items of great beauty. Nava, a kind and dynamic person wonders aloud how to reach American synagogue gift shops to form alliances and increase sales. She muses about the prospect of budget cuts in an uncertain economy. If her aged workers are laid off, they never come back. And this work literally helps keep them alive and getting out of bed each morning. Some of the regulars are now in their ninteties.

Evening brings Dinner at a kosher Turkish restaurant with our eldest daughter and a loud, exciting basketball game between HaPoel Yerushalayim and Migdal. The local basketball fans pound drums, ululate, wave red-and-white banners, sing and shout. During timeouts, teenage cheerleader/dancers sashay through their routines. The man in the seat next to me has one empty sleeve in his sweater. I wonder how he lost his arm. HaPoel Yerushalayim wins handily. The din fills the hall. We head for the exits and a busride through the Talpiyot Industrial District back to Baka. Through the bus windows, the lights of the Mount Gilo neighborhood gleam in the background. Bethlehem lies just beyond the crest.

Dizzy with the contrasts, the motion and emotions of the day, I close this first entry. Please feel free to share your thoughts. Shalom from Yerushalayim.--David J. Small