Tuesday, 25 October The City of Emotion

Last evening, our Israeli guide, Yuval, who is a journalist told us that Jerusalem is a city of great emotion. Unlike other similar places rich in religious history and culture, Jerusalem is dynamic, constantly changing, and not unified in any way. West and East Jerusalem are just one manifestation of countless conflicts; our hotel in East Jerusalem, the Legacy situates us between those two worlds. Our experience today including living some of the conflict.

We boarded our bus at 8:00 a.m.and headed for the the Temple Mount--one of the holiest places in this holy city because Jews, Christians, and Muslims claim this place at the heart of their traditions.

Our first stop was the Western Wall--also known as the Wailing Wall where Jews come to pray and weep in grief and loss suffered through the ages. The temples built and destroyed are represented by the stone wall that endures. After passing through security, the men and women in our group proceeded to their own section of the wall to read from scripture, to pray, to weep,and to place their hands and foreheads on the wall and to leave messages of prayer placed into the cracks in the wall.

We then went to stand in another line that would take us into the El Aqsa Mosque, with the Dome of the Rock and Mount Moriah--the site of the story of Abraham and Isaac and for Muslims, Abraham and Ishamel. Also on this holy ground is supposedly the first rock that God created--making the area at the top of the Temple Mount foundational to the creation of the earth as well as to religious traditions.

While standing in line moving at a glacial pace, we learned that the mosque was closing and would re-open again in the afternoon. We moved to plan B, and climbed up several stories where we could view the Dome of the Rock from above.

We sat around a little courtyard with stone benches and a giant menorah
in close proximity. One of our guides was discussing the unfair treatment of Muslims with respect to property ownership and the issue of the continuing building by settlers in Palestinian territory.

We lived in the conflict as a very orthdox- looking man began to call Shira "liar" and "traitor." She and the other guides refused to let the siyuation escalate, but we all removed ourselves quickly as we all learned that Israeli security had been tipped off.

I will tell more in the next post about our visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Dome of the Rock, the Via Dolorosa, Gethsemane, and the Mount of Olives and the Church of the
Ascension.