Legends of the Second Temple

Hello. My name is David Schwartz, and I’ve been Inter­net sober for six days.

In other words, I landed safely here almost a week ago. So far, I’ve stayed in two kib­butzim, includ­ing the old­est one in Israel/the world; in a Sephardic cen­ter in Golan Heights; and a hotel in Jerusalem. We’re in the holy city now and leave tomor­row to float in the Dead Sea and stay in Ein Gedi AYHA. What­ever that means.

“Wel­come back!” every­one tells us.

After a lit­eral day of trav­el­ing includ­ing beau­ti­ful Swedish stew­ardesses and no REM cycles, we arrived in Israel. I’m here with around 40 kids, most of whom are from Boston Uni­ver­sity. Now, we also have eight Israeli sol­diers trav­el­ing with us. Every­one on the trip is great, but I’ll give some char­ac­ter break­downs later. (Click “Read More”)

The first day we explored Tzfat/Zefat/Safed which was almost as foggy as it was reli­giously impor­tant and mys­ti­cal. There, we talked with a man named Abra­ham who told us all about kab­balah and showed us his art. Though I wouldn’t be sur­prised if I ran into him in a men­tal asy­lum, it was com­fort­ing to know that his seem­ing men­tal ine­bri­a­tion was entirely from Judaism. And I know that Birthright is noto­ri­ous for this—showing you a “nor­mal” man who hails from Michi­gan and now lives in the spindly hills of Zefat with a beard the size of my fore­arm, for flash-flooding your cere­bel­lum with the pos­si­bil­ity of the most devout con­ver­sion that even Moses couldn’t split. So I’m tak­ing it with a grain of salt. Speak­ing of salt, Israel has the salti­est water in the world. Yet some­how all the pota­toes we’ve eaten are bland. It’s a Hanukkah miracle!

Non-sequitur beauty.

The group also walked through Haifa which is a huge and beau­ti­ful city. There, we talked to Israeli high school stu­dents through the Haifa-Boston exchange pro­gram as the two cities are, in fact, sis­ter cities. That night, at per­haps our most reli­gious excur­sion of the trip, we raided the kibbutz’s bar. Sci­en­tific sur­veys after the fact sug­gest that there is some­thing about alco­hol, jet lag, and hours of hookah with our trip assassin/medic that don’t mix well together.

And the entire group itself is pretty cool. It’s hard to con­nect with every­one because it’s so big, but I’ve met a lot of peo­ple whose com­pany I enjoy and with whom I like trav­el­ing. Some­times there’s too much small talk, and I get tired, and some­times all the social­iz­ing takes away all the Jew­ish­ness that exists all around us, but it’s a nice group nonethe­less. More details on that later because I am appar­ently noto­ri­ous for being long­winded and ver­bose (though some peo­ple we’ve encoun­tered on this trip will prove all you haters oth­er­wise in con­trast), and I have been told to keep these posts succinct.

Since those first two days, I’ve seen Lebanon and Jor­dan in the dis­tance, seen where Pales­tine would be offi­cially cre­ated, observed desert and camels, smelled hor­ri­ble things, buck­led under pres­sure in speak­ing Ara­bic to ten-year-olds, and had the sick­est of Israel’s mil­lion stray cats lick the inside of my water bot­tle while tak­ing a picture.

I also heard Israel’s prime min­is­ter speak at a Birthright event attended by 5,000 Jews from all over the world. The event was the gaud­i­est, gildiest lily equipped with overused yet incred­i­ble pyrotech­nics, cos­tume changes, and an Israeli rap­per who listed off all of “Israel’s” inven­tions (ICQ, mobile phone soft­ware, cherry tomatoes).

Well at least they didn’t go all out…

Wine tast­ings and bus rides later, we arrived in Jerusalem. The city is incred­i­ble. On the out­side in some parts, it looks old and worn, but inside it is a cul­tural epi­cen­ter. It fea­tures spe­cial quar­ters for Jews, Chris­tians, Mus­lims, and Arme­ni­ans; we went through all of these. And, of course, Jerusalem is where the West­ern Wall/Wailing Wall/Chotel exists.

At first, when I walked up to it, I felt noth­ing when I touched the hard stone. Around me, men in shades of black wept and wob­bled, trac­ing the Wall’s aged con­tours. I slipped in a note and stood there, my mind clear, noth­ing par­tic­u­larly heartfelt.

It wasn’t until we took a tun­nel tour and learned all about the Wall and the Sec­ond Tem­ple that I under­stood the impor­tance of the area. After many hours under­ground learn­ing about ancient mar­ket­places and bedrock, touch­ing the Wall pro­duced a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence: it was one of mar­vel. For more than 2,000 years this area has been fought for, bled for, demanded. This area is the pin­na­cle of reli­gion for Jews, Mus­lims, and Chris­tians and that is why the Wall is so impor­tant. It is a bor­der that has invoked tears for cen­turies, a bound­ary that has browned because of all the peo­ple who have clung to it. The Wall doesn’t just rep­re­sent Judaism nor Israel; it rep­re­sents peo­ple and their unde­ni­able and unde­feat­able faiths. It rep­re­sents both myth and his­tory. It is more than just a wall.

I’d like to end this post with a note on the Sab­bath, the most impor­tant day of the week for Jews. Cel­e­brat­ing Shab­bat in the Holy Land was incred­i­ble and unreal. But noth­ing bib­li­cal bol­stered me—it was the food, the peo­ple, the danc­ing, the love, the cel­e­bra­tion in which every­one wanted to par­tic­i­pate. On our third time at the Wall, a few guys of our group and I danced crazily with some South African Chabad Jews who had never met us before but were so read­ily accept­ing. Five course meals and five chair horas at the hotel brought me closer to ran­dom strangers in our hotel—two of whom intro­duced them­selves as Tufts alum. The intox­i­cat­ing jubi­lance of the event gave Shab­bat mean­ing to me for the first time.

Here’re some pho­tos. Click them to see them larger!

Note: I wrote this a few days ago but only just found Inter­net again. Expect a post in the next few days for sec­ond half of the trip!