The Messiah on Wheels
April 6, 2007
18 Nisan 5767
Today is the Shabbat of Passover. On Christian calendars it is Good Friday. The confluence of these holy days is all the more remarkable because, this year, both the eastern and western rites of Christianity will be celebrating Easter Sunday on the same day. We Jews are not the only ones who get involved in the intricacies of lunar and solar cycles, so, too, do our Christian and Muslim neighbors. Following two different calendars, western and eastern Christians celebrate their major holy days of Easter and Christmas often weeks apart but this year, all celebrate Easter this Sunday just as we Jews bid farewell to our Passover festival. For we Jerusalemites that means that our city is the sacred destination of thousands of pilgrims as it has been at this season for millennia. The faithful and the curious, Christians and Jews alike, have been converging upon the Holy City this whole week to the delight of the merchants—Christians, Jews and Muslims who welcome the refreshing stream of visitors and shoppers after the long draught of the Intifada.
Jerusalem has been the destination of pilgrims since the days before the Bible entered the religious imagination of the people who gave it to the world. According to Jewish tradition the rock that crowns the Mount at its symbolic heart is Even ha-Sh’tiyah—the very foundation stone of the world. Thus it is believed that the mount upon which the Temple was built held sacred significance before David conquered the city and Solomon built the House of God there. Mount Moriah, the place where Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac as told in Genesis, is identified with that hill, thus making the patriarch the first pilgrim to Jerusalem in Jewish tradition. Since the Temple was built, Jews have been bound in sacred covenant with this place; commanded to appear three times a year at the festival times of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, to bring their festival thanksgiving offerings to God—in pilgrimage, a sacred journey. In Hebrew we call these festivals the Regalim from the word for feet, because of the walking that was required to reach the Holy City.
For hundreds and thousands of years, Jews and then Christians have made their way on foot from their homes, often across seas and even continents, to express their devotion to their faith and draw strength and inspiration from the holy stones of this sacred city.
During this, our second Passover in Jerusalem, Wendy and I decided to make a kind of mini-pilgrimage from our home over-looking the Old City, down Hebron Road to the ancient walled town some two miles below. It was an incredibly beautiful spring day; the weather was clement and the wildflowers spread a beautiful carpet in the empty lots and open spaces along our way. We made our way past the old British prison at the top of the hill near the derelict train station (just waiting for restoration—it’s bones are so good) and then began our descent past the Hinnom Valley (Gai Hinom in Hebrew, which became Gehenna in Greek, and is the Biblical metaphorical source for the post-Biblical concept of Hell in Christianity and the divergent concept of Gehinom in Judaism).
Before too long (it was mostly downhill at this point as you would expect of a descent into Hell…but paved with Jerusalem stone, not good intentions) we found ourselves at the foot of the city walls. We decided to make our way along the walls up to Mount Zion and into the Zion Gate in order to avoid the crowds that we knew would be massed at the Jaffa Gate. We were rewarded not only by lighter crowds, but also by a spectacular view of the valley below and of the terraced gardens from Mount Zion above us.
Once we entered the Old City through the Zion Gate the human crush of the crowds and the cacophony of people speaking in a dozen different languages engulfed us immediately. We hadn’t seen Jerusalem like this in years! Slowly we elbowed our way through the snaking throng and made our way to the Cardo, the ancient Roman commercial street in the Jewish Quarter, covered over now and restored as a shopping area. We were hoping to find some wedding gifts and decided to look in on two of our friends who had stores along the street. Both were very busy, a real change from recent years and we were happy to wait before speaking with our friends. At the shop of Ezra Dayafani, a scribe who does beautiful calligraphy, illuminated manuscripts and work in silver, I got to help out, relieving his assistant by translating for some customers so she could wait on the many customers that were converging on the tiny shop. That was a real treat for me.
Ezra doesn’t just make and sell scribal artwork: each Torah scroll, every set of Tefillin (phylacteries), his illuminated works and manuscripts are works of his soul as well as his hands. A British family came in to buy a set of Tefillin for their son who would become a Bar Mitzvah this coming November. In keeping with his soul-filled approach to his work, Ezra sat with the family and explained each and every step of the process of making the Tefillin and described how the scrolls they contained were written and explained the significance of the shapes of the letters inscribed upon the parchment. As Ezra explained in Hebrew, I translated into English for the family. I also added editorially that Ezra made a set of Tefillin for me (a gift from Wendy when I turned 50 to replace my old set) I told them that every time I put Tefillin on for prayer, I could sense Ezra’s kavannah—his devotional concentration, as he inscribed the scrolls and made the leather boxes to contain them. I was moved to help this family; they must have been moved by Ezra’s gentle piety as well because the father decided to buy a second set for himself.
Wendy and made our own purchases at Ezra’s and decided to leave them at the shop to be picked up next week when we found out that the unusually large crowds meant that there was no bus or taxi service in or out of the Jewish quarter and we’d probably have to walk all the way—uphill—back home.
This time we were brave—or foolhardy—and began to trek up through the main streets of the Old City. For those who have never visited our city, please don’t be mistaken, when I use the term “main streets” I do not mean “highway” or any other broad boulevard or, even, “street” by usual connotation. Most of the streets of the Old City are through the Suk (Arabic for market)—stepped paths lined by shops and stalls selling an incredible array of tourist items, antiquities (many right out of the kiln), fabrics, bric-a-brac, spices, meats (a nice camel’s head, perhaps), jewelry, pastries, you name it… Vendors yelling and cajoling, guides barking their spiels in Spanish, French, English and even Nigerian—all part of the river of humanity, and we were salmon swimming upstream while, so it seemed, the river was as rivers do flowing emphatically downward. We struggled and we strove with all our might until we emerged, finally and triumphantly at the Jaffa Gate to begin our ascent to our home in Talpiyot once more past Gehenna to our heavenly view of the Holy City. Our pilgrimage was completed just like those of millions of Olei Regel—pilgrims both Jewish and Christian—before us.
Looking at the faces of my fellow pilgrims I can imagine that little has changed in the millennia that have passed since the first pilgrim set foot upon Jerusalem’s sacred soil. They were flushed with the experience of Jerusalem. It is soulfully intoxicating. And in the millennia since the first pilgrims, pilgrimage and religious tourism have been and, I suppose, always will be Jerusalem’s major industry. The shops and commercial life of the city have always revolved around the visitors who come here to bask in the special spiritual atmosphere that is so unique to this place. As a result, over the centuries, a variety of entrepreneurs have cropped up to take advantage of the influx of tourists to find new ways to separate them from the contents of the pilgrimage purses.
For Christian tourists, especially at this time of the year, some of the shopkeepers along the Via Dolorosa—the traditional path that Jesus took to Calvary—rent wooden crosses for the faithful to carry on their own journey to the place where Jesus was crucified. These crosses (much smaller and lighter than the original) have been modified by some creative shopkeeper who has added wheels to the bottom of the crosses making them easier to carry along the journey.
Not to be outdone, for Jewish pilgrims there are also wheeled innovations. The City of David Foundation rents for Olei Regel who don’t want to use their regalim (feet) the patented Segway. Now, if you are not familiar with this device, it is a two-wheeled scooter upon which you stand. The wheels are on either side of you and the machine moves in whichever direction you lean. It sounds completely unsafe and unstable, however, gyroscopes in the mechanism keep it upright at all times and even the very young, the very old and very uncoordinated can use it. Not only does this obviate your need to walk, your feet don’t even have to touch the ground as you glide your way on your pilgrimage!
Christian pilgrims have been emulating Jesus’ march to Calvary burdened by the cross for centuries. Jews have made the journey by foot to Jerusalem as long as Judaism has existed as a faith. Jews and Christians, consider what our forbears—those ancient pilgrims—would have thought of all these wheels! Whether one’s faith anticipates the advent of the Messiah for the first or second time, can you for a moment, in your wildest imagination picture the Messiah on wheels? What would this mean? How would this alter faith? How would it change the world?
I think that I will continue to make my own pilgrimages on foot without wheels of any kind, thank you. In some things I am still a traditionalist. Besides, I would be too worried about falling from one of those Segway things and miss out on all the beautiful scenery along the way. One of the wonderful things about our religious traditions is that they teach us to slow down, to appreciate the world and those who inhabit it. Pilgrimages help us literally to step out of the everyday hustle and bustle of our lives and to take an alternate route—even if only for a brief time—as we journey through life. I highly recommend the excursion.
A happy Passover and a happy Easter to those who celebrate.
Shalom from Jerusalem.
18 Nisan 5767
Today is the Shabbat of Passover. On Christian calendars it is Good Friday. The confluence of these holy days is all the more remarkable because, this year, both the eastern and western rites of Christianity will be celebrating Easter Sunday on the same day. We Jews are not the only ones who get involved in the intricacies of lunar and solar cycles, so, too, do our Christian and Muslim neighbors. Following two different calendars, western and eastern Christians celebrate their major holy days of Easter and Christmas often weeks apart but this year, all celebrate Easter this Sunday just as we Jews bid farewell to our Passover festival. For we Jerusalemites that means that our city is the sacred destination of thousands of pilgrims as it has been at this season for millennia. The faithful and the curious, Christians and Jews alike, have been converging upon the Holy City this whole week to the delight of the merchants—Christians, Jews and Muslims who welcome the refreshing stream of visitors and shoppers after the long draught of the Intifada.
Jerusalem has been the destination of pilgrims since the days before the Bible entered the religious imagination of the people who gave it to the world. According to Jewish tradition the rock that crowns the Mount at its symbolic heart is Even ha-Sh’tiyah—the very foundation stone of the world. Thus it is believed that the mount upon which the Temple was built held sacred significance before David conquered the city and Solomon built the House of God there. Mount Moriah, the place where Abraham was to sacrifice Isaac as told in Genesis, is identified with that hill, thus making the patriarch the first pilgrim to Jerusalem in Jewish tradition. Since the Temple was built, Jews have been bound in sacred covenant with this place; commanded to appear three times a year at the festival times of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot, to bring their festival thanksgiving offerings to God—in pilgrimage, a sacred journey. In Hebrew we call these festivals the Regalim from the word for feet, because of the walking that was required to reach the Holy City.
For hundreds and thousands of years, Jews and then Christians have made their way on foot from their homes, often across seas and even continents, to express their devotion to their faith and draw strength and inspiration from the holy stones of this sacred city.
During this, our second Passover in Jerusalem, Wendy and I decided to make a kind of mini-pilgrimage from our home over-looking the Old City, down Hebron Road to the ancient walled town some two miles below. It was an incredibly beautiful spring day; the weather was clement and the wildflowers spread a beautiful carpet in the empty lots and open spaces along our way. We made our way past the old British prison at the top of the hill near the derelict train station (just waiting for restoration—it’s bones are so good) and then began our descent past the Hinnom Valley (Gai Hinom in Hebrew, which became Gehenna in Greek, and is the Biblical metaphorical source for the post-Biblical concept of Hell in Christianity and the divergent concept of Gehinom in Judaism).
Before too long (it was mostly downhill at this point as you would expect of a descent into Hell…but paved with Jerusalem stone, not good intentions) we found ourselves at the foot of the city walls. We decided to make our way along the walls up to Mount Zion and into the Zion Gate in order to avoid the crowds that we knew would be massed at the Jaffa Gate. We were rewarded not only by lighter crowds, but also by a spectacular view of the valley below and of the terraced gardens from Mount Zion above us.
Once we entered the Old City through the Zion Gate the human crush of the crowds and the cacophony of people speaking in a dozen different languages engulfed us immediately. We hadn’t seen Jerusalem like this in years! Slowly we elbowed our way through the snaking throng and made our way to the Cardo, the ancient Roman commercial street in the Jewish Quarter, covered over now and restored as a shopping area. We were hoping to find some wedding gifts and decided to look in on two of our friends who had stores along the street. Both were very busy, a real change from recent years and we were happy to wait before speaking with our friends. At the shop of Ezra Dayafani, a scribe who does beautiful calligraphy, illuminated manuscripts and work in silver, I got to help out, relieving his assistant by translating for some customers so she could wait on the many customers that were converging on the tiny shop. That was a real treat for me.
Ezra doesn’t just make and sell scribal artwork: each Torah scroll, every set of Tefillin (phylacteries), his illuminated works and manuscripts are works of his soul as well as his hands. A British family came in to buy a set of Tefillin for their son who would become a Bar Mitzvah this coming November. In keeping with his soul-filled approach to his work, Ezra sat with the family and explained each and every step of the process of making the Tefillin and described how the scrolls they contained were written and explained the significance of the shapes of the letters inscribed upon the parchment. As Ezra explained in Hebrew, I translated into English for the family. I also added editorially that Ezra made a set of Tefillin for me (a gift from Wendy when I turned 50 to replace my old set) I told them that every time I put Tefillin on for prayer, I could sense Ezra’s kavannah—his devotional concentration, as he inscribed the scrolls and made the leather boxes to contain them. I was moved to help this family; they must have been moved by Ezra’s gentle piety as well because the father decided to buy a second set for himself.
Wendy and made our own purchases at Ezra’s and decided to leave them at the shop to be picked up next week when we found out that the unusually large crowds meant that there was no bus or taxi service in or out of the Jewish quarter and we’d probably have to walk all the way—uphill—back home.
This time we were brave—or foolhardy—and began to trek up through the main streets of the Old City. For those who have never visited our city, please don’t be mistaken, when I use the term “main streets” I do not mean “highway” or any other broad boulevard or, even, “street” by usual connotation. Most of the streets of the Old City are through the Suk (Arabic for market)—stepped paths lined by shops and stalls selling an incredible array of tourist items, antiquities (many right out of the kiln), fabrics, bric-a-brac, spices, meats (a nice camel’s head, perhaps), jewelry, pastries, you name it… Vendors yelling and cajoling, guides barking their spiels in Spanish, French, English and even Nigerian—all part of the river of humanity, and we were salmon swimming upstream while, so it seemed, the river was as rivers do flowing emphatically downward. We struggled and we strove with all our might until we emerged, finally and triumphantly at the Jaffa Gate to begin our ascent to our home in Talpiyot once more past Gehenna to our heavenly view of the Holy City. Our pilgrimage was completed just like those of millions of Olei Regel—pilgrims both Jewish and Christian—before us.
Looking at the faces of my fellow pilgrims I can imagine that little has changed in the millennia that have passed since the first pilgrim set foot upon Jerusalem’s sacred soil. They were flushed with the experience of Jerusalem. It is soulfully intoxicating. And in the millennia since the first pilgrims, pilgrimage and religious tourism have been and, I suppose, always will be Jerusalem’s major industry. The shops and commercial life of the city have always revolved around the visitors who come here to bask in the special spiritual atmosphere that is so unique to this place. As a result, over the centuries, a variety of entrepreneurs have cropped up to take advantage of the influx of tourists to find new ways to separate them from the contents of the pilgrimage purses.
For Christian tourists, especially at this time of the year, some of the shopkeepers along the Via Dolorosa—the traditional path that Jesus took to Calvary—rent wooden crosses for the faithful to carry on their own journey to the place where Jesus was crucified. These crosses (much smaller and lighter than the original) have been modified by some creative shopkeeper who has added wheels to the bottom of the crosses making them easier to carry along the journey.
Not to be outdone, for Jewish pilgrims there are also wheeled innovations. The City of David Foundation rents for Olei Regel who don’t want to use their regalim (feet) the patented Segway. Now, if you are not familiar with this device, it is a two-wheeled scooter upon which you stand. The wheels are on either side of you and the machine moves in whichever direction you lean. It sounds completely unsafe and unstable, however, gyroscopes in the mechanism keep it upright at all times and even the very young, the very old and very uncoordinated can use it. Not only does this obviate your need to walk, your feet don’t even have to touch the ground as you glide your way on your pilgrimage!
Christian pilgrims have been emulating Jesus’ march to Calvary burdened by the cross for centuries. Jews have made the journey by foot to Jerusalem as long as Judaism has existed as a faith. Jews and Christians, consider what our forbears—those ancient pilgrims—would have thought of all these wheels! Whether one’s faith anticipates the advent of the Messiah for the first or second time, can you for a moment, in your wildest imagination picture the Messiah on wheels? What would this mean? How would this alter faith? How would it change the world?
I think that I will continue to make my own pilgrimages on foot without wheels of any kind, thank you. In some things I am still a traditionalist. Besides, I would be too worried about falling from one of those Segway things and miss out on all the beautiful scenery along the way. One of the wonderful things about our religious traditions is that they teach us to slow down, to appreciate the world and those who inhabit it. Pilgrimages help us literally to step out of the everyday hustle and bustle of our lives and to take an alternate route—even if only for a brief time—as we journey through life. I highly recommend the excursion.
A happy Passover and a happy Easter to those who celebrate.
Shalom from Jerusalem.
posted by RSJD at 3:37 PM
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