by Barry, Dave
So I walk up to the cliff edge. You know how—I’m talking to you men now—when you meet a well-endowed woman wearing a low-cut garment, you make a major effort to maintain eye contact with her because you don’t want her to think you’re thinking about her breasts, which are of course all you’re thinking about? That’s how I handle the cliff. The cliff is a giant set of bazooms and I am determined not to look at it. I am making intense eye contact with the rappelling guy. He probably thinks that at any moment I’m going to ask him out. He attaches the ropes to me and gives me some final instructions—I have no idea what he’s saying—then tells me to start walking backward off the cliff. Which I do, still maintaining eye contact with him.
“You have to look where you’re putting your feet,” he says. Reluctantly, I look down and . . .
WHOA.
This is way, way worse than the camel. My brain, which has spent all these years trying to keep me alive, cannot believe what my idiot feet have gotten me into. It is shrieking at me to go back up. Meanwhile, the rappelling guy keeps telling me to lean back. I don’t want to lean back; I want to grab the cliff and hug it tightly. I want to become so intimate with the cliff that a few months from now it has little cliff babies that look like me.
This is me and the rappelling guy at the top of the cliff.
Note that I am not looking at the cliff. “Cliff?” I am telling
myself. “What cliff?” My shorts are unsoiled at this time.
(Photo by Doug Shapiro)
The rappelling guy keeps giving me instructions. I am slowly making my way down the cliff, but I am still terrified to the point of sphincter malfunction. From directly below, I hear Rabbi Eddie shouting words of encouragement. An alarming thought flashes across my brain. I don’t know what the laws of Israel are, but I can picture this headline:
AMERICAN TOURIST FACES DEATH PENALTY
Pooped on Rabbi While Rappelling
Somehow I make it to the bottom without dying or soiling myself or anybody else. I am trembling, but feeling proud. This feeling lasts for about ninety seconds, which is how long it takes for Sophie to scoot down the cliff—smiling hugely the whole way—then ask if we can do it again. I assure her that we will absolutely do it again just as soon as our legs are rested and there are Walmarts on Jupiter.
After rappelling we walk, some of us shakily, back to the hotel for drinks and dinner, and several more drinks. After dinner Doron has an idea, which is that we should (why not?) experience the desert at night. So we all pile onto the bus and head back down into the crater. We drive for about fifteen minutes, then pull off the road. We pile out of the bus and begin experiencing the desert at night.
Here’s the main thing about the desert at night: It’s dark. We can’t see anything. Doron, who apparently has sonar, leads us, tripping and stumbling, up a rocky invisible path away from the road to an even darker part of the desert. He tells us he wants us to separate, to go off into the desert on our own for a while to look at the stars and meditate in solitude. We separate until we are, as a group, approximately two inches apart because nobody really wants to be separated out here at night with God knows what kind of lurking predatory nocturnal desert creatures such as vampire alpacas.
In our Clump of Solitude, we gaze at the stars for a while—there are a LOT of stars—and then Doron has us form a circle so we can express what we are feeling. We go around the circle and express a variety of deep thoughts, mostly along the lines of: Wow, the universe! Then Doron uses his sonar to lead us out of there. He reminds me of Moses, leading the Israelites out of Egypt until finally, after much hardship and many years of wandering around the desert, they reached the tour bus. And God gave them wifi.
DAY FOUR
After a hearty traditional Israeli breakfast, we have our stomachs pumped and board the bus, which takes us to Masada. This ancient, awesome fortress, on a high rock plateau overlooking the Dead Sea, is a major tourist attraction and an important symbol for Israelis: It was here, according to legend, that in 73 A.D. a group of 960 Jewish rebels—men, women and children—who had been holding out against a siege by Roman troops, chose to commit suicide rather than be captured alive. In our group, we get to speculating on how the rebels could possibly have brought themselves to kill their own families. One of the dads, Tony Menninger, says: “Having been penned up with my family on a long car ride . . .”
We hike to the top of Masada, where Doron fills us in on the history and we take several thousand redundant photographs of the view. We then proceed to a small pavilion near the edge of the plateau. There, with the help of a rented Torah (you can rent Torahs on Masada), Rabbi Eddie conducts a bar/bat mitzvah service for two of the young people on our tour, Leo Menninger and Jamie Shapiro. It’s far less formal than these services usually are—we’re in shorts and T-shirts—but it’s moving, and the setting is spectacular, here in this historic place, with the Dead Sea far below in the distance.
The only glitch comes when the parents read a prayer titled “To Be Recited by Parents Celebrating a Child’s Becoming Bar/Bat Mitzvah in Israel.” The parents fail to notice that the prayer book, although it’s written in English, is set up Hebrew style, meaning the pages are numbered in the opposite direction. So when the parents reach the bottom of page 57, instead of going to the top of page 58, they go to the top of page 56, which puts them in the middle of a different prayer, this one meant to be recited “For Israeli Soldiers or Civilians Being Held Captive.” All of a sudden the parents are asking God to “Send complete rescue and full redemption to those held captive by the enemy.” This seems kind of grim for a bar mitzvah. Fortunately, Rabbi Eddie catches the mistake and gets the parents back on course; the service ends happily, with hugs and many more pictures.
We take a cable car down to the base of Masada, where, to Michelle’s delight, there is a gift shop that Doron describes, accurately, as “the size of the rest of Israel.” There are also a number of restaurants, including a McDonald’s. After eating and purchasing various hugely unnecessary things, we get back on the bus and motor a short distance to the Dead Sea.
The Dead Sea is a super-salty inland sea whose shore is the lowest dry-land place on Earth. Tourists have been bathing in it for centuries and for a very good reason: Tourists are idiots. No, really. For some reason, when we leave home and join tour groups, we instantly degenerate to the same level of brain function as watermelons. We can be talked into doing anything. Walking backward off cliffs, for example.
In the case of the Dead Sea, what we have is a vast pool of warm, oily liquid (allegedly water, though I have my doubts). We ought to be able to figure out from the name “Dead Sea” alone that we should stay the hell out of it. Fish have figured this out; even plants have figured this out. But not us tourists! We walk cheerfully past a sign that says:
Do NOT jump or dive into the water
Do NOT immerse your head
Do NOT splash water on yourself or others
Do NOT drink seawater—if you swallow seawater, request help from the life guard or first aid provider
In other words, the sign is saying: Turn back now, you fool. But we do not turn back. We’re tourists! We walk right up to the Dead Sea and we smear Dead Sea mud on our bodies because . . . We don’t know why! But all the other tourists are doing it! If they were stuffing Dead Sea sand into their nostrils, we’d do that, too!
After we smear on our mud, we go into the Dead Sea and, as millions of tourists have done before us, we marvel at how easily we float. Our upper bodies are bobbing way out of the water. We’re excited and amazed. It doesn’t occur to us that this is not normal. This is exactly why the fish left. The fish were, like, WHOA, dude, this is WAY too floaty.
But we idiot human tourists bob happily away and pose for pictures, lying on our backs and pretending to read a newspaper. Ha-ha! Dead Sea fun!
But then as the initial excitement wears off, we begin
to notice that every little cut or scrape on our body is stinging. Then we notice that other sensitive areas, our various bodily crevices and orifices, are also starting to sting. In fact, they’re stinging a lot. Especially our butts. Our butts are shouting at our brains: Get out of this toxic stew, you moron. That’s right: As tourists, our IQs have declined to the point where the most intelligent organ in our body is our asshole.
So we get out, rinse as much of the Dead Sea off as we can in the outdoor showers and, with butts still stinging, rejoin Doron, our highly knowledgeable guide, who, for the record, has not gotten within a hundred yards of the Dead Sea. We get back onto the bus and head for the city where we’ll be spending the next four nights: Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is often called the Las Vegas of the Middle East because of its many casinos and strip clubs.
No, I’m kidding. Jerusalem is an extremely holy city. Everybody came through here at one time or another: Moses, Jesus, Muhammad, possibly L. Ron Hubbard. You can’t wave your arms in Jerusalem without striking a place or thing that is revered by one or more major world religions, so whatever you do, do not wave your arms. There are many intensely religious people walking around here; sometimes, there is tension. And by “sometimes” I mean “pretty much nonstop for several thousand years.”
There is also, I regret to report, shopping.
We check into our hotel and after dinner we set off on foot for the Old City, which is divided into the Muslim Quarter, the Christian Quarter, the Jewish Quarter and the Armenian Quarter. I never did get a clear explanation on why the Armenians have a quarter. I mean, nothing against the Armenians, but it seems kind of random, doesn’t it? I mean, why doesn’t Yemen have a quarter? Or, for that matter, Wisconsin?
We go to the Muslim Quarter, where Doron leads us through a tunnel that runs underground along the Western Wall. The Western Wall is important to Jews because it is a remnant of the ancient wall that surrounded the Temple Mount, which is considered the holiest place in Judaism. The first Jewish temple stood here, before it was destroyed by the Babylonians. The second temple also stood here; it was destroyed by the Romans. Jewish tradition holds that a third and final temple should be built here. The problem is that when the Muslims conquered Jerusalem in the seventh century, they built a shrine, the Dome of the Rock—it’s the third-holiest place in Islam—right on top of Temple Mount.
Fortunately, all of these events happened centuries ago. Tempers have cooled since then, so the Jews and Muslims will undoubtedly let bygones be bygones and work out a solution for sharing this holy place that satisfies everybody.
Ha-ha! I am kidding again. In this part of the world, no matter how long ago something happened, plenty of people are still hacked off about it. “Bygones, schmygones,” that is the official motto of the Middle East.
We get back to the hotel quite late, exhausted from a long day that began in the desert, took us to the majestic heights of Masada and then to the lowest place on Earth, and ended in a sacred part of one of the world’s most ancient, historic and spiritually significant cities. Little wonder that as I finally drift off to sleep the last thought that goes through my mind is: My butt still stings.
DAY FIVE
This is not an easy morning. We visit Yad Vashem, the official Israeli memorial to the victims of the Holocaust. It’s very well done, managing to convey the horrifying scale of the mass murders without ever letting you lose sight of the fact that every victim was an individual person, with a unique life and spirit. The most moving exhibits, for me, are videos in which survivors describe, matter-of-factly, what was done to them and their loved ones solely because they were Jews. After two hours I walk out into the bright sunlight with tears streaming down my face, holding tight to my daughter.
My Jewish daughter.
From this somber place we go to one of the liveliest places in Jerusalem: the Mahane Yehuda open-air market, which is bustling with people buying food for Shabbat, the day of rest that begins at sundown Friday and ends at sundown Saturday. This is a big part of the Jewish week and it of course involves eating. Michelle finds a store called Kippa Man, where she buys—you cannot have too many—souvenir yarmulkes. We eat lunch at a falafel stand that claims to sell the best falafel in Israel.
FACT: Every falafel stand in Israel claims to sell the best falafel in Israel.
FACT: And every one does.
In the evening our group attends Shabbat services in a suburb of Jerusalem at Kehilat Mevasseret Zion, a reform synagogue led by Rabbi Maya Leibovitch, the first Israeli-born woman rabbi. After the service, our group breaks into smaller groups, which go to have Shabbat dinner at the homes of members of the congregation. We and another family from the tour go to the small, neat home of Kay and Adi Elkayam, a couple in their sixties. Kay was born in Philadelphia and came to Israel as an adult; Adi is a native Israeli. She’s a talker and quite funny; he’s quiet and just as funny. (When I ask him how he met Kay, he answers, without elaborating: “By mistake.”)
They serve us a massive and delicious meal, during which Kay tells us in no uncertain terms what she thinks about Israeli politics, the Middle East in general, religion, U.S. politics and many other topics. During this time Adi is silent, plodding back and forth between the kitchen and the dining table, bringing us more and more and still more food. Finally, he stops next to Kay and announces: “I do not agree with her.” (Pause.) “About anything.”
After dinner we sit on a circle of chairs in their backyard, talking, drinking wine and enjoying the pleasantly cool evening. We can hear music in the distance; Adi tells us it’s a wedding celebration in an Arab neighborhood about a thousand yards away. After a while we hear popping sounds—first a few, then many. We ask if these are fireworks. Adi, who served in the Israeli army, says no, it’s celebratory wedding gunfire, but we needn’t worry because they’re shooting blanks. We ask him if he’s sure and he says he is. He describes in some detail the type of blanks traditionally used for weddings. So we go back to talking and drinking wine, with the music and the shooting providing background ambience. It’s a fine and festive night.
DAY SIX
Much of Jerusalem shuts down for Shabbat, so we’re mostly on our own today. Rabbi Eddie leads a small group of us back to the Old City, where we visit the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, by tradition the site where Jesus was crucified and buried. It’s packed, thronging with tour groups and believers. Near the entrance dozens of people—many praying fervently, some crying—kneel on the floor, touching or pressing religious objects against the Stone of Anointing, a slab of rock said to be where Jesus was prepared for burial. There’s a long line of people waiting to enter an enclosure containing what is said to be the tomb where Jesus was buried. I do my best, trying to recall long-ago Sunday-school lessons, to explain the crucifixion/resurrection story to Sophie. I do not sound convincing to myself, which I guess is why I stopped being religious.
We leave the church, working our way out through the steady flow of incoming tour groups, and head toward the Muslim Quarter. We wander through the Arab market, a maze of narrow stone streets where people in hundreds of tiny stalls wish to sell you—always at a special price—a vast array of items, including jewelry, hats, scarves, plates, spices, knickknacks that achieve truly profound levels of uselessness, hookahs and of course T-shirts. Some of the T-shirts reflect the Arab viewpoint on Mideast issues. One has an image of the Google search page, with “Israel” typed into the search box. Underneath that it says:
Did you mean: PALESTINE
The vendors also sell a wide variety of religious souvenirs, including crucifixes, anointing oil, frankincense, Holy Land ashtrays and crowns of thorns. Really. If you are looking to enhance your home décor with a crown of thorns, the Arab market is the place for you.
BONUS: The Arab market has wifi.
We leave the Arab market and spend the afternoon wandering around Jerusalem. Tragically, because of Shabbat, all
the higher-end stores are closed. Try to imagine my pain.
DAY SEVEN
Finally, I get to use my defective forty-shekel-apiece rubber sandals as we tour Hezekiah’s Tunnel. This is an underground aqueduct that was hacked through solid rock several thousand years ago by ancient workers who I bet would have been highly amused if they’d known that tourists would one day pay actual money to go down in there. It’s a claustrophobically narrow, clammy tunnel, a third of a mile long; the water is up to your knees and sometimes higher. There are no guides, no handrails, no place to stop and rest, no lighting. You are given a tiny key chain flashlight, which inadequately pierces the pitch-blackness ahead of you as you slosh your way through the chilly water, keeping a wary eye out for the Giant Hairy Aqueduct-Dwelling Spider and the Fanged Underwater Alpaca of Death, which as far as I know are imaginary creatures, but they are easy enough to imagine down in Hezekiah’s Tunnel.
We finally emerge from the tunnel and hike up to the exposed, aboveground section of the Western Wall. This is the famous part of the wall, a site sacred to Jews because of its proximity to the Temple Mount. The plaza in front of the wall is separated by a screen into two sections: one for men only and a smaller one for women only.
The vibe at the wall is a strange combination of vacation joviality and religious fervor. Some people are there strictly as tourists, smiling and laughing as they pose for photos with the wall as a backdrop as if it were the Washington Monument. Other people, a few feet away, are worshipping intently, praying and rocking back and forth for long periods of time, walking backward when they leave so as not to turn their backs on the wall. Most people, tourists and worshippers alike, write prayers or notes on pieces of paper, which they stick into cracks between the stones. Even I leave a note,* although I feel a little silly.
