Thursday 7/6/06 – Jerusalem: “Bar Mitzvah” at the wall, Davidson Center, Burnt house, Church of the Holy Sepulchre, shopping, Tunnel tour – Day 11

Thursday, the first event was the “Bar Mitzvah at the wall.”  We did it not at the Wailing Wall, but at the section next to it, which was buried 30 years ago when I last visited Israel – it’s been excavated since then.  We learned that the Wailing wall is not so much a wall of the Temple itself, but rather is a wall of the Temple mount – a huge base on which the Temple was built.  The original western wall of this base is over 1500 ft long and is actually mostly intact – it was just buried, or other buildings and shops were built up next to it, hiding it.  The wall also extends 50 feet below “ground level.”  And “ground level” at the section of was where we did the Bar Mitzvah is some 20 feet below “ground level” where the Wailing Wall is.  The picture on the left shows the section where we held the service.  We entered from the lower left corner, passed all the people you see there, and set up in front of the pile of boulders in the middle of the picture.  The “Bar Mitzvah” was nice.  First all the grandparents were called for an Aliyah, then all the parents. 

Then all the kids on the tour who have had or will have a Bar/Bat Mitzvah this year were called up for an aliyah.  The Rabbi made an effort to include all the younger kids with honors like, “opening the ark.”  (The Torah was wrapped in a tallis.)  Afterwards we took a lot of pictures.  The boulders that formed the backdrop for our service had been “tossed” off the Temple mount above us centuries ago by the Romans.  The kids really enjoyed climbing on them.

At the very end of the service, Marc spotted the Alban’s from our Temple and Rabbi Lutz came over and said hi. 

Next we went to the Davidson center and saw a movie about a Jew making a pilgrimage to the Temple 2000 years ago and how he would have to exchange money to pay the tax each person had to pay, and purchase an animal for sacrifice and purify himself in a mikvah before he could enter the Temple.  Next we went to something called “the burnt house.”  It was the home of a priest that had been destroyed and burnt when the second Temple was destroyed.  We watched a movie of what they think life was like in that house at the time of the destruction of the second Temple.  It talked about the disagreements between the priests and the zealots and how they sometimes ripped families apart. (Kind of like the US civil war, but they didn’t make that analogy.) 

After the burnt house, went to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  Not being Christian, the church felt very foreign and very austentacious (especially compared to the ruins we had been frequenting!)  The boys weren’t really interested at all, but they didn’t complain.

Then we got lunch and went shopping. 

I bought some Eilat stone earrings.  When we were shopped out, we went back to the hotel and played hearts.  Here are some shots of Jerusalem I took walking between the hotel and the old city.

I was surprised to see a windmill in Jerusalem.  The picture on the right was taken walking back to the old city.

Then it was time to meet the group at the Wailing Wall for the “Tunnel Tour.”  It turns out the Temple mount, the platform on which the Temple was built, is like a big box placed upside down on a mountain to level it out.  Originally it was about 100 feet from the ground to the top of the box where the Temple was.  However in 1187, Saladin, who ruled the area at the time, embarked on a plan to build mosques and schools, and to give people greater access to the Temple Mount.  Until that time, the existing city was lower than the Temple Mount. Saladin raised the level of the city to the level of the Temple Mount through the construction of a series of arches and vaults. The areas below the new construction were sealed off and used as water cisterns and for storage.  In the picture of the model of the old city on the left below, you are looking at the west wall of the temple mount.  The Wailing Wall is a small portion of the middle of this wall.  Now the entire left side of this wall is obscured by the shops and buildings that have been built up.  Only the white structure is the temple itself.  About twenty five years ago, they discovered how to get into the space below the current city and started excavating it.  So now you can go under the Kotel plaza and see “the wall below the wall.”  The tour that takes you “beneath the city” is called the “Tunnel Tour.”  Our tour guide talked a lot about how the Temple Mount was built and we saw a short movie about different techniques they used to move multiple ton stones.  Many times on the tour there would be a hole in the “floor” which they had covered with glass so you can continue walking, but still see what was below.  Below would be a 30 foot drop to the next level. 

The effort required to build the Temple mount amazed me.  I suppose it’s no less amazing than the pyramids in Egypt and other wonders, but I’ve never seen those.  The Tunnel Tour also had the first models we had seen of the Temple Mount (We later saw a much bigger model at the Israeli Museum.)  At one spot at the base, there is a single stone that is 41 feet long, 11 feet high and however wide the wall is at the base.  Its weight is measured in tons – approximately 500 tons.  It’s amazing to think of how they got it there.  I tried to take a picture of it (the one below on the right,) but it mostly just vanishes off into the distance in the picture!

After the Tunnel Tour, we went to dinner at “Olive and Fish” with the entire tour.  It was typical Israeli food – a bunch of chopped salads and pita to start, chicken, fried meatballs and “home-fried” potatoes for the main course and a non-dairy cake, (which I didn’t like) for dessert.  We met Danny Segal, who started Ziv, a charity that supports other charities.  He offered to show us what Ziv had done, but as his tour started at 5:30 Saturday morning, not many took him up on his offer.  The tour presented gifts to Naftali (a mezuzah) and to the Rabbi (a havdalah set).  After dinner, we walked back to the hotel and crashed.

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On to Day 12