Impressions of a tourist in Israel, circa 2005

By Ira Spector

SAN DIEGO — Some impressions from my tour of Israel,  guided by Ithamar Perath, a good friend and scholar.

Ahead of us at the entrance to King David’s Tomb was a group of 15 men, women and children in full-length white frocks and caps. They were carrying prayer books. Ithamar remarked, “I think they are ‘Copts’, which is an Egyptian-based Christian sect.” They entered a small anteroom, preceding the tomb. Then unfolded a remarkable scene. I saw the essence of the dark side of man’s existence, How man, in his eternal ignorance and stupidity, for some passionate reason needs all other human kind to express prayer and genuflection to God exactly in the manner of his own tribe’s rituals.

Inside this anteroom, perched at the far end behind a desk, was a stern looking bearded Jewish man in his thirties wearing a yarmulke,  tallis and tefillin. This armament is the most sacred adornment in a prayer to God that can be worn in the Jewish religion. He was about to start his ritual prayer (davening). The Copts were blocked from entering the small tomb area because a few Hassidic men were standing praying just inside the doorway. This blocked the entry. Unable to enter, they opened up their books and began to pray toward the tomb. The man behind the desk, prayer book in his hands, in a firm voice in English said, “YOU CANNOT PRAY HERE!” The Copts turned around and looked at him, confused, then gently turned back toward the tomb and resumed praying. Again, in a louder and more authoritative, threatening voice, the man behind the desk repeated, almost shouting,” YOU CANNOT PRAY HERE!” Intimidated the Copts closed their books, and slowly departed from the building in silence. The thug behind the desk then began his fervent prayers in great reverence to God. Before my eyes was the essence of all the previous and current misery in the world, the wars, the killing and torture, all the hate and discontent in the name of religion.

King David’s Tomb in the next room is small and anti-climatic. Its authenticity is colored by Ithamar’s comment, “ It is doubtful this was the Tomb,” and he quoted historical time and location data to support his thesis.

* At the Dome of the Rock, a Muslim husband and wife were dragging a thousand year old mother step by tortuous step around the Dome building. All the pages of her womanhood were torn away with scant few pages left in her book of life. Her stumps, called legs on other people, were swollen to grotesque proportions and could not sustain her upright without the support of her loved ones. This final visit to the sanctuary of holiness was bringing closure to her life. The circle of family and faith was bringing peace to her exhausted loins that are prepared to rest for a thousand years.

*  A few years ago Ithamar was commissioned by the Israeli government to review the physical condition of the  Kotel, known to some as the “Wailing Wall,” Some small stones had been discovered at the base and they were concerned that air pollution and overuse by people stuffing prayer messages in the joints was causing deterioration. The examination took place at the height of the Intifada bombings. To avoid disturbing the crowds praying at the wall, and at the same time avoid physical exposure, he undertook the examination from a friend’s apartment nearby with a high-powered telescope. Good news, the Wall was fine.

Ithamar told me a wonderful story. He had been at the Wall, and heard a young Hassidic man at some distance singing a beautiful song in Hebrew in a lovely voice. He spoke to the man when he was finished and asked him, whether he was singing a prayer, and if so, for what ritual? It was unknown to Ithamar. The man replied, “No it is not a prayer; my heart is so full of joy that I feel the need to sing.”

* It was a beautiful, warm night when we took the road to Hebron, and we had a marvelous meal outdoors in the patio of a restaurant. I was told that, two years before, just a short distance away in another restaurant, a suicide bomber had killed himself and five other people and many more were injured. Among the dead was a gifted physician, a renowned humanitarian, who treated Arab as well as Jewish children. During the 1948 War for Independence, Ithamar was building antitank barricades on the road where the restaurant was located.  The Israelis anticipted thatw the Jordanian Army would come marching this way from Hebron. The neighborhood buildings that flanked the road were owned and populated by well-to-do Arabs. In the early part of the war the Arab radio stations kept announcing that the destruction of Israel was imminent and every last Jew would be annihilated. However, when the war suddenly turned against them, there was an urgent call on the radio for the Arabs to abandon their homes and flee from Israel for fear the Jews would do to them what they would have so enthusiastically done to the Jews. They fled in such haste, that the victorious Israeli Army found cooked food set on dinner plates in the empty apartments. The Arabs never returned.

* At the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, I enjoyed  an interesting, temporary “fool the eye” exhibit. I wandered into a very large auditorium. No one else was there. The only illumination in the room was from a single, recessed, ceiling spotlight. The soft light washed down over a life-sized male sculpture standing on a pedestal. It was finished entirely in silver paint. Intrigued, I walked up to the sculpture to get a closer look at the detail. I focused intently for quite a while, examining the entire structure. All of a sudden I burst out laughing. It was alive! A mime! Even with my outburst, he never broke his pose. Great! I turned around and left his space which I meant as a tribute to his wonderful accomplishment and the unique pleasure he had given me, which was his intention.

*Ithamar was driving on a dirt road near the Lebanese border.  I was feeling very insecure about the outboard side of the road. It looked very soft to me. There was a tremendous drop into a canyon. I was getting increasingly anxious as we descended. Then a deep rutted hill lay before us. I finally yelled, “STOP, No more Ithamar, It looks too dangerous and we don’t have a four-wheel drive vehicle.” He realized we had to go back, but there was no place to turn around. He started backing up, and went about a quarter mile, when an Israeli armored car, with a menacing heavy-duty machine gun mounted on the roof, drove down the rutted hill and overtook us. They started to maneuver around our car at the soft edge side of the road and I was thinking, “I know Israeli soldiers are brave and bold but this is nuts!” Reason finally took hold of them and a soldier got out to assess the situation. I got out of our vehicle, and looked back. There was a fork in the road just to the rear of us that lead down to a kibbutz cemetery. We backed down into the fork, and the armored vehicle safely passed us. We were then able to turn around and Ithamar promised no more dirt roads.

*We visited kibbutz Hatserim where Ithamar had lived for five years. It is where he met and married Atida, his first wife. His sister and brother-in law Shaul and their five children also lived there. Tragically his sister Tirtsah, was killed on the kibbutz in a road accident in the seventies. She was riding her bike and a twenty-year-old soldier hit her with his speeding auto. She was forty years old, and her youngest twin children were only three. At the memorial service, Ithamar read a poem he had written for the occasion. This is the English translation.

Harvest
By Ithamar Perath

Gather each word, each token, every deed
like gathering a harvest overflowing.
Gather the blossoms that have gone to seed,
ending a summer prematurely going.
Gather the beauty that her face has known,
like gathering the lilies of the field.

Gray is the earth and dry, the crop is mown,
no more has it to yield,
and dreams of ripening shall be dreamed no more.
Deserted are the orchards of September,
but rains that come by autumn, as before,
shall nourish what she left us to remember

People who heard Ithamar recite the poem were so moved by the words, they asked the late Naomi Shemer, Israel’s most famous and beloved composer, to read it. She was so moved she composed a melody for the poem. People who heard the words sung today in the melody, regarded it as a kind of dirge for a dying summer and did not realize there was a person being mourned in these lines. Ithamar, said, “This was quite in harmony with what I intended.” We made an effort to visit his sister’s gravesite at the cemetery a short distance away. The gates were locked. No one was around except a romantic Bedouin couple at the wall of the cemetery. Tali, Ithamar’s wife, remarked, “This was an illicit meeting of the two of them. The woman was wearing Arab garb. If her tribe or family finds out, they will slit her throat.”

*We visited Yad Vashem, the Holocaust Memorial Museum. First, we drove around the back to a lower level to experience the monumental Memorial Of The Communities. I was totally unprepared for what I saw and the strong emotions that coursed through me as we meandered through. Fortunately, there was only the two of us, so my feelings were not distracted, as occurred up above in the museum building, where there were  hoards of people,

The Memorial was a monumental labyrinth of thirty five-foot-high walls made of giant hewn Dolomite Limestone blocks. Each block approximately six feet by six feet, sat on top of another to form a rugged sheer façade, maybe ten to twenty feet long. At the beginning and end of each wall section, there was a ninety-degree turn, and another wall section began, jutting off in another direction, in an intricate geometric procession. Embedded within each wall face a poured concrete section, the full height of the wall was engraved with the name of a nation or community, and a list of all the villages, towns, and cities where Jews once lived in that country or area and did not exist any more. They were all murdered! As I meandered the pathway through the maze like an ant, I felt overwhelmed by the scale of it all. Wall after wall, country after country, village-by-village, town-by-town, city by city, all no more! Here, in the shadows cast by these gigantic walls, my soul could feel the overwhelming scale of the horror of the Holocaust.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum, located on the upper part of the site, is housed in a magnificent, architectural edifice. It was quite crowded but the voice volume and decorum was quite respectful. The exhibits were quite graphic, but fairly similar to what I had already experienced at the Holocaust Museum in Washington D.C. and the death camps at Buchenwald, Dachau and Aushwitz/Birkenau. I was surprised at how few artifacts were displayed. The displays were mostly photographs and survivor testimonials shown on repeating TV monitors. However my heart was made heavy by a circular room of photos at the end of the Museum. Mounted all around the room were hundreds of personal family photographic portraits that had survived, though none of the people portrayed in them had. Posted were the animated faces of Jewish people from all walks of life expressing personality, charm, dignity, beauty, handsomeness, success, pride, rakishness, vivaciousness, coquettishness, and all the other human traits that a camera can capture. Nowhere in their faces was there any sense of the impending doom in the smoking chimneys of death that awaited them. One particular photograph is burnt into my memory: the face of a handsome young man with a marvelous handlebar mustache in a military uniform, jauntily full of himself. All that is left of him now is his memorialized image pinned on a wall.

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Ira Spector is a freelance writer based in San Diego.