Pow! Boom! Wham!

UPDATE: A 4-minute video that shows the mayhem best is here on YouTube. A must-see!

Tempers flared and fists flew for nearly an hour in the Holy Sepulchre this morning. Greek Orthodox versus Armenians. Israeli army and riot police were called in to break up the fight between the warring monks and priests. One from each side was arrested.

The full story and background can be found in Ha'aretz. A shorter version in the Jerusalem Post. Many readers' comments coming in, both funny and caustic. Both sites just now put up amazing videos of the brawl.

Some pictures will help you understand what is written in the newspapers.

Under the rotunda is the edicule, a small "house" protecting the tomb of Jesus.

A priest stands guard at the entrance. No one passes until he says so. Only two or three people fit into the little chamber inside.

So sometimes the faithful must wait in line for hours to enter.

After what seems like half a minute the priest shoos you out.

A simple marble shelf covers the remains of the stone tomb.

Greek Orthodox, Roman Catholics (here called the Latin Church), Armenians, Syrian Orthodox, Copts, and Ethiopians--all these Christians have separate chapels within the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. The troubles always start when it comes to the common areas, like the entrance courtyard, the Stone of Unction, the Rotunda, and the Edicule.

The Yad Ben-Zvi guidebook says

"The agreements reached by the various religious communities over ownership of different parts of the Church ... are called the Status Quo. These also include the timing of religious ceremonies within the commonly-owned areas .... These accords are very complex and reflect the tumultuous history of Jerusalem and the fortunes of each of the ... communities."

Because of the rivalries the key to the church has been entrusted for many generations to a Muslim family. "The Ceremony of the Key is a holdover from the expulsion of the Crusaders from Jerusalem, when Muslim rulers limited access to the church. Prior to 1831 and the rule of Ibrahim Pasha, Christian pilgrims could only enter on payment of a stiff fee and were locked in for the night. The owners of the key were the Joudeh family, while the Nusseibeh family, also Muslims, were actually in charge of opening the door."
(from guidebook by Sarah Kochav)

The Ha'aretz article gives examples of problems caused by the status quo:

"The Israeli government has long wanted to build a fire exit in the church, which regularly fills with thousands of pilgrims and has only one main door, but the plan is on hold because the sects cannot agree where the exit will be built. In another example, a ladder placed on a ledge over the entrance sometime in the 19th century has remained there ever since because of a dispute over who has the authority to take it down. More recently, a spat between Ethiopian and Coptic Christians is delaying badly needed renovations to a rooftop monastery that engineers say could collapse."

Indeed I was trapped in the press of the crowd on Palm Sunday and it took me much time and patience and will power to reach the one and only door. The doors are high but not wide.

As mentioned in the paper, this is the Ethiopian compound on the roof of the church. The monks live in these tiny monastic cells in great poverty.

And here is the famous ladder which no one dare remove since the 19th century.

Location, location, location, status quo, status quo, status quo.

Welcome to the Middle East!
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Old City cats

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Here's a sampling of cats I encountered on a guided tour in Jerusalem's Old City last week.


These are the well-cared-for cats inside and outside a home in the Jewish Quarter.
But mostly the Old City has street cats, and LOTS of them.

We humans have to walk through a metal detector and have our bags X-rayed before entering the Western Wall Plaza, but this kitty just slipped through.
 
Scavenger cats under the restaurant tables in search of a fallen morsel.

(Animals on several continents are appearing at the weekly Camera-Critter Sunday.)
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Old City vehicles

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The walled Old City is to the east of the new city.
The Christian Quarter (about 4,000 people) in the upper left, Armenian Quarter (2,000) in lower left, Jewish Quarter (3,000) bottom center.
The Muslim Quarter (26,000) is all the rest, including the large rectangle of the Temple Mount.

Aerial photo borrowed from the Internet.

The bustling bazaar streets that we saw in yesterday's post are still asleep at 6:00 a.m.
 I used to walk this street every morning to my dig at the Western Wall Plaza.
More cats than people just before sunrise.

The steps and the narrowness of the major shuk/market streets make them impassable for cars.

When I moved to Israel in 1968 donkeys still transported goods and sometimes people inside the Old City.
Now only this tourist donkey is left, and he works just outside the Old City.
Here he is seen at the New Gate.

These carts are the "modern" way to go.
The only brakes are the tire chained to the cart. Just step on it to slow down.
The stone steps and ramps you saw in photo #2 are slippery when wet.
Whenever I hear a young driver coming down the crowded lane fast behind me, I stand aside, out of both respect and caution.

Photo by friend Kristine S.

Garbage collection is done with little tractors and wagons.

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Old City people

Something new in the Old City: a free tour! Sandeman does free tours in seven European cities and now in Jerusalem too. After a guided walk of over 3.5 hours you tip the guide as much or as little as you want. They start at the Jaffa Gate Tourism Office every day at 11:00.

The walled Old City is less than one square kilometer but everything is in it!
We walked through all four quarters: Muslim, Christian, Jewish, and Armenian.
You might enjoy seeing some of the people we saw on Tuesday.
Greek Orthodox priests near the Jaffa Gate.

Meir was our Israeli guide. He spoke good English and knew his stuff.

This group of girl soldiers must have been visiting the sites as part of their training. Education about the country is given to all young soldiers.

Yes, they have to carry their gun everywhere.

Indian tourists, with women in the lovely sari.

Jewish kindergarten kids were running after their teachers in the Jewish Quarter.

All kinds of folks at the Western Wall Plaza. The ramp leads up to the Mughrabi Gate into the Temple Mount.

The narrow bazaar streets were packed with tourists. Sandeman guides wear red so you don't lose them in the press of the crowd.

Must be hard to take this lady in a wheelchair up and down the steps of the crowded streets.

A game of sheshbesh on the street.

School must have just let out.

Arab girls in their school uniform.

Ladies doing lunch in the Muslim Quarter.

Mothers out shopping.

Sometimes I wonder how the residents of the densely packed Old City feel about sharing their narrow streets with all these tourists all during the year. I wonder how it is to live there in the old stone houses, in all that intense religious history, to be at the very center of the world.

How would you feel about writing your address as, say, #10 Via Dolorosa, Jerusalem?

Light

The afternoon sky above the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Below the dome is the place where Jesus was buried, according to tradition.
The first showers of last week are long gone. Israel is back to blue skies and T-shirt temperatures.
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Last week 359 bloggers shared their part of the sky on the weekly SkyWatch Friday. Keep looking up!

What we all need

Within the Old City of Jerusalem, the writing on the wall.
With emphasis on the NEED.
BlogBlast for Peace is happening today. Many very original Peace Globes designed by participants on the theme Dona Nobis Pacem.
Although I'm not officially joining, this post is my nod to those idealistic young people blogging for peace today.

Elegant motorcycles inside the Old City

Yesterday I felt a strange need to visit the Old City of Jerusalem. Immediately upon entering the old Jaffa Gate, I understood what had "called" me there. Look at these BMWs!!

(You see, when in college in America my mode of transportation was a Honda 50. I loved it and always dreamed of crossing the country, ala John Steinbeck's Travels with Charley, on a black BMW.)
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I circled the bikes, trying not to drool on them. I sat next to them, took pictures, read the stickers, wondered about the license plates, marveled at the helmets. Then finally I figured out that man in black was the rider.

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Click on the photo and you'll see the Austrian eagle and the name of Innsbruck.
The American man leaning on the post explained he and a small group were touring Israel with these and six other motorcycles with Edelweiss Bike Travel (http://www.edelweissbike.com/). Because motorcycles cannot be rented in Israel, they had to be brought in from Austria for this first-of-its-kind-in-Israel trip.
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They had wanted to ride to Petra also but the Jordanians did not allow the bikes into the Kingdom.
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The lucky man gave me permission to post this and I wished him happy trails. His lucky lucky wife returned from her shopping spree in the bazaar along with the second couple.
And off they drove.
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The powerful purr of the BMW engines was just as I remembered it from the 1960s.
Sigh. . .

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God bless America

I just woke up to a bright new day. Opened my computer and Israel TV was broadcasting live the inspiring victory speech of Barack Obama. Our commentators then interspersed clips of Martin Luther King proclaiming, "I have a dream." Enough to bring tears to the eyes!

AP PHOTO

In July Obama wrote a note and put it into the Western Wall, "God's mailbox." Today his request has been granted. Today there is a feeling of new hope in the air.

Congratulations America! May our world have some leadership toward peace, soon and in our days.

Politics, posters, and political parties

Americans are at the polls today. A week from today Jerusalemites will be voting too, for a new mayor.
Arcadi Gaydamak is a Russian tycoon, a billionaire. Hebrew is not his strong point. His campaign slogan is "Lo medaber, oseh," meaning, he doesn't talk, he acts.

This poster says "Hatikva--the hope. Nir Barkat, mayor." I've heard that he plans to make Jerusalem a slick, high-tech city.

Barkat and Gaydamak are secular Jews running against ultra-Orthodox Meir Porush.

No offense, Mr. Porush. Really!

I simply didn't get a picture of his poster on the side of the moving bus. Actually I felt bad, standing and watching the buses on Herzl Blvd. run over his picture, which, as Jerusalemite Blog quipped, looks like a South Park-style Santa Claus.

The problem is that when election campaign pictures are illegally pasted on not-paid-for advertising spaces, the municipal supervisors come and tear them down, often leaving a mess.

But even worse is when the papers or the rolls of plastic banners are tied onto the fences with these azikonim (disposable handcuffs). They are made of tough ribbed plastic and are super hard to cut. I have a bad feeling that they will be left on the city's fences for a long time.

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ABC Wednesday today and our letter is P. Please visit the other bloggers to see what they post.

Home in the Jerusalem Hills

Every week more and more bloggers are contributing a look at their world on That's My World Tuesday. Come join us!
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Welcome to my village in the Jerusalem Hills (also known as the Hills of Judea).
We are just west of Jerusalem.
Perched on a hill, our altitude is plus and minus 600 meters, depending on which terrace you live.
The moshav (meaning collective agricultural village) was founded in 1950 by Jews from Kurdistan (Iraq). Soon new immigrants from Morocco also came.
It was a hard life for them, starting from nothing.

Today there are 234 households with about 620 souls.

I myself am a newcomer to this region of Israel, having formerly lived by the coast. Unlike the members of the moshav, I do not own a house. Instead I rent a simple one-room-plus-kitchen house with a big yard from the days of the founders.

From the next mountain across the valley you can see the sun set on our lovely hilltop.

Because the region is so hilly, no big-scale crop growing is possible.
 In recent years the moshav has moved away from collectivism and gone toward privatism, but once every member family was required to have a chicken house for egg production.

Today only less than a dozen hen houses still have chickens.
 Many others have been converted into warehouses, workshops, and even housing for low-budget renters.

Not much traffic on our narrow winding road.
One bus line takes me to Jerusalem, running once every few hours.

It is a nice quiet life, with nice neighbors.
 At night you hear only the chorus of the jackals, even right under my window.

I am blessed to have the best of both worlds--living in the country with woods all around us and yet being half an hour's bus ride from Jerusalem, the center of the world!
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Calder red

Yay! The Calder stabile has been painted in Calder red! I saw the two guys up there painting and grabbed this shot from a moving bus.
(Provided I have a seat on the bus, I always have the little camera in my hand at the ready. )
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To learn more about the sculpture and to see how it looked as a red and white patchwork, please see the post of Oct. 12.
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Creepy caterpillars on the capers

Bright fuzzy caterpillars on the caper bush? OK . . . Bon appetit, little critters!
See those serious thorns? Ouch! I never cut caper branches without strong gloves.

And you have to keep after them all the time or they overrun everything. They seem to thrive in old stone walls.

To see what animals other bloggers posted this weekend check in at Camera-Critters blog.

Over to Switzerland, just for Reformation Day

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Two shots of books in this post. (Books is the City Daily Photo group's Nov. 1 theme.)
The same book, the Bible, but in two vastly different moods.

Knowing the church would be packed for All Saints and All Souls Days (Oct. 31 and Nov. 1), Martin Luther seized the day to nail his "95 Theses" protest on the Wittenberg church door. That was back in 1517 and till today Protestants mark Oct. 31 as Reformation Day, including here in Jerusalem.

Well, Luther was no friend of the Jews, to put it mildly, so you won't find a statue of him in Israel (unless there is one I don't know of, tucked away in some Lutheran church). So to illustrate Reformation Day I have to open my photo archive from when I lived in lovely Switzerland (2002-3).
Meet Guillaume Farel (1489-1565), fiery French preacher, a founder of the Reformed Church in the Francophone cantons of Switzerland.

He guards the door to the old (begun in 1185) Collegiale in Neuchatel, Switzerland. Click on the first photo to see his face and understand why, whenever I entered this basilica, I would duck in quickly to avoid his wrath!

The pulpit Bible is more friendly-looking than the one in Farel's hands.

This 14-th century cenotaph is a grand piece of Gothic art, the only monument of its kind outside Italy. Fortunately it escaped the iconoclastic frenzy of the Reformers in 1530. The citizens did not have the heart to destroy their own noblemen in this Monument of the Neuchatel Counts.

I loved to look at them while hearing marvelous free organ concerts the church gave one Friday each month.

What is this one holding, another book, a scroll??

BTW, a major dig around Luther's house was just completed. Interesting stuff in Der Spiegel's article entitled "THE REFORMER'S RUBBISH, Archaeologists Unveil Secrets of Luther's Life."
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