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[travel] Jerusalem pt 1
There's so much to say about this place. It's beautiful, unique, and completely fucked up.
Jerusalem is an especially ancient city that happens to also contain the holiest sites of three of the world's religions. It's been fought over, captured, and recaptured by many different groups for millenia. It's currently filled with Israeli-Palestinean tension, and the police are constantly on high alert.
So what's it actually like in person? Here are some tales:
First, Jerusalem reminds me a lot of my visit to Houston. Why? Because it's full of Texans. There are more bible-belters here than just about anywhere else in the world, and that includes any blue state in the US. Jerusalem is basically a giant biblical pub crawl. Here's the place where Jesus had his last supper, there's where he dropped under the weight of the cross and Mary helped him up again, there's the tree that some prophet climbed up to hear Jesus give a famous sermon etc. It's fairly common knowledge that most of these sites were “discovered” in the 12th century when the crusaders showed up, but that doesn't stop the people from coming.
I soon realized something: In terms of both tourists and, especially, residents, Jerusalem attracts fundamentalists of many faiths, and the trouble with many fundamentalists is that they're fervent, stubborn, unswayed by logic, and sometimes a bit crazy. So essentially, the city is a magnet for crazies. This partially explains why things are such a mess. I've met fairly secular Jews in Tel Aviv who basically see Jerusalem as nothing more than a big security risk.
An anecdote about the crazies: As many of you may know, orthodox Jews see the Shabbat as a day of rest and contemplation of the Torah. Many things are forbidden on Shabbat, including the use of any fire or its modern equivalent, electricity (except for the use of candles for reading light). I watched as a group of rabble-rousing Muslims gathered in an open field at the corner of the city to shoot off fireworks right after the start of Shabbat just to piss off the Jews inside their homes studying the Torah.
Jerusalem is an especially ancient city that happens to also contain the holiest sites of three of the world's religions. It's been fought over, captured, and recaptured by many different groups for millenia. It's currently filled with Israeli-Palestinean tension, and the police are constantly on high alert.
So what's it actually like in person? Here are some tales:
First, Jerusalem reminds me a lot of my visit to Houston. Why? Because it's full of Texans. There are more bible-belters here than just about anywhere else in the world, and that includes any blue state in the US. Jerusalem is basically a giant biblical pub crawl. Here's the place where Jesus had his last supper, there's where he dropped under the weight of the cross and Mary helped him up again, there's the tree that some prophet climbed up to hear Jesus give a famous sermon etc. It's fairly common knowledge that most of these sites were “discovered” in the 12th century when the crusaders showed up, but that doesn't stop the people from coming.
I soon realized something: In terms of both tourists and, especially, residents, Jerusalem attracts fundamentalists of many faiths, and the trouble with many fundamentalists is that they're fervent, stubborn, unswayed by logic, and sometimes a bit crazy. So essentially, the city is a magnet for crazies. This partially explains why things are such a mess. I've met fairly secular Jews in Tel Aviv who basically see Jerusalem as nothing more than a big security risk.
An anecdote about the crazies: As many of you may know, orthodox Jews see the Shabbat as a day of rest and contemplation of the Torah. Many things are forbidden on Shabbat, including the use of any fire or its modern equivalent, electricity (except for the use of candles for reading light). I watched as a group of rabble-rousing Muslims gathered in an open field at the corner of the city to shoot off fireworks right after the start of Shabbat just to piss off the Jews inside their homes studying the Torah.