Prague Journal

Tuesday, April 19, 2005.

This morning we took a bus to Baka, now a fairly upscale Jerusalem neighborhood, to visit Rick’s Aunt Jean. We last saw her when we visited Israel in 1998. Her apartment has been arranged as a gallery for an exhibition of some of her recent oil paintings, and it was a treat for us to see the paintings, most of which we had only seen in photos. Jean and I took a walk around the area near her apartment, and we three talked for a long while. Rick and I then walked to the Gabriel Sherover Promenade, and down to the Old City to walk through the Jewish Quarter once again. The Sherover Promenade is an elegant stone path built in 1989 by philanthropist Gita Sherover in memory of her son. The promenade follows the boundary that divided Jerusalem’s Jewish and Arab populations until the Six-Day War in 1967, and it overlooks the arid white hills of the Judean desert, the Old City, the Temple Mount, the golden Dome of the Rock, and the black dome of Al Aqsa. The Sherover gardens are planted with wheat, olives and aromatic plants, contrasting sharply with the desert that begins immediately at its feet.
We walked to the Jaffa Gate to the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, through marketplaces that looked virtually unchanged from our last visit 7 years ago, and probably hardly changed over centuries. We also walked through the Muslim Quarter, hoping to gain entrance to the Temple Mount, the site of the Dome of the Rock and the El Aqsa Mosque. The Dome of the Rock, sometimes called the Mosque of Omar, was built in 691, by the Ummayyad caliph Abd el-Malik, around the rock on which Abraham bound his son Isaac to be sacrificed before God intervened. According to some old maps and traditions, this is the center of the earth. This is also the place where the Koran says Mohammed ascended to heaven. Muslim tradition also holds that the rock tried to follow the Prophet, whose footprints are said to be on the rock. For many years, pilgrims would chip off pieces of the rock to take home with them, but glass partitions now prevent visitors from taking souvenirs. A special wooden cabinet next to the rock holds strands of Mohammed’s hair. Under the rock is a chamber known as the Well of the Souls. This is where it is said that all the souls of the dead congregate.
There is a path from the Western Wall plaza that leads to the Temple Mount, but it was closed, as were the other entrances. The Temple Mount area and the mosques are closed to tourists during the five times each day when Muslims pray, and the area is now only open from 7:30-11:00am and from 1-2pm. So we were advised to come again in the morning.
This evening we had a delightful dinner at the New Philadelphia Restaurant with Ari and Elana Hagler. This is their second year in Jerusalem. Elana is studying art and Ari is finishing a master’s degree in International Relations. They’ll return to the US this fall, where both will be attending graduate school in Philadelphia. It was a treat to see them. After dinner they took us to their flat, where we continued a long conversation and caught up with various family news.

posted by JWinn @ 10:24 PM