It's been that way for a while now: moody whorls surrounding crystalline moments. Before we left Jerusalem we made another visit to the Kotel plaza and also to the "Burnt House" and its sister site, the Wohl Archaeological Museum, which contains more antiquities from the time of Herod the Great -- mikvaot [plural of mikvah, ritual baths], two smaller houses whose floors are decorated with still-vivid mosaic floors, and most spectacularly the ruins of the palatial house of an extended priestly family containing multiple mikvaot, rooms tiled and decorated with more mosaics, and remarkable cisterns for storing water for ritual bathing, hygiene, cooking, sleeping, and so on. With what once were clear views of the Second Temple, both the Burnt House and the residences in the Herodian museum would have been inhabited by families deeply invested in the daily conduct of Temple affairs. The Bar Kathros family whose home was destroyed by the Romans during the destruction of the Second Temple and whose lives were likely ended there (the bones of a young woman's severed arm were found, together with an iron spear point, as well as implements marked "Bar Kathros") are mentioned in Talmud, in Pesachim -- along with some unpleasant remarks about them and several other priestly families who allegedly abused their authority.
We expected to race through these exhibits, but instead found ourselves lingering and demanding more of these silent stones, tiles, and plaster. Laurelle pored over each sign and placard, softly reading sections of each. We were blessed to be the only tourists for much of our walk through the Wohl Museum; the quiet lent a note of reverence to every footstep. Keithen, ever the explorer and adventurer, for his part led us to overlooks and new perspectives not readily spotted from the prescribed path: a stairway descending into one of the cisterns with an unusually-small mikvah built at the head of the stairs.
When I first visited Jerusalem, these ruins were all part of excavations of the "Jewish Quarter"; everything was exposed to the elements. The sites are now three to seven meters below street level, and above them the Jewish Quarter has been rebuilt. The Wohl Museum is located under a yeshiva [think of it as a Jewish seminary and school for ongoing sacred studies], and the Burnt House in a separate venue. To emerge from reimagining ancient priestly life into the light of ongoing modern Israel is an extraordinary experience.
We also made our way to Hezekiah's Tunnel to make our way down the waterway; on our first visit someone in the group ahead of us had fainted within the narrow descending waterway and an emergency medical team had to extract him/her. The number of people already in the tunnel was so large that we who had been waiting to descend were diverted to a nearby exit or to a dry, parallel tunnel.
We'd promised ourselves a return to complete the water tunnel. The flow of people descending was steady, but luck plays a big factor in how we experienced this remarkable feat of engineering. The evidence is that King Hezekiah's tunnel engineers started from two different directions -- one team chiseling upward, and the other downward from the plateau of the City of David [not to be confused with the current "Old City of Jerusalem" -- this is where David and Solomon established the ANCIENT city of Jerusalem which later expanded and became the site now surrounded by walls built during the Ottoman Empire about 400-450 years ago]. Hezekiah commanded that the tunnel be built in preparation for a long siege that he anticipated the city would face when the Assyrians attacked.
Along the way you can see places where the workers veered off the mark, stopped, and reclaimed the correct upward path, and, of course, there is a place which is marked where the tunnelers met upon completing the aqueduct. [The plaque put in place over 2700 years ago was discovered and placed in the Israel Museum.] Archaeologists have pretty much figured out how the project was accomplished without modern technology: it is possible to stand on the surface of the hill and, putting an ear to the limestone karst, hear the sounds of chiselling far underground.
The water tunnel is so narrow that it barely permits adults enough space to turn around. People are advised to wear footwear suitable for walking in water, which ranges on an adult from just above ankle depth to mid-thigh. The water is a cold, steady, clear stream through which you can see remnants of ancient plaster that once lined parts of the waterway. In places the height of the channel shrank enough to require us to stoop for varying distances.
Unfortunately we made our descent in the company of several dozen teenagers from the U.S. who thought it was cool to fill most of the 533-metre tunnel with noise -- their repertoire consisting largely of camp songs ("999 Bottles of Beer..."; medleys of half-remembered pop lyrics, chauvinistic youth group slogans, and so on). Ahead of us was an Orthodox Israeli guiding his brother and nephew, proudly sharing his considerable knowledge of the tunnel and its history, legend, and lore. He had graciously invited us to join them -- but nothing much mattered when the wall of sound erupted from behind us. I periodically fell back and asked the teens' madrichim to quiet them, but nothing escapes teen spirit. About two-thirds of the way down the tunnel, I stepped back and told them that I would block the tunnel and prevent people from moving forward if they didn't shut up.
It worked for a while -- long enough to imagine what it would have been like working the darkness with hammer and chisel by the light of olive oil lamps. As we approached the exit, the height of the tunnel soared, and we realized that they must have had visions of the whole channel being something like that lower cavity. Their plans surely changed as they realized the work involved.
Emerging at the end from the damp and chill into the heat and light of the valley -- Siloam (an Arabic corruption of the Hebrew Shiloh) -- we were back in 21st century Jerusalem. On the short shuttle uphill to the entrance of the City of David archaeological site, I thought about the families settled in this area -- mainly Arabs with a smattering of determined Jewish refugees from Arab countries, eking out a living in occupations over centuries, and all the while sitting on the remarkable hidden archaeological treasures beneath the surface. Eilat Mazar, daughter of Binyamin Mazar, who is responsible for much of what has been discovered, deserves an extraordinary note of appreciation for her persistence, vision, and genius in bringing this ancient centre of civilization to light.
More to come....
Hope you are well, and, again, thanks for your patience.
Rabbi Larry
We'd promised ourselves a return to complete the water tunnel. The flow of people descending was steady, but luck plays a big factor in how we experienced this remarkable feat of engineering. The evidence is that King Hezekiah's tunnel engineers started from two different directions -- one team chiseling upward, and the other downward from the plateau of the City of David [not to be confused with the current "Old City of Jerusalem" -- this is where David and Solomon established the ANCIENT city of Jerusalem which later expanded and became the site now surrounded by walls built during the Ottoman Empire about 400-450 years ago]. Hezekiah commanded that the tunnel be built in preparation for a long siege that he anticipated the city would face when the Assyrians attacked.
Along the way you can see places where the workers veered off the mark, stopped, and reclaimed the correct upward path, and, of course, there is a place which is marked where the tunnelers met upon completing the aqueduct. [The plaque put in place over 2700 years ago was discovered and placed in the Israel Museum.] Archaeologists have pretty much figured out how the project was accomplished without modern technology: it is possible to stand on the surface of the hill and, putting an ear to the limestone karst, hear the sounds of chiselling far underground.
The water tunnel is so narrow that it barely permits adults enough space to turn around. People are advised to wear footwear suitable for walking in water, which ranges on an adult from just above ankle depth to mid-thigh. The water is a cold, steady, clear stream through which you can see remnants of ancient plaster that once lined parts of the waterway. In places the height of the channel shrank enough to require us to stoop for varying distances.
Unfortunately we made our descent in the company of several dozen teenagers from the U.S. who thought it was cool to fill most of the 533-metre tunnel with noise -- their repertoire consisting largely of camp songs ("999 Bottles of Beer..."; medleys of half-remembered pop lyrics, chauvinistic youth group slogans, and so on). Ahead of us was an Orthodox Israeli guiding his brother and nephew, proudly sharing his considerable knowledge of the tunnel and its history, legend, and lore. He had graciously invited us to join them -- but nothing much mattered when the wall of sound erupted from behind us. I periodically fell back and asked the teens' madrichim to quiet them, but nothing escapes teen spirit. About two-thirds of the way down the tunnel, I stepped back and told them that I would block the tunnel and prevent people from moving forward if they didn't shut up.
It worked for a while -- long enough to imagine what it would have been like working the darkness with hammer and chisel by the light of olive oil lamps. As we approached the exit, the height of the tunnel soared, and we realized that they must have had visions of the whole channel being something like that lower cavity. Their plans surely changed as they realized the work involved.
Emerging at the end from the damp and chill into the heat and light of the valley -- Siloam (an Arabic corruption of the Hebrew Shiloh) -- we were back in 21st century Jerusalem. On the short shuttle uphill to the entrance of the City of David archaeological site, I thought about the families settled in this area -- mainly Arabs with a smattering of determined Jewish refugees from Arab countries, eking out a living in occupations over centuries, and all the while sitting on the remarkable hidden archaeological treasures beneath the surface. Eilat Mazar, daughter of Binyamin Mazar, who is responsible for much of what has been discovered, deserves an extraordinary note of appreciation for her persistence, vision, and genius in bringing this ancient centre of civilization to light.
More to come....
Hope you are well, and, again, thanks for your patience.
Rabbi Larry
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