quite a few memories down these lanes.
Today's itinerary:
Mt. Herzl
Ein Kemer
The Chagall windows at Hadassah
Yad Vashem
Shrine of the Book
Menorah by the Knesset
Searching for Mattersdorf
Eating more than God intended
The biggest and most central tomb is that of Theodore Herzl, the guy who dreamed up the idea of an independent Jewish state back in the 19th Century. He wrote, among other things, a book entitled Judenstaat, which proposed a Jewish state and led to the Zionist movement, which led to Jews from all over the world going to settle in Palestine, founding cities like Tel Aviv. Herzl's tomb is half a geodesic dome--it immediately evokes an image of a world. In front of Herzl's tomb in a large presentation area, where Independence Day festivities are held. There are splotches of paint on the stones--"marks" for the festivity participants.
Yitzhak Rabin is buried there too, in a very large tomb with an eternal flame and bowls of stones. Jewish custom is to put stones on graves instead of flowers--there are so many stones on Rabin's graves they put up bowls.
Micky told us where to go to meet him when we were done walking through the cemetery, but the directions weren't clear enough. We ended up at a completely wrong end of the cemetery and started walking down the road. After half a mile we decided Micky couldn't have meant this. We went back and started looking for another exit, which we found across the cemetery. We probably wasted an extra 30 minutes or so.
From there we drove through Ein Kemer, reputed birthplace/home of John the Baptist. As they did almost all other Christian and Jewish holy sites, the Moslems built a mosque over it.
We then went to Hadassah Hospital to see the 12 Tribes of Israel windows by Marc Chagall. First we sat through a 15 or 20 minute promotional video for the Hadassah Foundation, started to help with medical care for women. (Hadassah is another name or a title for Esther. I wasn't clear on that part.) Darin asked me to sum up the video: I said, "Give money to Hadassah." He said, "Hadassah good."
The windows were neat. Chagall translated the traditional leanings of each of the 12 tribes in a window. The windows were damaged in some war--the Six Day?--and Chagall fixed them. I realized, as the woman described the traditional role of each of the tribes, that the roles neatly fell out by custom or by social need: priests, kings, lawgivers, fishermen, laborers. Pretty clever, those tribes.
Next we went to Yad Vashem, which means "A hand and a name," or a memorial. It's Israel's Holocaust Museum, which is far less graphic and comprehensive than Washington's, but it is effective nonetheless. I especially liked the sculpture garden, which had various statues and sculptures to commemorate both the victims and partisans--there was a memorial to the partisans that was created by six stones forming a negative image of a Star of David.
The partisan memorial
The new Children's Memorial, which has a room filled with the reflection of millions of candlelights to remember 1.5m child victims, with a voice reading out the names of children who died on that day (I think) was very good as well.
I feel like there must be something wrong with me, because I don't get all emotional at these memorials. It's very sad and we should remember, but I got far more choked up when I got to the part about the survivors and "illegal immigrants" making their way to Palestine after the war--and the British weren't going to stop them, the Soviets weren't going to stop them, the Arabs weren't going to stop them. (Leon Uris wrote about this in Exodus, if you're interested.)
We went to the Shrine of the Book next, the part of the Israel Museum (I think) that holds the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Scrolls are amazing, both as a technical feat--the scribes labored over their books with precise, neat lettering--and as a resource come down to us today. But I am constantly reminded that these were a bunch of religious fanatics living in the middle of nowhere and I don't admire them for believing somehow society would be cleansed, with themselves at the top of the new order.
Then Micky took us by the giant Menorah at the Knesset.
As he pointed out, it's not really a menorah, it's just a statue. (To be a menorah, you actually have to be a lamp.) It was a gift from the British and shows various scenes from the Bible (Moses, Isaiah walking through the valley of bones), Jewish tradition (the rabbi standing on one foot), and history (the Holocaust). The menorah is actually the oldest symbol of the Jewish people--the Star of David, says Micky, dates pretty much from the Middle Ages (as a Jewish symbol).
We rounded off a very long day by looking for a tiny bit of a suburb, called Mattersdorf and named after the town Steve's family originally hailed from (after the Jews were kicked out of Vienna). Micky drove around and asked lots of people for directions--I think we were in the Hasidic quarter or some heavily religious quarter and many people wouldn't even talk to him. He got his first good directions from an American woman (whose Hebrew wasn't quite fluent, so Micky switched to English).
We drove up and down a few more streets and pulled up alongside a group of schoolboys on their way home to ask them. The passenger side door opened and two boys hopped into the front seat. They directed him first to where one boy wanted to get out, then on to the building(s) the secondboy said was Mattersdorf.
"Boy, not like home, is it?" I said, when the boys got in, totally unafraid.
Micky said later one boy said to the other: "Shhh! I can understand everything they're saying!" Which wasn't much.
After an unbelievably long day, we bid Micky goodbye--another guide would take us back to Tel Aviv. Steve gave him a tip (I don't know how much).
We headed off to Eucalyptus, where Darin ordered the feast and we all got stomachaches. It was enough food for 12. At least. We all signed the guestbook. Incredibly great restaurant--just don't order the feast. Big mistake.
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Copyright 1998 Diane Patterson
Send comments and questions to diane@spies.com