Highway of Holiness

Neve Ilan, Israel

An eerie silence hung in the air as thirty-plus American youth spilled onto the empty freeway. College students released from the classroom instantly became little children again, piercing the silent night with whoops of freedom and shouts of laughter. Who can blame them? Running about where automobiles usually engulf the pavement at high-speeds is everybody's secret childhood desire--especially for many of the students who were off the reserve for the first time.

The only thing more unusual than the completely vacant highway was the fact that the highway wasn't actually closed--the road, though empty, was completely open; the on and offramps neither restricted nor blocked. For the out-of-town Americans, it was a sight to see on this atypical school night. But for the inhabitants of the city refraining for motorized transportation, it was a special night.

Three thousand years ago, this night and the following day were observed as the holiest day of the year, the peak religious day for a people who did the utmost to live up to their calling to be holy. This night began a 24-hour period of fasting, prayer, and repentance for a people whose yearly atonement fell on this one day--one day to be free of sin; one day to be reconciled to Him who called His people out of the wilderness. This day is so crucial to these people that it has been observed nearly every year since its institution, from tent to temple to synagogue--from a time of wandering to established monarchy, to provinces under foreign rule to a scattering around the world, to a reunited statehood in the motherland. Throughout the storied history of these people, this night has remained the most important night of the year.

The chaperones shushed us for the umpteenth time. Exuberance in the streets is not the most appropriate activity for such a solemn time, they said. While we ran wild in the streets, countless Israelis were gathered in their homes, soul-searching and examining their hearts in preparation for this appointed time of atonement.

While only thirty-percent of Israelis affiliate themselves with some sort of religious sect, Yom Kippur, this ancient day of atonement, is still ingrained in the Jewish mind, and the vast majority of Israelis still participate in its celebration. Although Yom Kippur is the "chreaster" of Israel, the observance of the holy day is taken seriously.

Yom Kippur is treated as a special Sabbath day, thus all shops are closed and work is prohibited, including the operation of motor vehicles. The day is spent in fasting and prayer as synagogues across the land meet to purify their hearts before their God. Forgiveness and repentance is abundant as people seek forgiveness from God so they exercise forgiveness with those around them. Other traditional rules of observance include abstaining from leather footwear, bathing, and marital relations--all of which are an extension of fasting, in order to "afflict yourselves" as it is written in the Torah. Giving to charity is also a part of the anticipation and participation of Yom Kippur.

The Americans scattered as several Arabs roared down the empty freeway. It seems only the unobservant were on the freeway that night. Several minutes later, patrolling police sent the boys and girls off the highway for the night. From the empty freeway, all we could see was a large national holiday. But in homes and synagogues across the land, and even around the world, this is an long-running covenant that is just as alive and well as the people who celebrate it.

Completely open but vacant freeways aren't something you witness everyday. Neither is ancient traditions celebrated by an ancient people in their ancient land.

Independence Day

Independence Hall, Tel Aviv

I leaned back in my chair as the old man continued to speak. The recording crackled as he spoke words I didn’t know in a language I couldn’t speak; but I didn’t need to understand Hebrew to feel the heaviness of words that still held their weight from when they were first spoken in 1948.

Sixty-six years ago in this room, Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion stood behind that blue and white podium in front of me and read words off a scroll that had been written and finished only hours before. Only sixty-six years ago the world listened via radio as one people group, once scattered to the ends of the earth, now came together to defy all odds and the advice of the UN and the United States to declare its unified stand to claim the ground on which they stood as Eretz Yisrael, the land of Israel.

As Independence Hall continued to resound with the steady sound of Ben-Gurion’s unwavering voice laying the foundation of this new state, my mind began to wander. I was whisked back in time to a familiar land across the sea, to another Independence Hall where another group of white-haired men poured over a document that could make or break their stand for freedom. A common theme of independence and freedom was clear and prevalent in both the American and the Israeli declarations, and the similarities between the two quickly dawned on me. But the American bid for independence occurred over two hundred years ago; Israel had only made their move within the last century. And as my American sense of superiority swelled up in me again, I had another epiphany.

Israel didn’t come to this land on boats from across an ocean; they didn’t secede from another overbearing country—this is their home country, and has been for three thousand years, back to the days when Abraham and his sons walked the land. Israel had been Israel for a long time before this this fateful day in 1948; and now after being dispersed among the nations, they had returned to make Israel a nation once again. The declaration of statehood that currently rang in my ears is just as monumental, if not more so, as the uprising of young America in the 1770s. As much as I would have loved to hear the voices of my founding fathers and witness the birth of my own country, I realized how much more significant this time and place is for a people who were once scattered around the world and severely persecuted only a few years before in the previous world war. To be united on home soil would be more than a dream come true.

As I mentally returned to my seat after straddling the formation of two nations, I finally began to grasp the miracle of the history before me. I now understood the relief in Ben-Gurion’s voice as he concluded the words "The State of Israel is established!" and the joy that overflowed from the recording as the room burst into the singing of Hatikvah, the current national anthem.

The tour guide clicked off the recording and returned to the center of the room to conclude this momentous occasion. The following day five nations rose up against young Israel, forcing her to defend herself with what little weapons and strength she had—thus beginning of the 1948 War of Independence. The room was suspended in silence as the guide concluded the tour.

“We must do the utmost to survive,” she said, speaking for far more than herself. “The land and the country is beautiful, yes—but it is not an easy one. If we want to survive, we must fight back.”

Waters of Life

City of David, Israel

The two teams pressed on through the darkness—one team consisting a crew of desperate men, frantically swinging hammers upon stone chisels as they attempt to carve a tunnel out of the bedrock beneath the city—the other, a class of eager college students armed with headlamps and digital cameras playing follow-the-leader through the very same tunnel nearly 2,700 years later.

For my classmates and I preparing to enter the tunnel, this was a passage of exploration and adventure, a reliving of a vivid history. But for the men with the chisels preparing to dig the tunnel, this was a daring undertaking that held the city, the king, and the rest of the country on its metaphorical shoulders.

The year is about 700 BC. The ancient city of Jerusalem is in danger of attack—Sennacherib and the Assyrians are coming. The city is defensible on nearly all sides, except for one major drawback—the city’s natural water source, the Gihon Spring, is outside the city walls on the east side. An attacking force could easily capture the spring once the city closes its gates during a siege. A city surrounded without water is a dead city.

King Hezekiah knows this. As the Assyrians make their way towards Jerusalem to drive the final nail in Judah’s coffin, Hezekiah prepares his capital city for war. He reinforces the walls surrounding the Temple mount and the western hill of the city with a wall that stands 8 meters high (26 feet) and 7 meters thick (23 feet). But it will take more than just brute strength and a lot of rocks to keep the spring and the water out of enemy hands.

As the horde of Assyrians draws near, Hezekiah launches a daring attempt to save the water supply—he decides to divert the water from the Gihon Spring (on the eastern edge of the city) to the Siloam Pool on the southern end of the city via underground tunnel aqueduct.

Cold water from the spring—liquid gold 2,700 years ago—ran over my dusty feet, rushing into the dark tunnel before me. The anticipation of undertaking this historical subterranean experience was apparent in every excited whoop and yell that the class let out as we started our descent. But one can only imagine the sense of immediacy and urgency burning within men assigned to cut this life-giving path into the rock.

Our voices reverberated through the tunnel as our headlamps pierced the thick darkness. In the artificial light, chisel marks could still be seen on the damp, narrow walls. The tunnel itself was small and slender, three feet wide and about five feet high; just enough space for a grown man to crouch through. It was clear from the dimensions of the tunnel that these men had been hasty in their efforts—water was the priority and time was of the essence. For the next twenty minutes our class of thirty-two crouched and ran through the space between rocks with nothing but the light of our lamps before us and the rushing of the water at our feet.

Unlike our singular stream of bodies that moved in one direction with the current, King Hezekiah had commissioned two separate teams to accelerate the tunneling process: one team starting from the spring to the east and the other at the Pool of Siloam to the south, digging towards each other. The teams could hear voices through the rock as they neared each other and attempted to connect the two tunnels. From a hundred feet deeper in the tunnel, our guide informed us that here, where the chisel marks abruptly changed directions, was where the two teams had met in the middle, connecting water from the spring of Gihon to the pool of Siloam. Fresh water rushed into the Pool, giving a city under siege a fighting chance to live another day.

Thirty minutes after going into the depths of the rock beneath the city, we emerged out of the darkness into the Israeli sunshine on the other side of the city. Hezekiah’s 1,750-foot tunnel, chiseled by hand under the direst of circumstances, still stands and still works. The 2,700-year-old tunnel has been converted into a tourist attraction today but the water continues to flow and the incredible history still lives within its dark, damp walls.

Two teams surfaced from the tunnel. One team created it while the other team relived its origins; but now both are witnesses to the miracle that once brought waters of life to a city on the edge of extinction.

O Jerusalem

Jerusalem, Israel

I stepped off the bus my first day in tiny Jerusalem into a new world, without realizing I was really entering into two—one buried within the other, clashing and swirling together before my eyes.

Behind me was a buzzing hive of endless movement and activity. Traffic swirled around me at a dizzying rate on narrow streets full of angry drivers shouting in various languages. The abundance of mopeds and scooters defying traffic lights to needle their way through over-crowded intersections was almost terrifying to watch. Men in black suits and tall black hats, curly sideburns and lengthy beards walk briskly on sidewalks and into the streets to and from their destination. High-rise buildings, offices, and hotels stand against the Jerusalem skyline as construction cranes also reach upwards, adding more buildings to the ever-growing lineup of towering steel structures that look down on the city. Hebrew and Arabic was on every sign and billboard and on every tongue, with just enough English words sprinkled around for me to get by. The culture that governs the city and gives it life is miles away from any city in the states, but the modern city of Jerusalem holds a very western influence that can by seen and heard throughout the city.

In front of me stood another smaller city in the middle of this modern one, guarded by an encircling wall made of aging limestone that has seen more years than my home country. One of seven gates in the ancient walls, the gate before me looms above another crowded and narrow street also made of stone, filled with endless foot traffic—travellers, pilgrims, worshippers, and tourists from every corner of the globe, seeking to see and experience one of the oldest standing cities in the world.

The light turns green and a stream of pedestrians spills off the main highway towards the Old City gates, sweeping my companions and I into the City.

Every so often our teacher-turned-guide turns over his shoulder to describe and recount the thousands of years of history of a particular church or site as he leads his thirty-two students through the madness of the Old City. The more he talks and the more we walk, it becomes apparent that history is everywhere. Down every street and every alley, in every building, underlying foundations sitting atop of Roman or Byzantine or Herodian ruins. Herod’s palace was here and the temple sat right over there and Hezekiah’s wall was right about there. Every rock and stone has a story and it’s breath-taking to think about.

Past and present continue to clash on the streets as mopeds and cars squeeze their way through alleys and streets wherever there was enough room to pass. Every man and woman carries a cell phone, neon signs glow in every window, and cable TV dishes adorn the roofs of every house in the city.

As tourism thrives in the Old City, so does the commerce. The marketplace is as ubiquitous as the Israeli sunshine, as shops and booths line the winding streets for miles throughout the city, and are never more than a few paces away in any direction. The variety of the wares on display is endless, ranging from fresh produce to jewelry to the latest Addidas clothing and everything in between.

Traders shout from fruit stands and sandal shops at passersby, hawking goods and haggling for prices.

As we press deeper into the city, roofs on stone arches now covered the street and the path began to shrink in size and become even more congested. The shops and booths were suddenly smaller in size but increasing in number. The signs over each shop were no longer in Hebrew but Aramaic, and the ratio of Arab to foreigner was suddenly twice what it was before. Our stroll through the shops was no longer a stroll; now we were pushing our way through a throng of people, shoulder to shoulder in melting pot of countries and nations shuffling its way down the stone pathway.

The zerg rush reached a fever pitch as the river of people reached a bottleneck. We pushed towards the opening of a single archway, bursting through into an open courtyard. Children were playing jump rope in the wide open street; men in big black hats congregated around a synagogue; the women were no longer veiled; and multiple conversations were taking place in English—it was like crossing into another country.

With three of the biggest religions in the world laying claim to holy sites in the city, Jerusalem is split into quarters: the Christian quarter, the Armenian quarter, the Muslim quarter and the Jewish quarter. We had walked through the Muslim quarter into the Jewish quarter on the southeast end of the city. Each quarter has a different culture, different rules and different atmosphere about it.

In the Jewish quarter, the holiest site without a doubt is the Western Wall, our last stop of a long and adventurous day. This wall is thought to be one of the retaining walls of the temple mount of the Second Temple period from the time of Herod the Great, and the last standing piece of the temple complex that was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans. This wall has been the site for Jewish prayer and pilgrimages for centuries, as this wall is the closest thing Judaism has had to a temple since 70 AD.

The wall was about 60 feet high, made of massive stones weighing several tons. A small crowd of Jewish men of all ages came to pray at the wall, first kissing the two thousand year old stones before launching in a head-bobbing song of prayer in Hebrew. Others shoved small pieces of paper, probably prayers, into cracks in the wall; some crevices were full of such papers. A group of about thirty men wearing prayer shawls with scrolls and books in hand sang and prayed in earnest, hair curls swinging back and forth in rhythm. We stood in silence watching, listening. For centuries these men, this country has poured out their prayers at this wall, and they would remain at these walls for centuries more if that’s what it takes to bring about answers to their prayers.

The sun was beginning to set behind the wall as we made our way back to the bus, thousands of years of history on our minds and in the dust on our shoes. The backdrop of skyscrapers and construction cranes does the beautiful Old City no justice, a city that has seen three thousand years on its perch atop a hill in the middle of the country, a city that has been overrun and destroyed multiple times and has been the scene of political and religious disputes to this day. I went home that night with a new respect that little old city, like an shriveled old man walking with a walker, but he's still walking, still going strong, still standing.

I couldn’t help but feel a little bit like the Jewish rabbis at the wall—maybe the peace of Jerusalem is something we could all pray for.

As the rabbis say, “L'shana habaah b'yerushalayim.”

Next year in Jerusalem.

Beneath My Feet

Christ Church, Old City Jerusalem

"Are ya’ll with Calvary Chapel too?" A voice said behind me.

The hint of Southern drawl in his voice was a welcome surprise after sparring with Arab and Jewish shopkeepers all day. I half expected to see a confused tourist looking for his group.

I turned around to see a middle-aged man with graying hair, a rather round midsection, and a cardboard coffee cup in hand. His t-shirt, denim shorts, and flip-flops would’ve been a better fit in a sleepy suburban coffee shop rather than on the streets of one of the oldest and holiest cities in the world.

"Actually no, we're with the Master's College, studying abroad here in Israel for the next three months."

My three friends and I eagerly jumped into conversation with this fellow English speaker and his story came tumbling out in a few quick minutes. Born and raised in the Carolinas, he first came to Israel two years ago to take care of his ailing mother. After researching his family heritage and discovering that he was in fact Jewish, he quit his job in the States, and moved to the Holy Land. 

"I love it here," he said.

Turns out he now works as a tour guide for the very museum we were standing next to. Suddenly he changed from unsuspecting tourist to fast-talking guide.

Yes, we already toured this museum the week before during our first walk through the Old City; yes, we saw the Jerusalem models; yes, we had been told that the museum and the courtyard we were sitting in across from Christ Church was once part of Herod the Great’s palace that stood two thousand years ago.

“Did your guide show you the tunnel under the coffee shop?” 

Under the coffee shop?

“Yeah, I’ll show you.” He turned on his heel and headed into the shop next door, leaving the four of us scrambling to grab our backpacks and follow.

Inside past the counter was a small iron gate, innocently minding it’s own business in a secluded corner of the shop. Behind the gate a set of narrow stone steps curved its way into the floor and descended into a passage so tight that even my 5’3’’ frame had to fold in half to pass through. My friends and I found ourselves in dank, dimly-lit stone room about fifteen feet below the Old City streets.

This room, our new guide casually informed us between sips of coffee, originally sat somewhere underneath Herod’s palace, making the Herodian portion of the room over 2,000 years old. The "newer" Byzantine rock that was built on top of the Herodian stones could easily be seen. The dungeon-looking room housed a small trapdoor in the corner of the floor that led to a cistern that descended another twenty feet into the stone, also from the time of Herod the Great. Somewhere in the cistern was a tunnel that runs under the city all the way to the Temple Mount; this tunnel was even mentioned in the writings of Josephus the historian.

"Yupp," he said, finishing his coffee. "This chamber was only discovered recently in 2011."

We stood there speechless in the soft light, trying to drink it all in.

We climbed out of the past and into the present day coffee shop and as quickly as we had first descended. I couldn't help but think about how many times I'd walked past this cafe and other structures in the City without sensing the thousands of years of history that lay dormant just beneath my feet.