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.

Goodbye Kansas

Some people are just lucky. Or fortunate—or maybe gifted. 

Whatever the case, some people manage to go and see exotic and far-reaching places that the rest of us only dream to see and do.

We all know someone who has seen lands and cultures and wonders that the rest of us only see in movies, on television and in travel magazines; someone whose passport would make Marco Polo green with jealousy; someone who has successfully crossed the ocean or circumnavigated the globe so many times that they now do so with the same manner and air of the average Joe going to the grocery store—casually and frequently. These people are the go-getters, the globetrotters, the frequent flyers, the out-and-about-ers, the sorry I was in Paris again last week-ers. These people get around—around the world.

I am not one of these people.

I’ve always been local kind of guy, never venturing too far from the family farm and the familiar plains of Kansas… Okay, I’m not actually from Kansas—I’m from Southern California. Sure, SoCal has nice weather and can be “entertaining” but it’s really all I’ve ever known. Sure, I’ve been out of state a couple times, drove to San Francisco once, and flew to Chicago about ten years ago. And that’s about it. I’m not opposed to travel; I just rarely do travel.

So when my school offered me the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to study abroad and live in Israel, I leapt at the chance to set foot outside of my home-sweet-home. And then the leash of doubt abruptly stopped me in my tracks.

Hustling through several airports to fly seventeen hours overseas to spend three months of hard study in a very different country and culture in the Middle East on the other side of the world? Intimidating. Just a little. But my land-locked fortune may never see this chance again—to see the sun rise on a different horizon, to experience people and places I had only heard of and read about, to be somewhere vastly different and completely unfamiliar was worth the risk. 

My window of possibility was quickly closing, the sun was beginning set on the farm, and the dusty country road that lead to the unknown was calling my name.

Three airports, one massive ocean, and seventeen hours of cramped seating, uncomfortable sleeping, time zone crossing, and bumping flying later, I stepped off the ramp and into the biggest adventure of my life thus far. With the Israeli sun beating down on my head, Arabic and Hebrew ringing in my ears, and the jetlag digging deep into my tired shoulders, I knew my tornado of opportunity had run it’s course. The farm and familiar landscape was nowhere to be seen and the adventure was just beginning.

I’m not in Kansas anymore.