Holy Hols (2) --- In The Heart Of Jerusalem

Tweet

After visiting the Church of the Holy Sepulchre built over the spot where Jesus Christ is said to have been crucified and buried we moved on or rather drifted through the maze of twisty alleyways. There are no visible boundaries between the four quarters (the Old City is divided into the Muslim Quarter, the Christian Quarter, the Armenian Quarter and the Jewish Quarter), until we came to an airport-like checkpoint. We had reached the entrance to the Western Wall, aka Wailing Wall. What we see nowadays is the section of the Western supporting wall of the Temple Mount which has remained intact since the destruction of the Second Jerusalem Temple by the Romans (70 BC). (Wikipedia) "The term Western Wall ... is mostly used in a narrow sense for the section traditionally used by Jews for prayer; it has also been called the "Wailing Wall", referring to the practice of Jews weeping at the site over the destruction of the Temples." The place in front of the wall serves as a synagogue. It has been accessible for Jews only after Israel captured the Old City in 1967. At times tens of thousands of people gather there for prayer. Men and women pray separately, a fence divides them. Our first encounter with Jerusalem was an assault on the mind and the senses! Would it have been wiser to start at the Jaffa Gate with the Citadel Museum offering a well-made overview of the history of Jerusalem? We went there at the end of our stay when we had already seen and learnt a lot. The exhibition served as a kind of summary then. No, I think this unplanned plunge into the Old City was just the right thing to do because Jerusalem *is* an assault on the mind and the senses! Three religions living together, all eager to be as near as possible to their holy sites and unfortunately always ready to fight for them. Yerushalayim, as Jerusalem is called in Hebrew, means ‘place of peace’. If only! In the course of history it has endured thirty-six wars and has been destroyed more than a dozen times. For the Muslims the Dome of the Rock is the third holy site after Mecca and Medina. It is situated above the Western Wall. The following day we got to it through another check-point. Passing the al-Aqsa Mosque we came to an elevated plateau with the wonderful Dome covered with coloured tiles and crowned by the golden dome. I love Islamic art and looked forward to visiting the Dome of the Rock where Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son and from where Mohammed ascended to heaven on his horse according to the holy texts. Alas, it was closed. We could only sit on the wall surrounding the vast area in whose middle the Dome is situated admiring it from afar. With us were about ten other tourists, wonderful! --- If you look closely at the photo, you'll see the crevices in the wall full of pieces of paper. People have written their prayers on them feeling that they can't get any closer to God than there. Twice a year the crevices are cleaned, This video shows you how it is done and what is done with the messages. It lasts only 21 seconds. --- You can find the other instalments if you click on the green bar at the top of the site.