Belz Hanging Out

I estimate that I walked about 13 kilometers today. We couldn't sleep last night because they are rehearsing Oklahoma in Beit Beuer which faces right towards us. Till about ten thirty they are whoopin' and hollerin' and singing "oh what a beautiful morning" with all the windows open wide open which keeps us all up past our usual bedtime. All the Rogers and Hammerstein meant that I didn't have my usual presence of mind when I got up this morning. There was a lot of Ariela and me walking around this AM saying "Rassafrassin' Oklahoma." Since I knew that I was too tired to do any brain work, I decided to give myself some foot work instead. I walked Lev down to daycare and then set off to visit Belz World Headquarters. Belz is the name of a large Hasidic community, named after the town in Ukraine where it started out. I had a Belz student in a social work class that I taught and he was a very sweet guy. He suggested I go and check out the place. I decided I might not get another chance especially on a day where it wasn't a thousand degrees so I set off with a water bottle and a map. I lucked out and managed to get the cook's tour of Belz, but I didn't know that when I crossed the Jaffa street. Jerusalem is really three cities, Arab east Jerusalem, Jewish modern south Jerusalem and Jewish ultra-orthodox north Jerusalem. As soon as I crossed over Jaffa street the demographic shifted and in a few blocks I was one of just a few people not dressed like 18th century Polish nobility. It was probably a forty five minute walk out through Meah Sha'arim, up Strauss boulevard to Kiryat Belz. I asked a few men for directions partly to make sure I was headed the right way and partly to see how they would respond. The guys I asked were all polite and gave me directions in good Hebrew. Though I heard a lot of people speaking Yiddish I also heard a lot of Hebrew which is a big change, the ultra-orthodox and in particular the Hasidim opposed the use of Hebrew as a secular language for a long time. I finally got to the building. It is very impressive from the outside and I was standing tehre looking when a fellow came up and asked me if I needed any help. I told him that I had come to see the building and was hoping to see the main synagogue which is the second largest synagogue in the world, seating between six and eight thousand people at a time. Yitshak smiled and said he would be happy to show me around. He led me in through a side door and in and around the labyrinth of corridors, chatting occasionally with various men as we walked, none of whom expressed any interest in me, nor any resentment. Eventually he managed to bring us to the main sanctuary. We chatted on the way. It turns out that he is not a Hasid but is a Syrian Jew who works nearby and spends a lot of time learning at the various study halls that are located throughout the complex. We came up into the main sanctuary. It is pretty spectacular -- giant chadaliers, huge wood aron kodesh for the torah scrolls, marble floors -- and we were the only people in there. He showed me where the Admor -- being the Belzer Rebbe -- sits. He showed me the old chair brought from Ukraine where the former Admor sat. Then he showed me around the rest of the complex, the Admor's 'villa' which is connected by a causeway to the Mikdash so that he doesn't have to go outside, and a balcony where he can stand and address his hasidim in the big open square out front. He even took me into the Admor's new sukkah. A Sukkah is a temporary hut built for the holiday of sukkot each year, but the Belz sukkah has a retractable roof with lights in it and sensors to detect rain so that it can open and close automatically in the event of rain as well as lights green and red to tell you when the roof is open or closed and a HDTV (I'm not sure what they watch) and must seat at least 600 people. Then Yitshak insisted on taking me to see the mikvah, the pools for ritual immersion. It took us a while to get in because his electronic mikvah pass-card (I kid you not) wasn't working. In addition to seeing more naked, hasidic men than I have seen before I got to see the cleanest, biggest and most well-maintained mikvah complex I have ever laid eyes on (not that I have seen that many). It has seperate hot, cold and luke-warm pools for dipping depending on your mood.
Finally, Yitshak and I parted ways and I geared up to walk back into downtown Jerusalem. I took a different route through neighbourhoods with four, five or six little synagogues per block. I got myself a really tasty hot bagel, and wandered in what I hoped was the right direction, but it was difficult to tell because there are very few vistas in nroth Jerusalem. New and old neighbourhoods alike have a way of feeling closed in, in part because of all the hills which prevent making long straight roads, in part because of the tremendous housing demands so that teh buildings are tall and close together and perhaps in part because people want to be enclosed, protect from the eyes of the outside world and from looking out too far.
When I finally got my bearings I realised that I had ended up a little further east than I had anticipated. The Jewish half of the city ends abruptly where the 1948 cease-fire line was and there, across the main drag of Bar Lev street begins Arab East Jerusalem. I looked at my watch and saw that I had about an hour and a half left before I had to get Lev at daycare and my map had something marked near to where I was that was called "Jeremiah's grotto" which was not far from where I stood.
I have a soft spot for the prophet Jeremiah. He and I share a name. When I tell Israeli Jews that my Hebrew name is Yermiahu I get a few reactions. Religious people don't bat an eye but most secular people laugh. Being named Yermiahu is a little like being named Jeremiah in North America. It is the sort of name that religious people give to their twelfth son when they have run out of other things to call them. One kibbutznik though nodded when I told him my name and said that Jeremiah was a prophet of social justice which indeed he was. I had no idea what his grotto was but I figured I should check it out. I saw a sign that said Garden Tomb which looked close on my map and so I followed that and soon came to a little gate in a high wall right across from St. George's Church, not a stone's throw from the busy Sultan Sulamein street. I went in and got a little brochure and map from the lady at the entrance. I asked her if Jeremiah's grotto was in here and she said no, she was sorry but it wasn't, but I figured I was here so I would head in. The I looked at the brochure and realized where I was. This was none other than the place that ol' General Charles "Whoops I lost the Empire but I Saved My Soul" Gordon had looked at and decided was undoubtedly the site of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection of Jesus.
I went to General Gordon Elementary school in Vancouver for grades 6 & 7 but I don't think it ever really ocurred to me that there was a person named General Gordon until I read Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians years later and then I was apalled that somebody had thought to name a school after such a head-case. Gordon's career was full of amazing military and political adventures on behalf of Empire punctuated by inner religious upheaval.
Strachey starts his description of Gordon during his time in Jerusalem.

"DURING the year 1883 a solitary English gentleman was to be seen,

wandering, with a thick book under his arm, in the neighbourhood
of Jerusalem. His unassuming figure, short and slight, with its
half-gliding, half-tripping motion, gave him a boyish aspect,
which contrasted, oddly, but not unpleasantly, with the touch of
grey on his hair and whiskers. There was the same contrast--
enigmatic and attractive--between the sunburnt brick-red
complexion--the hue of the seasoned traveller--and the large blue

eyes, with their look of almost childish sincerity. To the
friendly inquirer, he would explain, in a row, soft, and very
distinct voice, that he was engaged in elucidating four
questions--the site of the Crucifixion, the line of division
between the tribes of Benjamin and Judah, the identification of
Gideon, and the position of the Garden of Eden. He was also, he
would add, most anxious to discover the spot where the Ark first
touched ground, after the subsidence of the Flood: he believed,
indeed, that he had solved that problem, as a reference to some
passages in the book which he was carrying would show.

This singular person was General Gordon, and his book was the
Holy Bible." Eminent Victorians @ Project Gutenberg

According to legend, Gordon, saw a cliff face that looked remarkably like a skull and said that's the sight of Golgatha, ignoring the longstanding tradition which put the site of the crucifixion, burial and resurrection at the place where Church of the Holy Sepulcher stood as well as any modern considerations of archeology. The cliff really does look kind of like a skull accept that now the Jerusalem Arab Bus Station stands in front of it. And they did find a tomb there.
After filling my water bottle and listening to the earnest bearded, sandal-wearing Christians reading Scripture, I left and walked around the corner to Sultan Sulamein and into the Arab Bus Station. It made me nostalgic for the old Israeli bus stations and seems to have been designed along the same principles of chaos and clutter. I wondered around and looked at Gordon's Golgotha which looked more like a big white rock from that angle and no sign of a grotto. Of course, I stood out like a sore thumb but I just hoped it wasn't like a Gush Emmunim Settler sore thumb. People were pretty oblivious to me until I started asking (in English) if they had any idea where Jeremiah's Grotto was. People were polite, eager to help but totally baffled. A young guy who was buying some boiled kidney in pita asked everybody around but none of them could figure it out. I was about to give up when I saw a young woman who looked Western and on a flier I said, "Do You speak English?" she did and though she didn't have any better idea where Jeremiah's Grotto might be than anybody else, she did explain to a passer-by that a grotto was some kind of cave, I guess because he immediately understood what I was looking for and walked me back to the Arab Bus station where he showed me a funny little alleyway which I had taken to be just a row of shops selling electronics and Djalabeeas. I walked down the street, past a mosque, down down down into the cliff face of Golgotha. A rooster crowed and I thought of Peter denying christ three times before the cock crows or that perhaps I had triggered some kind of alarm system. And then I entered Jeremiah's Grotto. It was like walking into a warehouse. The ground was paved. There were long fluorescent lights, a funny little booth like a taxi dispatcher's and crates and crates piled up against the walls. A man looked at me curiously and I said, "Is this Jeremiah's Grotto?"
"Yes," he said and turned on the lights.
"Wow," I said.
He showed me around a little. The place was quite big hollowed out of the rock and looks very old, but what do I know. Which raises the question what is Jeremiah's Grotto. So here's what I can tell you. Arthur P. Stanley in his book "Hostory of the Jewish Church" of the 1860's said that it was a "local belief" in Jerusalem that a cave opposite Damascus gate was the site where Jeremiah composed the book of Lamentations. I haven't been able to figure out whose local belief that was. The man from the taxi dispatch stand did not offer any answers -- our ability to communicate was limited -- though he was very nice.
"Are those bananas in all those crates?" I asked.
"Yes," he said. It's a good use for a huge, cool cave in the middle of a busy city; Chiquita Banana says 'Never put them in the refrigerator.'
"Here," he said. "Please, have one."
So I did. A perfect end to a perfectly bizarre adventure.