starry night

It has been unseasonably warm. I came to Montreal because I wanted cold and sunny and this has been the grayest winter in history so far, and everyone is walking around talking about how nice it is that its warm. Tonight though the clouds broke and the stars are out. Usually that means it's colder than an assdiggers grave. The wind of skating blows right through your clothes so that you look down at your legs asking, "Did I forget to put on pants?" But tonight it was minus two or three, and those pretty stars watching the hockey a million miles below, approvingly. The ice is the shits but what can you expect when we've been having warm days? I watched some of the guys, how they handled the puck. A couple could do this thing where they would turn their wrists so that the blade of the stick momentarily looked ductile, as if it had gone from being a 10 degree curve to a 180 degree curve, a perfect puck-shaped hook, and then had sprung back all in a second. I watched how the guys who know how to play take an all encompassing look around the ice just before they get to the puck so that they know where they want to pass to and swore to0 myself that I would do that the next time I was going into the boards to retrieve the puck and then failed to do so. A dozen times. It is a lot easier to do, if, like the good players you are working in Matrix time. I feel like the poor bullets which Keanu Reeves can just dodge like they're moving through water.
The other day, back when the cold was hard, I saw someone out skating at 7:15 one morning all alone. If you're reading this; way to go.

A worthy topic

Since we came back from Israel, I have been feeling stuck, blogwise. Life seems less comment-worthy, less remarkable when you are in your regular groove. But today, New Year's Eve, it so happens, I went out to play my first game of shinny in the park across the street, one of the things I most missed when I was away in Israel and I realized that I had found my new topic. Girouard Park is a great neighbourhood park and every year around Nov. 1st hockey boards appear in the middle of the baseball diamond. From that day on I wait for snow and -10 degrees like sane people anticipate a trip to Cuba. Two weeks ago some guys from the city were out in their fluorescent orange rubber gloves with the fire hose under the giant halogen lights in the middle of a bitterly cold night putting down the first layers of ice. I went over the next day. They had been back, and the ice shimmered with another coat. I could hear it creaking and groaning as it froze. I saw skate tracks in the snow. Somebody even more eager than me had come over hoping for a skate, but the ice still wasn't ready. But a few more coats, a few passes with the zamboni and now the ice is good to go. I have been out a few times with the boys but today was the first day I went over myself and played.
I grew up in Vancouver and -- except for a few rare occasions -- didn't get to skate outdoors. Like the Montreal Canadiens, skating in the fresh air was part of a Canada that I knew about but couldn't get at. We played street hockey all year round but never shinny. Now I get to rectify that.
Anyway more about the wonders of the game as the blog progresses, with ample doses of children updates, identity, literature and other brain-sweepings. Suffice it to say that after a year away -- and I was never so hot to start with -- I was pretty rusty. I had one pretty nice assist. The highlight was when I was going for the puck iat centre ice. A young buck in his twenties a little taller than me and a better skater by far was after it too. Too late to get out of the way we both put our shoulders down. Guess who was left standing? Young buck says, "that was interference." I figured he needed to save face and anyway, I was too happy at not having been knocked ass over teakettle to protest so I let him have the puck. After all, shinny is about fun.

Cute story about Lev, and Chicken Manure news for those who persist to the end

I mentioned that I am reading Harry Potter in Hebrew. It is going well and Harry is now at Hogwarts, now, but my feeling that I could be reading this in any language generally continues. It is as if the story were being sent directly into my head without the pesky medium of language. Occasionally though the fact of Hebrew intrudes on me. This is probably largely a personal matter that has to do with knowing the original pretty well and the idiosyncrasies of learning a language as an adult. When you learn a language as an adult you actually often can remember the first time you came across a word and this sets up a whole associative network which is hidden from view or buried when the language in question is one you have spoken since childhood. For example, I was curious about the origin of the word shakshuka which is a tasty egg-in-tomato-sauce breakfast which I first enjoyed at Tmol Shilshom here in Jerusalem. I assumed shakshuka was a loan word from Arabic but came across variations on the root shakshek in several places meaning something like "shake" or "mix-up". For example, when Harry and Hagrid visit Gringots and they first get out of the cart at Harry's vault, the narrator says "He [Hagrid] indeed looked a little green and when the cart finally stopped next to a little door in the wall of the tunnel, Hagrid got out and leaned against the wall until his knees stopped "leshakshek."
Still, I recently read a letter that Gershom Scholem, the renowned scholar of Jewish mysticism sent to his friend, the philosopher, Franz Rosenzweig and which is published in the collection On the Possibility of a Jewish Mysticism in Our Time, in which Scholem says (in an uncharacteriscally overheated sort of way) that "This Hebrew language is pregnant with catastrophe; it cannot remain in its present state -- nor will it remain there. Our children will no longer have any other language... One day this language will turn against its speakers -- and there are moments when it does so even now; moments which it is difficult to forget, leaving wounds in which all the presumtuousness of our goal is revealed. Will we then have a youth who will be able to hold fast against the rebellion of a holy tongue?" What Scholem was exactly worried about, he leaves tantalizingly unspecified, but it seems that it has to do with an inextricable bent towards messianism and eschatology somehow inherent in the Hebrew language itself. Given that you would think that Harry Potter would have a more pronounced messianic or apocalyptic flavour to it in Hebrew than in English but I have to say that in general that is not the case. The translation like the orginal is sort of eerily pelucid. However I found a few oddities. One is the translation of Halloween as "layal hakadoshim" or literaly "the night of the holies." Kadosh, of course has a strong redolence of the biblical and makes the non-religious, magical holiday of Hogworts seem very close to its Christian/Pagan roots. I'm not sure how Halloween general gets translated but I think a transliteration might have been more apposite. Another spot where the language's theology sort of jumped into the driver's seat unexpectedly was when Snape puts Harry on the spot on his first day of Potions class by asking him, among other things the difference between "choneq hazaev" and "bardas hanazir." Now, I have already packed up my dictionary so it is a little hard for me to confirm this but I think the translator -- Gili Bar-Hillel -- has come up with two Hebrew neologisms having translated wolfsbane and monkshood more or less literally. Neither variety of aconitum grows wild in Israel as far as I can tell from various plant websites (plant sellers just call them aconitum) so it is not so odd that the translator would simply use a direct translation from the very evocative English common names. But I would imagine that with a little work one could find a Hebrew name in a medieval Hebrew herbology. What is funny about the translation of monkshood to "bardas nazir" is that it relies on imagining the "nazir" as a Medieaval christian monk -- in which case the hood follows naturally and the flower really does look like its namesake. But if your referent for a nazir is the biblical nazir, such as Samson, the "bardas", the hood seems like a bit of a non sequitor.

The other day I told Lev that curiosity killed the cat. He said, "Really? How?"

Finally since I have touched on the agricultural and this is really mor or less just for my mom, there was an article in this morning's Haartez about flies, chicken manure and compost, topics all dear to her heart. It also highlights the benefits for people from all over the region to co-operation in this case on ecological issues. I can personally attest that 18 years ago when I was on kibbutz not far from the Jordanian border the flies were Biblical and plague like, though I never thought to blame chicken manure or the Jordanians and I remain skeptical on this point.

Jordan bans chicken manure as fertilizer over fly infestation

By Zafrir Rinat, Haaretz Correspondent

Tags: fertilizer, Jordan

Jordan has banned the use of chicken manure as fertlizer, as it has been responsible for widespread infestations by flies for many years on both the Jordanian and Israeli sides of the Dead Sea. In future, Jordanian farmers in the Jordan Valley and Dead Sea area will be required to use only compost. Chicken manure both attracts and nourishes flies, and the profusion of the insect has been a blight to life on both sides of the border for years. Recently, authorities in both countries teamed up, with the mediation of the environmental organization Friends of the Earth Middle East, to deal with the problem.

Post Script to my last

1. This AMs conversation with Lev
ME: I really liked getting to spend time together, just the two of us.
LEV: What?
ME: I really liked spending time together, you and me, together.
LEV: (Suspicious now) What?!
ME: Benjy and Imma are away and that is a little sad. But I am also happy that we are together just the two of us.
LEV: I want a toilet paper roll for my wrist.
ME: Of course.
LEV: I need weapons (walks away muttering 'weapons' under his breath).

2. I am reading Harry Potter in Hebrew. I am on chapter 3. Reading the book in translation makes me realize something about it and its allure and failings. The book seems to be all story without (or beyond or behind) language. I swear you could take 72 Hebrew speakers and put them in different rooms each with a copy of Harry Potter in Hebrew and have them translate it back into English and get the same book (and one that would be practically identical to the original). It is uncanny. Martin Amis has a hysterical bit in one of his books, I think it is London Fields, where his novelist character complains about how hard it is to get your characters from one place to another. There is a certain dreariness for writers with aspirations to being literary in writing things like "James got on the subway." "Felicia walked across the park to Alice's house." If Faulkner ever wrote a sentence like that I can't remember it. In J.K. Rowling every sentence seems to be like that. And yet they add up to a really good story. Language versus story.

3. I just finished reading "The Swimming-Pool Library" by Alan Hollinghurst. Ariela gave it to me when she'd finished it. It is a great book very beautiful and elegaic and at the same time quite cutting (and takes a tremendous delight in language). It is all about the gay cruising scene in London in the 80's right before the awareness of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Given the subject matter it is no suprise that Ariela gave it to me with the warning (recommendation?) that it is really dirty. And it is. Why I am telling you this is because I took it on the bus the other day when I went to pick up Lev. I was nearly finished and couldn't leave it unfinished in the appartment, so I grabbed it and read it on the 74. I didn't get cruised or gay-bashed by a very well-read homophobe or anything like that. But at one point I looked up and realised that -- and this will be familiar to those of you who have taken the bus in Jerusalem before -- while lots of other people had books on the bus, almost all of them were reciting Psalms.
Which leads me to a reflection I had been meaning to share but hadn't gotten around to; one of the things that Jerusalem does, for good or bad, is it puts "Sin" as a category in your mind. In Montreal or Vancouver or New York you might think about Good and Bad but unless you are a very religiously inclined person, you won't (at least I don't) think about SIN much, which was after all a category that dominated people's thinking for hundreds of years not so long ago. Yesterday, I saw a cute teenage couple necking in the park. No surprise, nothing you don't see a dozen times on a nice day in Montreal, even in Jerusalem. But she was wearing a hijab! I was scandalized by that. SIN! Before my very eyes. How weird is that?! It's not even my religion and I was shouting SIN at them (internally, you understand). While I don't think I would ever want to get to the point where SIN became an unrecognized category of my thinking, which I suppose could happen if you lived here long enough, I do enjoy having it in my face and it makes reading a book like The Swimming-Pool Library, on the bus, amidst all the bus-y passions, political, national, religious and sinful, all the richer.

O Lord, thou hast searched me and known me.
Thou knowest my sitting down and my rising up, thou understandest my thought afar off.
Thou hast measured my going and my lying down, and thou art acquainted with all my ways.
For no word is on my tongue yet, and lo, thou knowest it all.
Thou hast beset me behind and before and laid thy hand on me.
Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high and I cannot attain it.
(from Psalm 139)

Lev and Jeremy unplugged

Ariela and Benjy are off in Egypt with Menachem, so Lev and I are holding down the fort here. Lev is a person of strange proclivities and I am not entirely sure it was wise to leave me under his supervision. Sometimes I question his judgement. His speech can be disjointed (I was relived when some friends showed us their son's hearing test -- perfectly normal -- which they had undertaken because he, too, is constantly saying "What?" What?"). "Do birds really know everything?" he asked me the other day, as if in reference to some previous conversation. Sometimes, his speech is whatever the opposite of disjointed is -- but weirdly so.
Two days ago he said, "Maybe you'll never die." I said I would die but I hoped it would be a long way off. Yesterday he told me he did not think I would die before Ariela and Benjy got back from Egypt. A child's loyalty is a little mercenary. He hopes I won't die, and if I have to would I at least stave it off until his mother, who knows how to buy things he likes to eat at the grocery store, comes back.
He mutters a lot.
Lev has clothing rules. Shirts cannot cover his pockets or his bum. Pants must be "softie" pants ie. sweats or fleece, preferably with pockets for putting all the weird treasures he finds with friends at school. I scored a huge parenting victory the other day by cutting the legs off an old pair of sweat pants which had too many holes in them to be acceptable anymore and presenting them as a new pair of shorts. "Softie pants with pockets!" he said with reverence and delight. You can see them in the picture. I don't think Benjy ever had such a strong tastes in clothes but maybe I have blocked it out. After all it makes the mornings more challenging.
I have been trying to find adventurous things for us to do so Lev won't be too sad about missing out on Egypt. We went to Hezekiah's Tunnel two days ago. Lev started complaining about getting car sick after thirty seconds (which explains why he was not invited on the twelve hour bus ride to Cairo.) "Ir David," is the name of the metastysizing archeological park where Hezekiah's tunnel is located. It is in Arab East Jerusalem, in Silwan three or four blocks from the walls of the Old City. It is run putatively by the Israeli National Parks Authority, but the work of digging in the site and managing it is subcontracted to a right-wing, religious private foundation (see one organization that is trying to draw attention to this). In some cases the excavations have been carried out under the homes of Palestinians, literally undermining their houses and often without permits. It has excited some controversy and in addition to seeing Hezekiah's Tunnel I wanted to see what the fuss was about. We went in and I bought tickets for Hezekiah's Tunnel and they had a 3D movie, so I figured we'd check that out too. In the meantime, Lev had a slushie. He asked me what flavor it was and I told him "red". Then we got our 3D glasses and watched the video which is called "Where it All Began" but should be called "Arabs? What Arabs?" since it is at some pains to ignore the fact that David's City is underneath a busy Arab neighbourhood. One sequence seemed particularly odd from an ideological perspective. At the end of the film, the narrator talks about how there are so many buildings from so many different historic periods in Jerusalem today and a fancy computer generated video shows a bunch of architectural landmarks. Given the bent of the movie, I didn't expect to see the Dome of the Rock or the American Colony hotel or anything like that but I was suprised by two things they did show. One was the King David Hotel. The King David is definitely a Jerusalem landmark. It is a beautiful building from the late twenties located right across from Lev's daycare. But what's weird is that the King David is perhaps most famous for is getting partially blown up by Jewish terrorists in 1946 when it was the headquarters of the British administration and military in Palestine, an attack which killed 91 people (the Irgun always claimed that they called to warn that an attack was imminent and that the building should be evacuated and that the call was ignored) not exactly an association you would want to make, I'd think. The other thing that jumped out was the way the Western Wall was presented. The Western Wall is the big kahuna of Jewish religious and nationalist iconography. Of course, it was notably shorn of its Golden Yarmulke, the Dome of the Rock, which is creepy, for sure, but no surpirse. But it was also presented as sort of second fiddle to Ir David, WHERE IT ALL BEGAN. It is pretty cheeky to put your Jewish monument standing higher (of course, it is actually quite a bit lower geographically) and glowing (?!) brighter that the Western Wall. I am curious if this reflects some subtle ideological rivalry that I am missing. Anyway, with both our slushy and our indoctrination finished we went down to Hezekiah's tunnel.
It is a hand-carved 500 something meter tunnel which brought water from the Gihon spring inside the city walls of Jerusalem during the time of the first temple built by King Hezekiah to ensure water supply in case of seige particualrly by the Assyrians. Water still runs along it from the spring and it is pitch black; a perfect place to take a four year-old. When we first went in the water was belly high on Lev and I had to pick him up and I thought there is no way I can shlepp him for forty minutes. But soon enough the water levelled off at about ankle depths. We trudged through the low narrow passage in the dim light of our flashlights and sang "Dark as the Dungeon" with great accoustics. It was fun although about ten minutes in Lev said "I want to go home." I pointed forward and said "Home is that way." He did great in the tunnel though he did tend to loose focus (amazing since all there is to do is walk and that only in one direction, but such is the power of a four year old).
When we got out of the tunnel we hiked up the steps back to the entrance which was longer than I had bargained for in the full heat of the day (the tunnel was great for a hot day, the walk back up the hill, not so much). The one good thing (or not depending on your take) is that as you walk back up the hill (shlepping a screaming 4 year-old) you get to see the amount of Jewish-Israeli settlement that has gone on as part of "Ir David," often on land/houses expropriated by the government from Palestinians. The film had boasted in a weirdly National-Geographic-sort-of-way about how Jews were now living once again where they had so long ago. Aside from the political piece of this settlement activity, which is meant to "Judaize" the eastern part of Jerusalem both as a nationalistic and religious enterprise and, practically, to ensure that the city will never be home to a Palestinian capital, it sounded from the video almost as if the settlers were caracals or ibex which had been reintroduced to their natural habitat. It seems to me indicitive of the way in which, when you view people strategically, as ideological assets rather than as individuals, you end up de-humanizing even "your own."
Finally, ruffled feathers smoothed, mine and Lev's, we got in a cab and headed home. Not quite Egypt, but plenty to think about.

In other news

Not sure what to do with this except post it. Yesterday I was talking with Yair about kids' books and I learned the Hebrew word for Vampire, Arpad. I was immediately curious, since it is a good Hebrew-sounding word and not a loan word from a European language. The word arpad, it turns out, is a hepax legomenon (sole usage) of the Babylonia Talmud, maybe an aramaic word. ("Arpada" is used as an Aramaic translation for the Hebrew "atalef" or "bat" in the Aramaic translation of the Bible called Targum Yonatan. But the Targum Yonatan on the five books of Moses, according to Wikipedia, should more properly be called "pseudo-Yonatan" or the "Yerushalmi Targum" and, probably, does not date any earlier than the 8th Century of the Common Era, therefore the Targum may be using the Talmud's word and not the other way around. Got it?)
The very cryptic and wonderful use of the word arpad in the Talmud comes as the rabbis are trying to figure out what another animal is, a bardalis, and are running through various possibilities. Could it be a hyena (tsabua)? Could the word bardalis mean the female hyena? (BK 16a)
"The male tsabua after seven years turns into a bat, the bat after seven years turns into an arpad, the arpad after seven years turns into a kimmosh (species of thorn?), the kimmosh after seven years turns into a thorn, the thorn after seven years turns into a demon. The spine of a man after seven years turns into a snake, so shouldn't he (the man?) bow while saying the blessing 'We bow to You.'"
I just love the idea of these hard desert creatures transmuting until finally they are refined down into a thorn which has one job alone and does it very well, and then into pure, incorporeal malevolence, a demon. And that the redactor tacked on to this associative serpent the hallucinatory vision of our spines becoming snakes (!!) makes it all the more twisted.
It reminds me of the Kimya Dawson song "treehugger" that my kids love. "In the sea there is a fish, a fish that has a secret wish, a wish to be a big cactus with a pink flower on it."
Who knows what the Talmud meant by an "arpad" but the fact that it ends up after all its shapeshifting as a desert demon is suggestive. In my quick search of the relevant dictionaries I couldn't find arpad used to mean anything other than a species of bat until the twentieth century when some Gothic-minded Hebraist with a really heavy duty Talmudic education wanted a word for "vampire" and pulled "arpad" nearly out of thin air. It would be interesting to know if there were Hebrew vampire stories prior to the twentieth century and if so what word was used.
Now, I should go write some fiction though I can't imagine writing anything better than
"The male tsabua after seven years turns into a bat, the bat after seven years turns into an arpad, the arpad after seven years turns into a kimmosh..."

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.