I have settled into life in Jerusalem so I may not have as much to write about as I did about the trip over here. However, enough happened this past weekend to justify writing a few relections.
Thursday is the last day of class at Hebrew University before the weekend so Thursday night is like Friday night in the U.S. The mormon singles group gets together for "FHE" (an activity loosely analogous to Family Home Evening that is meant to strengthen families) on Thursday evenings here so I was there during the early evening (the Mormon singles who participate in the FHE activity includes a foreign service officer, 3 Hebrew University students, one nanny, and two young ladies who, together with their mother, have been alternatively working on a kibbutz and hanging out in Jerusalem for most of the past year). So FHE was nice but not newsworthy but then I walked home and when I came into the dorm, my roomates were watching the news. Terrorism had returned to Jerusalem. Unlike many terrorist attacks, where a random sample of the population is killed on a bus or in a cafe, this one seemed carefully targeted--a yeshiva of modern orthodox Jews. This yeshiva is part of the very group that sets up settlements which are only later recognized by the government. Members of this movement are regularly accused of violence against Palestinians. Still, the victims were youths studying their holy books and by no means legitimate targets (see March 11, 2008 post on salanmooreopinion.blogspot.com regarding this terrorist attack). It may have been the lack of randomness or it may be my having been here before and having felt the shock cycle but this time was completely different--I watched the news with interest for about an hour but felt no stress, no worry, no shock. By the next day I left the apartment without a thought of terrorism in the city where I'm living. And that's in the same week when I shed a tear watching a scene from an Israeli movie as part of a lecture on Ethiopian Jews being brought to Israel.
The weekend extends (on the Jewish side, at least) through Friday and Saturday. Jews start their sabbath Friday at sundown so Friday until sundown is a frenzy to get shopping done and get ready for sabbath. Since most stores are closed on the sabbath, you don't have to be religious to join the frenzy. Moslems have the Friday prayer around noon on Friday but the stores that close are only closed for an hour or two so, as part of the Palestinian weekend, Friday is quite a shopping day as well. So I have a bit of a routine (when I'm in town) where I walk to Jerusalem's old city on Friday morning, see some site or visit the Garden Tomb and read a bit, buy some stuff on the arab side and then go over to the Jewish side (west Jerusalem) to buy some other stuff. While on the Jewish side I try to see some other site before walking back to the dorms.
Before the terrorist attack, the week's news had been dominated by Palestinian rocket fire into Israel and an Israeli raid into Gaza so between the terrorist attack and the rocket fire & response with accompanying protests, I should have been on the alert for something abnormal in the arab market area. By abnormal I would think of kids throwing rocks, Israelis shooting tear gas and other projectiles in response, or Palestinians chanting and marching. But the street was a ghost town. Only one in 5 or 10 shops was open (and fortunately the money changer I trust was one of them) and there were no moving cars on the road. During an intifada this could mean a "strike" to protest some Israeli action or Israel in general and on previous visits I've seen shop owners in that area of town scurry to close shop when the Israeli tax collector was coming around. I asked the money changer if there was going to be a protest and he said no, it was because of "what happened yesterday." The clear implication was that it was collective punishment. Another perspective was that it was to prevent protests over Gaza during the upcoming prayer hour, when Palestinians tend to be particularly politically active. In any case, I passed through the Israeli checkpoint manned by around 30 soldiers and police by showing my Hebrew U. student I.D. I was then on the street running east to west on the north of the old city. This too, was almost completely vacant. Shopping day had been cancelled on the Palestinian side of town.
After I saw that the place that sells whole wheat pita bread was closed, I decided to walk to the other side of town and get to the museum all the sooner. But I ran into a friend of mine who is a freelance photographer. He had studied at the Hebrew University years before and knew some arabic and some hebrew. He says he sells his pictures to the Christian Science Monitor and some London paper that I wasn't careful to remember. So I followed him around for about an hour while he took pictures of the relatively empty old city. Once he got what he was looking for, an Israeli soldier escorting an arab under the age of 45 out of the city (over 45 or female and you can pray regardless of the political tension).
I spent the next couple of hours in the Israeli museum and the market on the Jewish side. Then I bought a cheap falafel sandwich (around here I would just say I bought 'a falafel' and everyone would know that it was the whole sandwich rather than one falafel ball) and went to a Christian church that is trying to appeal to Jews by having their service in hebrew and on Friday afternoon. It wasn't bad and the hebrew lesson that I made it into made the pit stop worth while. It was a bit disappointing though as I had been told it was a Messianic Jew hangout and I didn't see one kippa in the whole place. So I walked home. The quickest way was straight through an orthodox neighborhood so I put my shopping bags in my backpack to be less offensive. It was early evening but the sun was down and Jews in orthodox garb were wandering the streets in the most calm manner imaginable--young children barely in range of their mother's view while the men were in or walking to synogogue. There were no cars on the streets which added to the sense of peace--religious Jews don't drive on their sabbath and the government protects the sabbath environment in these neighborhoods by forebidding driving by others. It was nice to see sabbath being enjoyed but I couldn't help reflect on the tense empty street hours earlier on the other side of town.
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