Jerusalem, Old City

The Old City of Jerusalem is not easy to write about. So many people have written so many different things about it... Unless you are a historian or an archaeologist, your own personal perspective on it is apt to be trite, or ignorant, or both (and even if you are, it might still be that). So with this disclaimer—because I am neither historian nor an archaeologist, and I'll do my best to avoid being trite, and to keep my ignorance to myself—here is what I love about the Old City.

It is like a human anthill. You might be following a street that turns into a staircase, leads up to a roof of a building, proceeds there for a while, gets back down... Other streets are completely enclosed in stone arches, so you cannot even see the sky, and as you walk there you are wondering: are there, at this moment, other people walking above my head, or under my feet?.. and you cannot help but feel yourself a part of very complicated system which you cannot quite understand, but which, hopefully, has some kind of its own communal intelligence—like an ant colony.

Thousands of years of civilization have left these layers—of soil, of stones, of desires, of emotions... In Jerusalem, time thickens and becomes tangible, you can almost touch it. And so does the intensity of emotions. Jerusalem is very personal to me; even its name, Yerushalaim, sounds like caress...

And emotions don't really need thousands of years, a few is enough... Here, for example, look at these photos:

Same people, same place... the one on the left is from our trip in 1999. David is 5... Temma is 18 months old.

And here is another pair: David and I in front of the Hurva synagogue, then and now... The synagogue sure looks different, but so does the couple in front of it... I don't know which change is more amazing.

What are you supposed to feel when your baby is taller than you? (Not necessarily a whole foot taller, like in this case...) For my take on this, see Irreverent Reflections of a Bar Mitzvah Parent, written in between of David's and Temma's Bnei Mitzvot, from the perspective of somebody who's been there, done that, seen what happens in the next few years—and is now about to embark on the next adventure. Having children is not just an accomplishment, but more of a spiritual journey (it is a process rather than a result)... and as such, deserves Timely Updates, too.