Blame Abraham, pt. II

After Bethlehem, I went to Hebron so I could check out the Cave of the Patriarchs. Legend has it that a lot of your favorite biblical characters are buried there, including Abraham. Abraham, being about as ancient a character as you can find in the Bible, is so old that he's a big deal in all the Middle Eastern religions. He's the father of Judaism, and his kids are responsible for Islam and Christianity. In a nutshell, anyway. If I get into who begat whom, I'll be here for a while. There's a whole series of books on the matter, you've probably heard of a few of them.

Anyway, an Arab kid, who couldn't have been more than fifteen, and was dressed like just about every poor teenager anywhere in the world these days, saw me and decided he would escort me (For a tip, of course.) to the "cave". (A temple covers it now. Well, for about the last 1500 years or so.) I was actually kind of grateful to have his company, as I was getting some looks from the locals that made me slightly uncomfortable. With my bodyguard leading the way, you can imagine my surprise when we came around the corner of a narrow street and I found myself face-to-face with two machine gun nests pointed in my direction. He didn't even flinch.

The guards only looked slightly surprised to see us, but after they gave me the once-over and checked my passport they let me through. The kid, however, was told he would not be joining me. (I gave him a tip, anyway.) Once inside, I was surprised to find that Abraham's coffin (Cenotaph - I guess that's what you call a coffin that everyone knows has always been empty.) is not entirely visible. Turns out that the building has been divided, between the Muslims and Jews, like so much else in the country, and just a portion of it can be seen through a barred window on the Jewish side.

Outside the temple as I waited for a mini bus, a group of Hasidic-looking individuals spontaneously started dancing. (I say Hasidic-looking because as I was later to find out, there are about as many different types of Jews as there are Christians (That's probably a gross exaggeration.) and apparently, if you're knowledgeable enough, you can even pick them out just using clues like hat and hair style.) I don't know why they were dancing, or if they even had a reason, but they seemed happy enough and didn't seem to mind me taking a video, so I did.

Obviously, there’s plenty of old buildings that are hugely important and significant in the area, but one of the most important, and contentious, resides at the Temple Mount. You've all seen the famous Dome of the Rock - it's the elaborately blue and white tiled mosque-like building with the gold domed roof in the middle of Jerusalem. Inside is the most sacred site in Judaism (They say Earth and Adam were created here on/of the rock that the dome covers.) and ranks up there along with Mecca for the Muslims.  A lot of things supposedly happened on this particular rock, but the one thing that stands out, at least for me, is the “binding of Isacc”. This is the story of how God/Allah/Jehova told Abraham to sacrifice his son, Isacc, and Abraham, being devout, decided to do it. In the end, Isacc wasn’t killed and each religion has their own take on why. (I tend to think of it as one of the very first “Han shot first” arguments, but it's possible that I am  somewhat sacrilegious.)

The Muslims claim Muhammad leapt to heaven from here as well, which left a footprint that is still, more or less, visible. Truly, you would be hard pressed to find any other spot where more has supposedly happened on less square footage. So, naturally, I wanted to go inside and have a look.

That didn’t happen. I didn’t even get to peek in the door. If I could have proven that I was a Muslim, sure, but that would have been a hard sell. I asked the guard out front if non-Muslims would ever be allowed back in (they were forbidden starting in 2000) and was told by the guard “Never! They will never be allowed in.” Shoot.

Speaking of shooting, I did meet a fair skinned girl who managed to sneak in. She was grilled for a good long while since they were suspicious of her motives (rightly so) but, because she was from Turkey and, apparently, since most Turkish passports have “Muslim” listed as the person’s religion by default, and because she was at least passingly familiar enough with the religion to answer the faith-based questions they presented her with, she was grudgingly allowed in. With a chaperone. She told me that inside there is a display case of spent bullet casings from the last big shootout with Jews in 1967. It seems like an odd thing to have in a holy place, but I could almost see it catching on in Wyoming. (Church attendance might soar if a person could check out the arrow that killed Custer or the gun that shot Sitting Bull while learning about the ten commandments.)

It was about this time that I had my first bomb scare. I was shopping in what was essentially a mall and suddenly the metal garage doors started coming down. Looking at the other shoppers, I felt like I was the only one who was paying much attention to this so asked what was happening. “Oh, someone thinks they found a bomb. We’ll open the doors soon - the bomb squad will be here in a minute and get rid of it.”  Sensing that I was less than reassured, this was followed with “Don’t worry, this happens all the time.” Discretion being the better part of valor, I chose not to peek under the door like the other young men who were working there. Eventually, the doors opened, and life returned to normal, or some semblance of it anyway. 

I think it was about this time I decided that I was ready to get out of Jerusalem and see somewhere a little less... interesting. Luckily, I was afforded that opportunity and so headed north towards the Golan Heights.