Jerusalem stones
Walking, walking…
The lonely streets
So quiet in the shabbat-deserted landscape
Few cars, little noise finally,
After a week of traffic and throat-acidic-air pollution.
The stones bear witness
Slippery in the rain
Treacherous at times
So irritating
Yet they seem unconcerned
For the petty lives and loves of today’s broken souls
This city of paradox
So many faiths crowded together
People isolated or trapped in their respective mythologies:
The sounds of the muezzin mixes unharmoniously
With the church bells,
The steeples and the minarets dot the skyline
In competition for the soul of Jerusalem.
So many faiths
Each claiming its own truth
Each disowning the other
Each sending its children here for instruction
From the diaspora
For inspiration and intensity of study
From its spiritual teachers,
Yet the “other” seems not to exist
However fatefully forced to live in close proximity
In the wet stone buildings of this eternal city.
The paradox of the old and the new
The East and the West
The shtreimel and the burkah
The bekeshe and the nun’s habit
The density of pure piety per square foot
Competes with heaven itself
For the “truth” about the divine.
Does god in fact smile down on all this from heaven?
I am drawn here
Despite myself
I don’t like this intensity
I don’t like the heat
I don’t like the downpours
I prefer the quiet cool rolling cotswolds…
Where it rains so finely the drizzle doesn’t bother me
I like to be left alone from prying eyes
Who size me up by my yarmulke or clothing
Analyzing my shade of orthodoxy and praxis
By the implication of leather or felt, length of jacket,
It is almost too much, this noise and chatter,
The cottage industry of talmudic erudition
This pressure cooker
Waiting any moment to burst.
Too much to bear at times,
The blood stained sidewalks and café houses
Of Dr. Applebaum and his daughter,
Of children of all ethnic backgrounds
Sacrificed on the altar of parental
And societal and ethnic expectations;
These stones have witnessed the pain and suffering
Of those willing to surrender to this eternal city
Of those willing to die for myth and text and ideology
Of those unwilling to be scapegoats again in history
“Jerusalem of Gold”
The inspiration of poets and midrash
Shemer and Amichai
Broke their teeth on these stones and soil
The old city and new
The bustling the Christian tourists
Confirming the archeology of their saviour
With pseudo-science willingly provided by “certified” tour guides
In German tour buses with A.C. and cushion comfort.
This part of earth where the jewish faithful come to be buried
Hurriedly, flown in, heavy zinc lined coffins
Now only covered in white cloth, coffinless,
Followed by men in beards,
An industry for the mafia/black coated chevra kadisha
Who control food and graves in this secular country.
I walk by an abandoned muslim cemetery opposite the luxurious
Waldorf Astoria, the silent graves
bespeaking a different era of Turkish rule
And obvious graves of classy and wealthy patricians buried just
Outside the old city.
A city drowning in a millenia of tears, an old foto,
Circa 1917, general Allenby dismounts out of deep respect
At the Jaffa gate…the Turks have left finally after hundreds of
Years of Ottoman rule…
And the Christian conquerer proclaims
a free city for all faiths (sic)
The mullahs and the priests and rabbis lined in a row,
Bowed in deference,
The only commonality is obeisance to the new colonizers
The Turks and Marmadukes the British and the Zionists
Those who loved this city of gold
More than life
Those who would never leave its gates once having arrived
(not even for Uman!)
The study of halls of learning
Piety and punctilious observance of minutiae
(i watch them examine the aravot
With microscopic precision
Or push wildly to get closer to the rebbe in his succah
Or the funerary bier of the zaddik)
Those men who comb their payot before the mikveh
Unaware of their effeminate trimmings
The same mikveh that commands “tvol utzeh!”
(by the rebbe of toldos avraham yitschak
Demanding silence as they watch me an outsider
In different cloth, disrobe like an alien.
The same black coated men walking briskly along Mea Shearim
streets, competing with huge buses crawling through the same
Winding road :
That bastion of hassidic/hungarian piety some two unconscious
Minutes from the huge greek orthodox church and complex,
The graves on the mount of olives, next to the Augusta Victoria
Hospital housing the enormous bell donated by
Kaiser Franz Josef from Vienna,
While the nuns walk to their morning matin
at the entrance to the
Armenian quarter,
Past pictures of the first ethnic holocaust 1915-1920 plastered on
Jerusalem stone walls,
(a conveniently forgotten piece of history)
The faithful Muslim men bowing on their prayer mats
on the Temple Mount,
Where, at dawn, just below by the Kotel
that stone wall of wailing,
The sephardi mekubalim recite the siddur of the rashash
Nothing makes sense here
All are hurrying to worship!
All are claiming the truth
All are claiming exclusivity.
Yet somehow, paradoxically
It all does.
The military presence
Always hovering
Always a threat, seemingly arbitrary at times
For some protection,
For others occupation,
Colonialism redux
For all, undesired road blocks, but necessary
These slippery stones bear witness
To the millenia of conquering armies
To the piety
To the blood of the innocent spilled
To the desire and fervent hope for the coming of the messiah
(or his possible second coming?)
And the continuing wrangling over pieces of real estate,
Politics and wheeling dealing over square metres.
The “settlement expansion” and the clear distinctions between red
Tiled roof settlements and arab villages from afar, the facts on
The ground evident to all. The new once proud light rail winds its
Way through east jerusalem and with all the high tech, new
terror tactics at stations along the way
like the stations of the cross.
This Jerusalem of stone,
That gets under the skin and never leaves
That infuriates and irritates
But never relieves,
Like a migraine one must endure
Photophobic and unable to focus on anything but the pain
These stones remain
As witness as testimony
Of its eternity…
I walked these stones first at age 16 and now,
I have lived my life,
They have not changed.
I have failed as Dorian Grey
They have remained steadfast
This maddening city
She points her accusing finger,
She affords no tolerance for anyone
Whatever their conviction, religion, sect
Who compromise their values,
All who live here
Must live fully and without pity
Whatever the cost.
All must endure the slipperiness of her surfaces
And the immutability of her pavements.
This is Jerusalem.
