The Layers of Jerusalem

[av8rmike]

This morning's speaker was David Horovitz, editor of The Jerusalem Report, an English magazine for the Jewish world.  He came to present a more balanced approach to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict than what normally appears in the U.S. news.  I don't remember a lot of his specific points, but that's probably because I already think I know a good deal more than what is usually on the news.  However, for the predominately college-age audience, the talk was probably a good wake-up call on Israel's perspective.

The first outside-hotel stop was another visit to the Old City, this time on the bus.  We had another visit to the Kotel and more shopping.  The first thing we saw in the Old City was a museum of a large underground excavation dating back to Roman times.  We went to another excavation site around the corner from the Western Wall, where they were uncovering the lower parts of the Western and Southern Walls of the Temply Mount, including the ancient gates to the Temple Mount itself.  Then we walked back to the Western Wall's security entrance again.  We had to go back because several of us had notes to put into the Wall, something we couldn't do on Shabbat.  There weren't as many people there as there had been two days earlier, but there was what appeared to be a Sephardic Bar Mitzvah taking place, with loud shofar blasts and everything.  We spent another hour or so getting lunch and doing more shopping in the Old City.

Continuing in the archaeological theme, we drove for about an hour to Beit Guvrin, the site of an ancient city that was completely destroyed by the Romans.  The only things left are a series of underground caverns, some of which had been excavated previously, and some of which we'd be doing the excavation.  We descended into the caverns (where it was nice and cool) and were allowed to sift through the dirt in search of pieces of pottery and bone fragments.  Someone in our group found a handle to some kind of larger vessel.  After the digging, they took us to a different cave, one that had been only partially hollowed out and would require us to do some crawling around ("spelunking," in the lingo).  Some of the passageways were very small, and I felt a little freaked out, but I fared OK.  I wish I'd had the presence of mind to take some pictures, but I really just wanted to get out of there.

It was another long ride back to the hotel to get there in time for dinner.  We cut it pretty close; many of us didn't even have a chance to shower and change after crawling around in the dusty caverns.  The after-dinner program was supposed to be a talk about Zionism and how to take the message back to campus.  Since most of us didn't go to college any more, they created a separate program on sex and Judaism.  I decided to go to the advocacy program anyway, and it turned out to be really interesting.  And awesome.  It was definitely not limited just to college students.