Three in One

Jerusalem

Sunny, Hi 75, Lo 58

Thank you to Fodor's Travel Israel for helping me grasp the complexeities.

Jerusalem is a composite of three faiths: Jewish, Christian and Muslim. They co-habit the Old City, burdened by eons of struggle over real estate. On a daily basis, believers of these three faith traditions come to the city to see, feel and touch, respectively, the Western Wall, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher and the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Our OAT guide, Ofer, unbelievably explained 4,000 years of Jersalem history in 4 minutes. Suddenly everything made sense - I understood it all. - world history was mine! Five minutes later I suffered a bout of CSR (Can't Remember Sh....t) and the layercake of history crumbled! Now all I know for sure is: 

1. Our guide resembles Jesus and
2. Queen Sheba, one of Solomon's many wives, was more beautiful than Beyoncé!

The Christian, Jewish, and Muslim religious traditions sprang from the same rock, it seems. In Jerusalem, Mt. Moriah is the biblical site where Jews believe Abraham prepared an altar to sacrifice his son Issac. Built over this area, the First and Second Jewish temples stood for a 1000 years. Devout Muslims point to a footprint at this place that is believed to be Muhammad's and it is from here that Muhammad ascended to heaven for his meeting with God. The Dome of the Rock and the Al-Aqsa Mosque enshrine that tradition.

The Dome of the Rock now sits upon Mr. Moriah

The Western Wall

The Holiest Shrine for Jews

The 2,000 wall is holy due to it's association with the ancient temple - the House of God. King Herold built a massive retaining wall to create the vast  platform known as the Temple Mount upon which the Temple was built. 

After the destruction of the Temple, Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem for generations. When they were allowed to re-enter the city, Jews did not enter the Temple Mount for fear of trespass on the most sacred and therefore forbidden areas of the ancient sanctuary. Over time, by proxy, the western exterior of the retaining wall took on the aura of the Temple itself.

Jewish women pray in the tunnel below the western wall. Why?  Jewish men and women pray separately and the area closest to the sanctuary on the open-air level is restricted to men. In the tunnel, women are directly below the area where the men pray, thus they are closer to the sanctuary of the destroyed temple than they could be on the open-air level.

The Western Wall, directly below the Gold Dome. At the Western Wall you are standing at the point closest to the site of the Holy of Holies...

The Israeli army visits the wall and take selfies. It is a place of great emotion, sorrow and spiritual energy.  Devout Jews feel the destruction of the Temple as a religious and national cataclysm and grieve for God's House.

Thousands of notes partitioning God are stuffed in the cracks of the wall. They are collected regularly and buried in a Jewish cemetery with reverence as they contain sincere prayers to God.

 This young woman is at the Wall Also. She is a member of a Israeli force that accompanies groups of children. She is slight in stature but has a gun...

The Western Wall Tunnel

The tunnel runs adjacent to the Western Wall, along it's entire length.It is not a rediscovered ancient thoroughfare but was dug in recent time to expose a strip of the Wall.

Irene and our OAT guide are claustrophobic, but these tunnels were doable.

Some interesting things were found during the dig, like these columns below. 
Also we re-discover Byron (above)

Fighting the throngs of pilgrims (of which we are apart of) requires sustenance. We stopped at the Austrian Hospice for their specialty, apple strudel.