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A Good Time to Visit the Holy Land?

Crisis as Opportunity

By Susan Scott Schmidt

At the First Station of the Cross in the Old City of Jerusalem, business is slow.  According to the shopkeeper at Antonia Fortress, the stream of tourists who once came past his store, retracing Christ’s steps toward the Crucifixion on cobblestone streets, has slowed to an intermittent trickle.

“Tourism has been bad for three years,” he says. “These are very hard times.” He says he is price cutting to move his merchandise.

Just down the street at the Lebanon Café, outside Jaffa Gate, the story is the same. The owner says his small café at the entrance to Old City used to be wall-to-wall diners. Now, in mid-afternoon, a handful of stragglers sip tea.  “Some days I don’t even open up,” he says.

Israel’s tourist trade was decimated in 2001, by a combination of worldwide recession, fear of terrorism, and post 9-1-1 retrenchment of foreign travel. It dropped to 800,000 from a previous high of 2.6 million.  But the Land of the Bible still has all the attractions it always had – sweeping scenic vistas, white sand beaches and a rich cultural history.

Today, Israel is welcoming tourists with open arms, hoping to revive visitation.  And numbers are rebounding. There are bargains aplenty for savvy travelers to Israel.  .

Is it a good time to visit Israel?  Yes.  Number one, it is safe for tourists.  Israel has never had a foreign traveler harmed by terrorism.  Number two, it’s a powerful and outstanding travel experience. And, with hotels half empty, the lines are short at attractions.

My husband and I spent 10 days in Israel in February.  As our El Al flight landed in Tel Aviv, we saw dozens of Orthodox Jews, men dressed in long black coats and black hats, with beards and earlocks.  They flooded off the plane and piled into cars going to Jerusalem.  The somber garb of the devoutly religious was in sharp contrast to what the Westerners were wearing.

A Visit to the Holy Sites in the Old City

We spent our first week in Jerusalem’s Old City, seeing the ancient religious sites.  Our first day, we stopped at the Sanctuary of Gethsemane and the Tomb of the Virgin Mary, taking a cab up the hill. There we saw a 2,000 year-old olive tree in the garden.  This is the site where Jesus was betrayed. We entered the Church of All Nations (circa 1924) and the natural Grotto of the Virgin Mary, where an Armenian priest was lighting candles in the dim interior.

Walking in the rain, we passed the Lion’s Gate and began our trek up the Via Dolorosa, where Christ carried his cross on the way to crucifixion. There are 14 stations of the cross, weaving through the Old City,  ending at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, where he was crucified.

(Beware of volunteer tour guides, who will approach you here looking for work.  Avoid eye contact passing stores if you’re not interested in bargaining.)

Walking inside the Old City, you feel as though you’re in a maze.  The Holy Sepulchre, which appears to be a small church within a big church, was originally built by Constantine in 335, then destroyed by the Persians and the Turks. The current Crusader structure was built in 1149.

At the last station of the cross, Jesus’s tomb, there is a rock on which his body was laid, covered by a marble slab.  The faithful were laying their faces down on the slab, weeping.

Inside the Arab quarter, we negotiated for a lunch of falafel, pita bread, eggplant salad and grainy Turkish coffee. Cost:  $8 for two. We also bought plump dates from a vendor.

We continued on to the Western Wall, where men and women must enter separately.  It is like an open air synagogue.  People rocked back and forth in prayer. Prayers to God were tucked into crevices in the wall.

After several fruitless tries, we were finally admitted to see the Temple Mount with the Dome of the Rock Mosque. Built in 792, this is the rock where Abraham was ordered by God to sacrifice his son.  Although the Mosque is a World Heritage site, we were denied admittance twice.  (We were later advised that we should have bribed the guards.) Inspired by the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, this is the symbol for Islam in Jerusalem.  The gold plating on the dome and the ceramic tiles are magnificent, and there is a splendid view of the Mount of Olives.

Note: Dress modestly for your visit to these sites.

Citadel and Tower of David Museum

Before beginning your tour of the Old City, stop at the Citadel and Tower of David Museum, located just outside Jaffa Gate. If you’re rusty on your Holy Land history (which I was), this inexpensive little museum offers exhibits explaining the timeline of the different periods in Jerusalem history – who built what and why. Admission is about $1.25 and there is a charming herb garden and café in which you can seek respite from the chaos of the Old City.

After our days as pilgrims, we returned to the Olive Tree Hotel, which was built around an old olive tree in the Eastern part of the city. There we had a balcony where we could sit and listen to the Muslim call to prayer, broadcast five times every day.

Just two streets away, we discovered the American Colony Hotel, a jewel of a place with a gracious courtyard, Swiss hotel service and an excellent menu. (It is alleged to be the favorite Jerusalem hangout of diplomats and spies.) Founded and run since 1902 by the Spafford family, the hotel was originally the home of a Turkish pasha. The American Colony has survived World Wars I and II, Turkish and British rule, and The Six-Day War of 1967, in which part of its walls were blown away by crossfire.

The 84 rooms run from $230 to $700. We celebrated Tom’s birthday there with an elegant dinner for two.  For $100, we had steak, soup, wine, potato and mushroom gratinee, and two chocolate mousses. The hotel has a cozy and sophisticated feel to it.

The Museum of Israel and Yad Vashem

The next day, exhausted by the Old City, we took a taxi to the Museum of Israel, located high on a hill with a view of the city. The pride of the museum is the Shrine of the Book, which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls. Unfortunately, it was under construction for our visit.

The Scrolls were discovered by Bedouins in caves near the Dead Sea. The five scrolls contain writings of the Bible by Jews called Essenes more than 2,000 years ago. The lids of the scroll jars are the same shape as the roof of the building housing them.

We loved the outdoor garden, featuring sculptures by Henry Moore, Rodin and Jacques Lipchitz. The museum’s Impressionist collection is outstanding – Renoir, Matisse, Van Gogh and Gaugin.

The Judaica and Jewish Ethnography Wing could take an entire day. Three synagogues have been shipped in from other countries and reconstructed.  There is also a wonderful display of folk costumes.

We roamed the paths outside lined in rosemary and ate a simple lunch ($10 for two) in the café overlooking the orange trees.

Another museum, Yad Vashem, commemorates the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.  It’s also high in the hills, in the western part of the city. The museum is top quality, tracing in graphic photo detail the journey of the Jews from persecution and ghetto life to death in the concentration camps.

I was moved by the memorial of candles, like twinkling stars, dedicated to the 1.5 million children who died at the hands of the Nazis. In a dark room, a narrator reads off the individual names and countries of the victims. It takes four months to read every name.

A Tale of Two Walls – A Country Divided

Under the surface of Jerusalem, the conflict is ever present. On the same day we visited the Western Wall, we drove to see a newer wall – the one separating Israel and the Palestinian West Bank. The concrete wall looms large, at eight meters high.  It is forbidding, harsh and reaches straight to the sky.

The wall is being built in retaliation for Palestinian terrorism, to protect Jerusalem from suicide bombers.  It is in stark contrast to the Western Wall, where the religious deposit their prayers.

Graffiti on the fence reads “PAID FOR BY THE USA”  and “IS SHARON A MAN OF PEACE?”

Israel soldiers, guns slung over their shoulders, patrol near the wall.  The smell of marijuana hangs in the air as Palestinians loiter nearby.

Israel says it needs the wall to protect its citizens from terrorism. Palestinians, like our taxi driver, say it amounts to apartheid, cutting people off from their jobs and schools.

Tel Aviv – The City that Never Sleeps

The old Israeli saying is that “Jerusalem prays and Tel Aviv plays…” We ended our visit with a stay in Tel Aviv, whose name means “Hill of Spring,” and it did seem less intense. Israel is so small that it takes only 45 minutes to drive from Jerusalem to Tel Aviv.

Tel Aviv has an abundance of sidewalk cafes, beachfront haunts, and a cosmopolitan air. After a stop at the Diaspora Museum near Tel Aviv University, we headed for the beach. (Our room at the Dan Panorama Hotel had a good view of the ocean also.) We walked to the sea and then turned south for an hour’s walk to the old Arab town of Jaffa. Jaffa is estimated to be 4,000 years old. Now an artists’ colony, legend has it that the city was named for Yefet, son of Noah, who built it after a flood.

Once in Jaffa, we passed fishermen casting in the blue water and climbed up the hill for a view of Andromeda’s Rock. We also wandered into St. Peter’s Monastery, which is a beautiful church, where we could hear the sound of Gregorian chants of monks in the background.

We ended our last day in Israel in a Tel Aviv beachfront café, feet on the sand, engaging in the local sport of people watching and café sitting.

Images by Thomas M. Schmidt

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