A Little About Jerusalem
We're traveling today, so if all goes well there won't be anything interesting to share. So today I'll share some info about Jerusalem, our first stop on the tour.
In 1200 BCE Moses led the Hebrews out of Egypt, heading toward the Promised Land. They were twelve tribes, aligned to the twelve sons of Jacob (whose name became Israel). They were encamped, still close to Egypt, when Moses went up Mount Sinai to have a chat with God. It was there that God wrote The Law upon stone tablets. We all know the image of Moses holding the tablets with the Ten Commandments, but it was actually 613 Commandments. Jews today will wear prayer shawls (tallit) with 613 tassels (tzitzit). When he arrived with the tablets, the Hebrews built a container for them out of wood and gold, and named it The Ark of the Covenant. (For non-Jews, it was the thing that melted the faces of the Nazis at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.)
The Hebrews wandered the desert with this Ark for 40 years, and whenever they camped it would be housed in The Tabernacle -- a huge tent that served as the center of worship for the Hebrews. The significance of this Ark and those tablets can't be overstated. God was in there. If you wanted to pray to God, you had to go to Him. The entire Hebrew community stayed in close proximity to the Temple.
When the twelve tribes/kingdoms finally settled in The Promised Land, the Ark was always the center of ritual and worship. Because they were all descendants of Jacob, whose name was changed to Israel, they became the Israelites, but they were still twelve separate kingdoms. The Ark moved around a bit between the tribes during the following 350 years, but then King David unified the twelve tribes into a single nation, and he moved the Ark to Jerusalem, in the Kingdom of Judah. His son, Solomon, built a grand temple to replace the Tabernacle in 957BCE, and that's when Jerusalem became the center of life and worship. Literally. Jews would face Jerusalem to pray. In the book of Daniel, the reason Daniel gets thrown into the den of lions is because he gets busted kneeling toward Jerusalem to pray, instead of toward King Darius.
In 586 BCE King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon destroyed the Temple in Jerusalem, and plundered it of all its treasure. No one has seen the Ark of the Covenant since then. Jews were exiled and scattered from the region in what is known as the Diaspora. For the sake of brevity I've skipped the bit about the nation of Israel splitting into north Israel, and south Judah, then the Assyrians conquering the northern kingdom of Israel in 722 BCE, leaving only the southern kingdom of Judah. This is when the term Judish, or Jewish, arose.
After about 60 years of exile, Cyrus the Great allowed the Jews to return to Judah, which the Romans later called Judaea. The Jews built The Second Temple, which stood for over 500 years. Herod the Great renovated and expanded the temple, turning it into an incredibly grand structure, which was completed in about 10BCE.
Jesus came along around this time, and there's a lot of important stories of Jesus in Jerusalem. When he was twelve (read: pre-Bar Mitzvah, so pre-adult, so shouldn't be literate in scripture yet) his family went to Jerusalem in a caravan, because no matter where you lived, you had to go to the Temple to do the rituals, sacrifices, and worship practices during important holidays. So the whole community trekked to Jerusalem, and on the way home they couldn't find Jesus. They walked all the way back to Jerusalem and there was Jesus, still in the Temple, chatting it up with the most learned scholars, and impressing them with his nuanced understanding of the law. Later Jesus and his disciples would go to Jerusalem to observe Passover, and when they arrived he was greeted by the people as if he was there to conquer Rome and restore independent rule. This triumphal entry is still commemorated as Palm Sunday. A few days later Jesus threw the tables of the money changers and merchants in the Temple, which was an event that would seal his fate. The next day he celebrated the Passover Seder with his friends, and that would become The Last Supper. The next day he was arrested, tried by Judaea's Roman governor Pontius Pilate, sent to Herod Antipas (Herod The Great's Son), sent back to Pilate, and sentenced to death. The next day he would carry his cross through the streets of Jerusalem to Golgotha, where he was crucified. He was buried, and resurrected, right outside the walls of Jerusalem.
Herod's beautiful Temple only stood until 70 CE, when Rome squashed a Jewish rebellion, and destroyed the temple and razed Jerusalem, leading to a Jewish exile that would last for nearly 2000 years. The only thing left standing when the Romans were done with it was the Western Wall (The Wailing Wall, The Kotel).
Skipping ahead a few centuries, in 621CE Muhammed was well into his career as the founder of a new faith. The revelations he was receiving started in 610CE, and would continue until his death in 632. The revelations would eventually be compiled into a book called The Qur'an. Judaism and Christianity were well-established religions in his part of the world, and he took some cues from them. In 621 he experienced the famous "Night Journey," where Gabriel led him to Jerusalem, riding the back of a winged horse, and when he got there he would visit with the major prophets (Moses, Abraham, Adam, Jesus, and others), and receive instructions from God about how Muslims should pray. Whereas Moses met God and received instruction on Mount Sinai, Muhammed met God at the site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque, in Jerusalem. This site is the third most important site in Islam, behind Mecca, and Medina (where Islam began, and where Muhammed is buried).
Jerusalem has seen a lot with these three faiths. Rome held it for centuries, including the later Roman period when Rome became Christian, then Byzantine Empire. Muslims conquered the Byzantines and held Jerusalem for generations. They built a grand mosque, The Dome Of The Rock, on the very spot where Solomon's Temple and The Second Temple once stood. Christians wanted to control Jerusalem, so they staged the Crusades to take it from the Muslims. Control went back and forth, with thousands and thousands dying to defend or seize it. The Ottoman Empire held it for centuries, until World War I. British forces seized Palestine and governed it for awhile. When World War II ended, and the Jews had been targeted for genocide by Germany, Britain and the brand new United Nations created a partition plan for Palestine, which created a new Israel. Jerusalem would remain an international city, and no one would call it theirs.
For decades Israel has considered Jerusalem its capital, but the world has acknowledged Tel Aviv as the capital, because the UN partition plan says Jerusalem can't belong to any nation. That changed when Donald Trump announced that the American embassy would move to Jerusalem, in acknowledgement of their sovereignty to name their own capital city. This drew mixed reactions from around the world. Israel was happy with the decision. After all, if the world told us we couldn't have our capital city in Washington D.C., we'd tell them to get lost. A country should be able to locate its capital where it wants. On the other hand, if international peace depends on Jerusalem being a neutral, international city, it's irresponsible for the U.S. to acknowledge it as Israel's. The U.N. Security Council held an emergency meeting and strongly condemned the decision to move our embassy, but the U.S. acted anyway. The day the announcement was made there were violent uprisings. In 2018, the day the embassy was opened there were protests, and reprisals by Israel led to the deaths of 58 Palestinians. Our move inspired other countries to move to Jerusalem, but all of our European allies stand against the move.
Mom and I will spend today and tomorrow on planes, and tomorrow we'll arrive in Israel. When we land in Tel Aviv they'll do a PCR test on us, then we'll shuttle to our hotel in Jerusalem and spend a day in isolation until our results come back negative.
