The Jerusalem Syndrome (9 page)

The Church of the Holy Sepulchre is chaos. When we walked in, there were hundreds of people mobbed around the many religious relics throughout the interior of the church. There were people and dangling Christian symbols everywhere. The last five Stations of the Cross are all within the church: where the Christ was stripped, where they nailed him up, where they lifted the cross, where they took him down, and where they laid him in a tomb. We took the tour and the last stop was the marble slab where Christ’s body was laid and anointed before it was placed in the tomb. People were surrounding the slab, some placing their jewelry and religious trinkets on the marble top and moving those items around. I guess the idea was to charge their stuff up with the power of the dead Christ. I placed my camcorder on the marble and moved it around a bit. I figured it couldn’t hurt.

The Temple Mount is by far the most awesome place I visited in Israel. Time seemed to stand still when we were within the confines of the Temple Mount area. It is an expansive flat space that was clearly designated to accommodate a huge structure. In the center of the space stands the Dome of the Rock mosque. It is a beautiful building covered in mosaic and gold leaf. I walked around the area surrounding the dome. I was taping. I felt the Gray come over me. I was standing on the holiest ground on Earth. God knew I was there.
Soon, I will be contacted
, I thought. Kim and I asked Jim to take our picture. I put my arm around her, and out of nowhere a Moslem man came over, removed my arm from my wife, and shook his head. No public displays of affection are allowed on the Temple Mount unless they are for Allah.

The last ride I went on was the Western Wall.

I stood at the wall with the davening Hasidim. I felt awkward standing there. I didn’t know what to do. I looked at the Hasidim. I’ve always thought they were arrogant. They think they’re the only real Jews. They do. It trickles down from there. The Orthodox don’t believe that the Conservative Jews are real Jews, and the Conservatives don’t believe that the Reform Jews are real Jews, but the people that hate and want to kill Jews think that we’re all the same, so why do we help them by dividing and conquering ourselves? There are no mild hate groups that only target the Reform, and if there were, they would be looked down upon in the hate-group community as not being a
real
hate group. “Why can’t you just hate everyone?” “We’re just not that religious.”

That’s when I realized why the Hasidim were there. They are the extreme margin of Judaism. They justify the middle. There is no middle without them. They are there to keep the arcane channels to God open through prayer and ritual round the clock. On some level, they are there for all Jews, everywhere, whether they like it or not. What if one Hasid at the Wall were to one day say, mid-daven, “You know what?” They all stop davening to hear. “Fuck it. Let’s get out of here. Lose the hats, lose the beards, cut the curls. We’re gone.” And they all walk off forever.

Once word got out, how long would it be before all Jews around the world said, “
They
stopped? Well, can we all stop? It would save me a thousand a year on seats.”

They need to be there. That is why Jerusalem is a living, mystical city. The Zionist State of Israel would be meaningless if it didn’t have the heart of Judaism to protect. [The heart of Judaism would be vulnerable if the Zionist State of Israel didn’t exist.] If it did crumble, Jerusalem might become the ruins of a faded mystical city.

I have no political solutions. I think the wrong negotiator might have been chosen for the peace talks. Instead of Clinton, maybe they should have used Michael Ovitz and brought in Michael Eisner and put Jerusalem under the nondenominational control of a secular corporate neo-deity like Disney. Jerusalem would then become one of the “Happiest Places on Earth.”

People could enjoy Jewishland, with its mechanical Hasidim. Then they could go to Christianland and ride the cross; then Moslemland: “Gotta take your shoes off for Moslemland. Mom, you can’t come in.” Biblical characters could wander around in period costume. “Get your slings ready, kids, here comes Goliath.” And, of course, there would be Space Mountain. All Happiest Places on Earth have a Space Mountain, even if it doesn’t fit in with the theme. There’s always room for space and all the hope that it holds.

As I stood at the Wall I realized that I was part of an ancient, mystical, and spiritual community. I have my
own
beliefs, but at the wall I felt that I was part of an eternal legacy. It was something other than the Internet, which might ultimately win out, as it slowly usurps the collective unconscious.

I stopped taping because I wanted to put a note in the Wall. That’s what people do if they’re not Hasidim. You write a note to God and place it in a crack of the Wall. I wrote a very general note.
HELP
! I waited for a reply. Nothing.

I swear the guy next to me put his business card in the Wall. So tacky. I thought,
Do you have to live up to the stereotype here?

I was so overwhelmed by the Wall that I had to immediately go out and buy a tallit. The tallit is the prayer shawl that most American Jews wear twice a year, if they can find it. On some level, Jerusalem is just a very large synagogue gift shop. If you don’t have some kind of religious catharsis, you will be overwhelmed with the pressing desire to buy menorahs, mezuzahs, yarmulkes, and whatever tchotchkes are necessary to make you feel superior to your Jewish friends and family. “Oh, really? You’ve never been?”

When we left Jerusalem, I resumed taping. I knew I was close.
I could feel God.

We drove through the Negev and crossed over into Jordan to visit Petra. When we crossed the border we were in the real desert. There were miles and miles of nothing but the occasional amazing rock formation and camel.

Petra is situated in the middle of the Jordanian desert. It encompasses the ruins of a very advanced ancient civilization. It was built thousands of years ago by the Nabataeans. Did you see the last Indiana Jones movie with Sean Connery? The Red City? That’s Petra. It is spread across miles of beautiful red rock cliffs that are riddled with cliff dwellings. Not your run-of-the-mill Pueblo Indian caves in the rock cliff dwellings. These were ornate, detailed, architectural wonders chiseled delicately into the face of pure hot rock. There are actual Greek-style columns chiseled into the rock. Which isn’t even necessary. Why? Someone must have come down from the north and said, “You know, they’re doing something new in Greece.” So the King probably said, “We must have these new columns.”

The commitment that went into chiseling these things was intense. I mean, what could they have been using for tools? Spoons? It was either commitment or slavery. You don’t want to think about that when you are standing in front of something beautiful. It undermines your aesthetic experience, as a tourist, to think there might have been some guy with a whip, saying, “Build the pretty thing!” Unless you’re that kind of tourist.

Petra was a great hub of mysticism and commerce. There are the ruins of an outdoor theater, a technologically advanced water distribution system, and temples of a lost religion. Petra was at the cutting edge of desert culture in its day. I’m sure people would stand on their terraces in Petra’s heyday and say, “We’ve got it all. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere but here. Let’s go to Zabar’s.”

And now there’s nothing but ruins, artifacts.

We walked through this mile-long ravine along the overhanging cliffs on a path called the Siq. It was the main road into Petra. I was taping everything. All along the cliff walls were small eroded square reliefs that had faded symbols on them. The tour guide said they were called “god rocks” and they most likely were depictions of the gods of the culture. They don’t know for sure, because to this day they don’t know what religion was practiced by the Nabataeans. Petra
is
the ruins of a faded, mystical city. I raised my hand and suggested, “Maybe these are actually ancient billboards advertising a popular soft drink of the time. Is that possible?”

The guide looked at me the way an angry snake would and said, “No, it is
not.
”

We arrived at the highest point in Petra, which is called the “altar point,” because it is an actual altar. The entire top of this hill was leveled off. In the center of the plane was a slab of red rock about the size of an adult male. It was surrounded by strange, geometrically aligned, pyramidal stair-like structures. It was believed that human sacrifices were made to appease the gods on that slab. I thought,
Man, that’s deep.
I walked slowly around the altar, filming. I was fascinated. The thought that people could be that brutal and possessed by faith and fear was hard to handle. A sacrifice is performed by a priest or holy man, the seer, the illuminated one who understands more deeply than the rest. He understands that the ritual act done with the knowledge or in the presence of the followers will guarantee the power of the illusion he purports to understand and, conversely, guarantee his power over the followers.

A human sacrifice is the sacrifice of a life: a history of moments, movements, events, engagements, feelings, pains, pleasures, achievements, loves, visions, and hopes. Brought to an end on a slab of rock for the sake of something larger, a greater, godly agenda, a lie. The very possibility of such a thing was mind-blowing to me. As you know, I have a thing for altars. I stepped slowly around it. “They used to sacrifice human beings here. That’s so intense.”

I stepped onto the altar, pointed the camcorder skyward. Under my breath I said, “This would be a good time.” I waited. Nothing.

Then, I stepped up onto a stone staircase above the altar. I put my camcorder in its bag and reached over to grab my wife’s still camera to take a picture of the mountain in front of me. As I turned to take the picture, I heard the sound of my camcorder bouncing down the steps of the stone staircase. I heard all the delicate machinery and components clanking down those steps. I turned around to see my camcorder bounce right out onto the sacrificial altar and stop. When it hit the altar, I heard a voice behind me say, “There goes a thousand dollars.” I turned to see who had said it. No one was there.

It was the voice of God
.

I looked up and said, “Subtle.”

It was over. The camera lay alone on the slab of rock. Other tourists began to gather around. I looked over at my wife and friends. They were glaring at me smugly, as if justice had at last been delivered.

I went to pick up the camcorder. It was really broken. The start button was all bashed in. I couldn’t even shove it up Sony’s ass anymore. What would I say? “I was holding it and it just started crinkling in on itself. I don’t know. You take it. It’s creepy.”

I was standing on the altar, cradling the camera as if it were a child. I looked up into the sky that once harnessed the gods and demons that have defined spiritual belief for millions of people for thousands of years, and it was empty and red and beautiful. My camcorder was dead. There was no face of God in sight. I realized deep within that I knew
nothing
. I stood on the altar and I felt naked, stupid, and a little used. I was a cosmic doofus, a sucker, a mark. Sony and God had been waiting for this to happen. I had been set up, caught in the middle; I was the catalyst and the punch line of a biblical struggle between good and evil. I blew the dust off of my camcorder, put it in the bag, and slouched slowly down from the altar point. It was done. I didn’t get the job. I was free.

I had one more day to indulge in my vacation. We drove back down through Jordan and Elat, down into the Sinai to a small town on the coast of the Red Sea called Terebin. Oriella had visited there when she was a child, and it was still part of Israel. It wasn’t so much a town as it was a dirt-cheap, run-down, low-rent tourist outpost. There was snorkeling and pedal boats, strewn garbage, dusty sand, broken-down trucks, stray dogs, and camels. There were three or four small, one-story hostels in a row. In front of each hostel was an open seating area with pillows, couches, low tables, and thatched roofs right at the edge of the water. Bedouin men served you as you sat. Mint tea, hummus, and tabouli.

We checked ourselves into a hostel. I was shattered and had surrendered. I felt the way the town looked. My spiritual journey was over. I hated my camcorder, and I wasn’t too happy with God or myself. Once we got settled in, we went out to sit. I tried to get reacquainted with my wife and friends.

While Jim, Kim, and Oriella were talking, I stepped away and pulled one of the Bedouin guys aside. I looked into his eyes and pinched my thumb and forefinger together and brought them to my lips and made the toke sound, the sucking in a joint noise, the universal sign language for “Can you get us some pot?”

He looked at me and said, “Yes, I get for you.”

I said, “That would be great.” I thought if I could score some reefer, it might make up for what an asshole I’d been the entire trip, and besides, I needed the relief.

It must have been about two in the afternoon when he told me he could get some. We snorkeled, rode the pedal boats, ate twice, napped, and chatted, but still no pot. Around seven I was getting irritated and every time I saw the guy, I kicked my chin up at him with the secret
What’s up with what we talked about?
head jerk. He would say, “I get. I get. No worry.”

I eventually gave up hope and settled into a cranky disappointment that my wife could not understand. I told her I was trying to get us all some pot and it didn’t pan out. She was pissed that I hadn’t told her earlier.

It was like one-thirty in the morning. It was our last night in the Middle East. I was lying outside on the ground, looking up at the stars of Egypt, festering about a pot deal that didn’t go down, when I felt a tug on my arm. It was the little Arab guy. He said, “It is
time
.”

I shook Kim, who had dozed off. I said, “Honey, it is
time
.” Oriella was still awake, so she came with us. Jim was out cold. We followed the guy up a hill behind the hostel. On the top of the hill there were three women and four men sitting around a campfire talking and eating. They were passing around what looked like two hubcaps. One was filled with stew and the other with bread. The Arab guy told us it was chicken, and it had been cooking in the ground all day. We found an open place in the circle and sat beside the fire. The people greeted us in broken English. We were handed the hubcaps and we took some chicken with the bread and ate. It was delicious.