Miqvahs and Mud!

Mud and water - there's something about that combination that draws fascination from all people, but especially boys, of all ages and for all time.

Clay pots found on site

Miqvah bath - at least twice daily

Take Qumran, for instance. For 200 years, the ones right before and after Christ's coming, hundreds of men went out to the desert, to a place called Qumran. What did they do there? Splashed in water and played with clay! Now I'm sure they would disagree:  in their minds they were waiting for the new kingdom, where they, as prepared, purified leaders, would rule. But what filled their daily lives? Mud and water!

They were also incredibly into words - maybe because their community was silent most of the time! After their ritual miqvah washings and silent meals they wrote and wrote and wrote. What did they write? The entire Old Testament, copied many times. The rules of the pure community.

Tightly-written, restored scroll

Image of the community & leader

Commentaries on both of these. They wrote in the "Scriptorium" room, on a table that was 5 metres long - just right for such books as Isaiah - extremely lengthy.  They wrote on long scrolls, made of parchment - very thin sheep's leather. They wrote in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek.  They used no vowels, and often left no spaces between words. Parchment was precious, and anyway, imagine the awesome word games this would create in time to come! Scholars need entertainment!

Large jars containing scrolls

When you're out in the desert there's not a great market for your writings, and in any case this group wrote to purify themselves, not to sell their work. But this was holy writing - you can't just toss it away, or burn it (as the US found out recently when a soldier burned copies of the Qur'an). So they buried the writing, sacredly. In large clay pots, sealed tightly with lids, placed in caves. Sarcophagi for words, buried and preserved in the desert as carefully as the pharaohs in nearby Egypt.

Qumran caves: this is #4 of 11 w/scrolls

Then the Qumran community was obliterated by the Romans in 68 AD, two years before Masada just down the road was bashed in. The bodies they'd worked so hard to keep pure - shunning self, sex and excess - vanished back into dust. But hidden in the sandstone caves, their words waited for resurrection.

We visited those caves, discovered in 1947 by shepherd boys, as they hunted for a lost goat. What they found turned the world on its head! Scripture - so ancient - matching what we had from much later, in our hands! Confirmation of grace and truth. Shepherds are good at being bearers of glad tidings!

Running down to the Dead Sea!

Floating without any effort

And when my guys arrived, guess what they did? Yup - mud and water! Not in the caves or Qumran ruins; those aqueducts have long since dried up. But very nearby, in the Dead Sea which is visible from Qumran. Down they ran, to the water, taking with them Frasier the gnome. In they jumped, splashing and laughing - but keeping their mouths closed if the water came too close! It tastes absolutely disgusting!

And they floated, buoyed up by minerals that are said to purify the body - and I believe soul and mind too, because what could be more healthy than a fun-loving sage of a father taking his sons for a dip in the Dead Sea? Elliot had turned 15 the day before, and Oliver had just passed me in height! This was truly a rite of passage!

Pure as mud!

Then off they went to the mud baths! Nothing more than a hole in the shore, where glorious, gooey black mud oozes out, free for the taking. They dug in and slathered it on, beaming all the while! Purification comes with much joy these days, it seems! And it's widely available, and free!

Mud, and salty shores

Some missed that point, and just down the beach a pair of tourists brought their expensive tubes of Dead Sea mud, bought in the gift store, down to the waterside. There they opened the tubes, put the mud on their hands, and rubbed it onto their skin with immense sophistication! (I have to say, I think my equally purified barbarians had more fun!)

We tried - but real skin benefits more!

You can't live long in that mud-pure state, though, and back they plunged into the water to float some more. Covered with salt, then they  followed the rocky path back to the start, and showered under fresh water for a final immersion. They did as much washing as the Qumran blokes in any given day - but not quite as silently! We left rejoicing on a glorious, golden evening. (I, who had waded in with the camera, but not showered off at once, had itchy legs for days afterwards!)

Qumran hills with the Dead Sea just below the horizon

What is it that drives us to be pure, to cleanse and better ourselves, whether through mud, water or words? A desire for more: for a new body, a new life, a new kingdom. The beauty is that a new kingdom has come, through the living Word (in the mud and water formation of a body!). He makes us more pure and complete than any ritual cleansing when his good Spirit soaks in, and renews us. We need only open Isaiah, copied carefully by the Qumran scribes and preserved in the Dead Sea Scrolls, to read how it happens and confirm that it's true.

Masada!

Masada desert view

Slaves sweat under the blazing desert sun, building a massive ramp, feeling like traitors. The people up inside the fortress are, after all, their countrymen. This ramp will provide a path for a battering ram to beat in their walls, and that will be the end of the final Jewish holdout. Day after day for three months they've been working on this ramp. The zealous Sicarii Jews holed up inside have tried everything - flaming arrows, boulders, prayers in the fortress synagogue. Nothing will stop the Romans. It's slaves who die when obstacles are hurled down, so what do their bosses care?

Masada: fortress hill on a flat plain

A slave's opinion is not asked. And it's hot. Who can speak anyway? The nearby huge body of water offers no relief, being nine times as salty as any normal sea. The Dead Sea. Well named. Get a drop of that in your eyes and they sting for hours. Try tasting it and you'll spit it out in disgust. Wash in it, and any wounds from those whips will scream. Better leave it alone. Use the minimal water from the cisterns around the mountain base, when you can.

Dead Sea view from Masada

Roman soldiers, garrisoned in ten enormous camps around the fortress, play dice with clay shards. Some supervise other slaves building an encircling stone wall, seven miles long, surrounding the fortress at ground level. Just in case any Jews inside the fortress tried to escape. Where would they go, anyway? The desert is long and low - this is the lowest point on the earth, for goodness' sake! The Dead Sea is 400 metres below sea level! And the rest of the land, every other city for days of travel, is already under Roman occupation. It's 72 AD. Taking Masada is really just a final sneer. ... But it gives the slaves something to do. When you're near the end of a war you have thousands of prisoners-of-war, now called slaves. You don't want idle slaves. This fortress must be taken.

Herod's patio

Patio party! Imagine the old days!

Once it had been home to the palace of King Herod the Great, famous builder, ruthless destroyer. It was the ultimate fortress, huge and high. It gave him a stronghold overlooking trade routes, and was a fabulous place for summer parties on its "hanging patios". Steam baths, with under-floor heating from fiery furnaces matched by cool cisterns, provided luxury in the dry desert that was unheard of. The water came from beautiful aqueducts: low stone canals channeling streams from the mountains in rainy season. Herod was a master designer.

Storage houses - long rows, walled in

2100 year old walls!

76 years after Herod's death, the empty palace fortress is a refuge for over a thousand fleeing Jews: Essenes, Sicarii, Zealots - all looking for a last stand of safety. But nowhere is safe from the Roman war machine, and here they come with the battering ram. They're crashing against the huge wooden posts that the refugees inside have erected to support their wall. Wait! Maybe the Jews can set the battering ram on fire. Look, it's starting to burn! Hooray, is this salvation?! But then - a gust of wind turns the fire around - "the wind of God" the Romans yell. Fire licks at the stalwart wooden posts, making them crumble even faster under the battering ram. There's no hope. Not a chance. It will be death or slavery. Well, they'll die! Women and children first - like a lifeboat.

A cistern for water storage

And, so the story goes, they slew their women and children. The men lined them up and lay them down and thrust their sicarii knives in, even as the battering ram pushed against the walls, strong, hard, huge and powerful. Their women and children would not be touched by the enemy. They were gone. Then it was the men's turn, and they drew lots to see which ten men would kill the brethren. The deed was done. Finally, those ten, plus their leader, Eleazar ben Ya’ir, had to die. Each man wrote his name on a clay shard and they drew lots to see who would be next. The last person would throw himself on his own sword, so that when the Romans finally bashed in the wall, their victory would be hollow, with no-one captured alive. And so it was done.

1800 years later, eleven clay shards were found on the site, with names inscribed on them. One was the name "ben Ya'ir"; the same name as the valiant Jewish leader. Perhaps these were the very eleven who concluded the tragic, heroic tale of Masada.

Listening to the desert

How do we know the story? Josephus writes that two women and children escaped by hiding inside a cistern; they told him what happened, and he recorded it for all time. I crouched in a corner of the empty walls and imagined being a child listening to my world caving in. Oh, you're exposed in the desert.

Mosaic floor - designed by Herod;

lumpy stones – added later by Sicarii

Masada, fortress of the famous last stand by the Jews against Romans, still towers over the vast deserted terrain surrounding it. The Dead Sea has retreated from it, and a thick haze of evaporation lingers over the water. No-one lives in the diamond-shaped fortress; you can't stay there overnight,

Ornamental stone-laid walls

 but when you visit you can still see what were once lovely mosaic floors, painted and pillared balconies, underfloor heating, walls and ovens, lookout rooms and baths. You can imagine having a party on the patio while the camel caravans on the spice trade pass below.

Terraced balconies below

The strange thing is, no bones were found inside Masada when the excavators unearthed it. The people seeking refuge have vanished as surely as the Romans and the prisoner-of-war slaves outside.  Two skeletons were found, a boy and a very rich woman, possibly from long before, in Herod's time. Her thick hair was still braided and her fancy sandals were by her side, well preserved in this incredibly dry landscape. Where were the refugees? We can only speculate. Perhaps their strong spirits took them to a land beyond, where things like braided hair and fine clothes don't matter. Maybe there's a more practical reason. In any case, those strong-hearted Jews have not been seized, dead or alive, and Masada endures as an everlasting stronghold for their memory.

Choose your ascent ...

I remembered how often the Lord is called our "fortress, refuge, stronghold, place of help in time of trouble" throughout the Bible. Here in the holy land, where at every turn you re-live tales of war and worry, past and present, you can understand why. Refuge is vital. Enemies are real.

A mighty fortress is our God ...

... or Gondola up & down!

I'm sure that even in our western world we need a fortress to shield us from all that's distracting, disturbing and destructive around us. God is our refuge and strength, much greater than Masada, far more refreshing than the Dead Sea. God is a fortress unseen yet invincible. Because He is near, instead of dying in the desert we can live to the full, secure and safe.

The battering ram of life's trials and trouble will continue to do its work. Our story, though, has a different ending.  As they say here in Israel: "Masada will never happen again!"

Everyone in a fortress needs to eat!

Breaking the Silence

"Hebron" was my childhood school in India, named after the holy place where Abraham bought land to bury his beloved Sarah. Like Sarah's later life, it was marked by laughter and childhood chatter, birdsong in treetops (with monkeys throwing tree tomatoes at us!), sunshine and happy learning. I remember the Hebron bells ringing for recess; the playground with the log swing, giant strider, netball courts, games of marbles; the faithful teachers, daily tuck time, afternoon sung prayers, inter-school sports, plays and musicals, and kids darting everywhere!

Patriarchs buried under here

So when we were to take a day trip to Hebron the original, where now Abraham along with Sarah, and their descendents Isaac, Rebecca, Jacob and Leah are buried, I looked forward to it!

Then I went to a talk where a former Israeli soldier spoke.What he told us about the city of Hebron in Palestine today was horrible to hear.

Soldiers on duty cluster in Hebron

Hebron is not a jolly place of echoing laughter. Today, Hebron stifles tears of terror, cries of fear, wounds from kicks, scuffles, torment and torture; random, rough midnight routings; the anguish of the vanquished. Hebron has had the worst of the oppression in this land. It's seen terrible violence on both Arabs and Jews, with lasting retribution being heaped, we heard, on the Arabs.

Checkpoint before entering holy site

This Israeli ex-soldier told our group of ex-pat women from around the world that, after his time stationed in Hebron, he found he couldn't sleep. He couldn't settle down. He could only remember the atrocities of the intifada, crimes committed by law-enforcers, maddening memories that he should silence but needed to speak.

And so he started to speak, telling the horrors that ordinary people didn't want to know about, but which he blames them for as much as himself. After all, what is a soldier but a representative of his taxpayers and government? Other Israeli soldiers, formerly stationed in Hebron, agreed. "I couldn't question anything while I was on duty. Now I will speak: the way we treated the Palestinians was not right." They formed a community with the name and mission of "Breaking the Silence."  Ever since, their government has been trying to silence these silence-breakers. (When you have time, read this link to one person's Hebron visit with them:  http://www.pij.org/details.php?blog=1&id=26.)

Child behind walls

Israeli flag in Hebron

Let me go back for a bit of history. The intifada (meaning "uprising, awakening, shaking off") is the name for two major rebellions when Palestinians fought to regain their land which Israel had claimed in its "creeping process of annexation" (as described by an Israeli Minister of Economics & Finance - i.e. Israel gradually taking over Palestinian land). These uprisings took place in 1987 and 2000, with ongoing military repercussions for each. 

To ensure dominance, Israel practiced an "Iron Fist" policy. This resulted, for example, in well over 23,000 children (from all over Palestine) requiring medical treatment for their beating injuries in the first two years of the first intifada (statistic from Save the Children). The second intifada led to the checkpoints and walls I showed in an earlier blog. Both uprisings saw casualties and violence toward both Israelis and Arabs, but with Israel's power to hold a standing army, far more squashing came from their side. Unspeakable, sleep-depriving acts were the army's ongoing, unrelenting response, to demolish and demean their target. At least that’s according to this ex-soldier, who remains an orthodox Jew with a desire to share the land rather than annex it.

Abraham's grave cenotaph

Singing his prayers

What does Hebron look like today? We first visited the synagogue/mosque (once a church) under which the founding family is buried. Abraham is the father of all three monotheistic religions, and like almost every empire founder, tremendous division sprang up amongst his children! In the holy land this division is both political as well as religious, which means that no matter who is in power, the fight goes on. We heard a Jewish man praying in high sing-song, and listened to the call of the Muslim muezzin from a different tower. We, as Christians, were barricaded out till after prayers.

Shops sealed shut; homes barricaded

From the shared holy site we walked into the streets of Hebron's city centre. What did we find? Nothing but silence. Thick silence. Not the silence of the watchful but the silence of the lost, disinherited, deceased. We walked, as if in a funeral, through street after street after silent street. Shops were boarded up. Apartments above them looked empty. Israeli flags fluttered in limp triumph. Nothing would open again. It was an endless, still silence, with not even a cat in sight.

Canadian volunteer

We saw one small group of children at the end of a distant street. The front entrances to their homes have been sealed shut but they have to travel the street to get to side entrances. They were being escorted home from school by international volunteers who perform this task morning and afternoon. One volunteer we spoke to was from Hamilton, ON. It is dangerous, even now, years after the intifada, for Palestinian children to walk to their shut-off homes, for fear of Jewish settlers hurling stones at them. Stoning still happens, especially by kids who can't be charged, in Hebron, these thousands of years after Bible times.

The silence was oppressive. I mean, this is the Middle East!
When you picture it you imagine crowds bustling in bazaars, people haggling over meat and merchandise, children chasing each other through carts, clatter, clutter, clamour, chaos. (Say that fast!) None of that exists in the streets leading from the synagogue/mosque to the heart of Hebron.


Why the silence and empty streets?

Ultra-orthodox Jews

We were told it's because the Israeli government deems it safer for the 200 Jewish settlers in the community to walk through empty streets than through Palestinian neighbourhoods as they go to the synagogue. Therefore the Palestinian neighbourhood which existed there for generations, supporting thousands of families, 2000 shops and dozens of communities, has been barred - metal seals welded over doors. No-one has moved in besides a few settlers, so you notice your thudding footsteps as you walk. There is no access to these streets unless you are a Jew or a tourist, or happen to be a remnant Palestinian living tucked away, unseen - needing to maneuver the streets, on foot, to school.

Opening bags at the checkpoint

The surreal silence lasts till you reach a checkpoint in a street corner. I saw a woman at the end of the empty street, harrassed and harangued as she tried to get through the checkpoint.  Then we followed her.

Tiny passage past the checkpoint

Finally - supper shopping! 

On the other side, the vivacity you'd expect in the East suddenly burst to life! It was like stepping out of a painting into reality!

Bread bakes, kebabs sizzle, lemons and eggs and vegetables and shoes and hookahs and fabric all call out intoxicatingly, colourfully, cheerfully. There's hustle and bustle. People smile and laugh and shop and talk. Families buy candy. Oh, so this is Hebron!

Old friends

The kebab man - they smelled good!

Better cook it quick!

You'd hardly imagine that one checkpoint away lies a disenfranchised, deserted community.  Unfortunately, reality includes both sides. That's the grown-up truth. 

Which took me back to my childhood. What changes a place even when the name's the same? After Hebron elementary school where I attended as a day scholar, Hebron high school, in a different town, felt radically different to me. Instead of the daily back and forth from home to school with clatter and chatter and tea and talk, faith and family, hugs and "how was your day?", I moved into the dorm when I was eleven. Many people liked it, and there was fun and freedom in lots of aspects. But I felt as though the heart of my life was snuffed out and I was silenced.

As I walked through Hebron here, the silence descended on me again, only this one has no holidays or graduation in sight.

The funny thing is, the name "Hebron" means "friend, colleague, unite, to be noisy"!  The significance of names is never lost.  And as some brave ex-soldiers valiantly try to break the silence here, perhaps one day Hebron will live up to its name again.  I think Father Abraham, "God's friend," would be glad.