Hunting Aurora Borealis (a mostly photo essay)

That was the title I gave to day one of my "bucket list" trip to Tromsø, Norway, January 9-12, 2020. Count on me to pick the four days when the whole area was shrouded in clouds. Our bus trip out of Tromsø started at 5:00 pm local time but it didn't matter what time it started -- it was dark anyway. This was the route, taking us through Norway, Sweden and Finland. We'd been told to bring passports but we didn't need them. The roads were unlit and two-laned, and it was snowing and blowing fiercely. The minibus, carrying eight tourists (5 Australians, 2 Germans and me), was a small shelter of light and warmth. Our driver was from Portugal; our guide, Georgi, was from Bulgaria (hence the Cyrillic text on the map).

Now, for the photos. Not National-Geographic quality, but even our guide's shots weren't all that much better given the wind conditions. We finally saw lights at our last of the three stops (red teardrop). If we hadn't seem them there, it would have been, "Oh well ... ." I estimated that the temperature was in the single digits. We were issued snowsuits and mukluks before leaving Tromsø, all included in the tour price.

                            

  

I was surprised the first time I saw what I was told was a Northern Light. It appeared to my naked eye as just a broad ribbon of dust without color. But when I trained my camera on subsequent displays and hit the shutter release, the colors appeared in all their glory. The camera picked up not only the aurora colors but more blue in the sky than the naked eye did.

Here's one group shot Georgi took. The sky was nowhere near as blue (see photos above); it appeared velvety black - the photo on the right is mine and shows what it was really like.

 

    

           

So, after a cozy dinner in the minibus, consisting of Norwegian MREs (I chose reindeer stew), which we ate straight out of the packets, thanks to a couple of Thermoses of boiling water supplied by Georgi, it was back to Tromsø, arriving at 3:00 am local time.

Day 2 I named "Life in the Twilight Zone." Here's Tromsø at various times of the day:

From our hotel window, upon arrival, 2:00 pm 

  Friday, Jan 10, 12:45 pm

Also Friday, 2:30 pm

Never mind the photos; the sky was in fact quite gray in the 12:45 shot and totally black by 2:30 pm. It all played havoc with my psychological time sense. I kept wondering why people were out shopping instead of indoors having dinner. I also noticed that many people walked around with headlamps. Smart idea.

The highlight was an overnight (days 2-3) at Camp Tamok, about 60 miles from Tromsø, which I term "Roughing it, hi-tech style." Friday, the day we arrived, we went dog sledding. One tourist played passenger, one tourist played musher. No points for guessing who played musher. Five dogs pulled each sled. Our guide explained that they were of various breeds. He pointed to one Norwegian husky, an elegant-looking brown-and-white dog, and said many of the others were of mixed breeds. The musher pretty much stands on the runners and (I suppose) keeps the sled from tipping over by balancing on one or the other runner as needed. He (er, she) also has to  jump off from time to time to help push the sled up an incline or out of deep snow and may have to push off with one foot while keeping the other on the runner to help the dogs along. One of the dogs in the rearmost team of my sled would occasionally look back at me as if to day, "Get to work, human; we need some help here." I would oblige but it was hard work, especially with a 165-pound passenger. I demanded union privileges, which the dogs may or may not take under consideration.

Camp Tamok has a couple of large structures based on the Sami lavu, a variation of the Plains tribes' tents or the Mogols' yurts. One of those was the dining room, where all participants in the various camp activities for the day gathered for dinner. Cozy. Sort of. Then it was off to the cabin to sleep. I had selected an overnight trip; no one else, of all the people gathered from various local tour companies, chose to stay at the camp. I never ran with the herd anyway, so what was one more rugged individualist decision?  I assured Kevin that we wouldn't need to mount watches. In fact, several of the staff stay overnight there, too, sometimes for a couple of weeks at a time. The showers and toilets are housed in a separate building. Because we were the only ones staying, the staff kindly gave us the nearest cabin, only 100 or so feet away. We'd hoped not to need a night run, but being the ages we are, it was unavoidable. I'd done this kind of thing before, but when I was much, much younger. I do love modern technology and its creature comforts.

 

  

The next morning, we had our breakfast-for-two in yet another cabin, this one with a full-length window in one wall, overlooking the camp. It would have made for a spectacular photo but for the weather. Then it was off for snowmobiling, another skill to add to my resumé. Lots of calories spent over those two days but alas, I didn't lose weight.

We returned to Tromsø Saturday afternoon and recovered (hot showers do help). On our own all day Sunday, the last day, we went to Tromsø's principal man-made attraction, the Polar Museum. Everything you wanted to know about polar exploration and exploitation (hunting and whaling), beginning in the 17th century and involving several nations, in one small space divided into many smaller spaces. I had looked earnestly around Tromsø for any item I couldn't live without, but I don't need sweaters and ski apparel and Sami crafts and clothes. But at the Polar Museum, these two items below were both well within budget and pleasing enough to serve as souvenirs.

 

 Meet Claude's Reindeer ("Claude," for short) and Bébé Phôque (that's "baby seal" in French, for you naughty-minded people).

I'm available for mushing and snow-mobile rescue or smuggling operations. Just drop me an email. 😉

The Story of Hanna: The Ambivalence of Motherhood

The writer of 1 Samuel describes Hannah, wife of Elkanah and eventual mother of the prophet Samuel, as wretched because she had long been childless.  But Hannah herself does not lament her failure to bear children.  The writer gives her several speeches, including her famous one to Eli denying being drunk, yet none of those statements mention sorrow over not having children.  Instead, we read only that Hannah weeps because Peninah, Elkanah's other wife, torments her.  Peninah, of course, has borne children as befits a proper biblical wife, yet Elkanah loves Hannah more and Peninah knows it. She takes out her resentment in the obvious way, deriding Hannah's infertility and by implication, her worth as a woman.  So is Hannah truly unhappy because she is childless or only because she is worn down by Peninah's nastiness?  Perhaps Hannah prays for a child in part to remove her rival's only weapon against her.  It is telling that in her prayer she promises to give her child to the priesthood, to be separated from her all his life after only a few years of nurturing.  If she longed for motherhood, would she not have wanted to keep her child with her, to watch him grow up and remain close by?  Hannah may be the earliest example of ambivalence toward motherhood.

More on Being in St. Petersburg

Bored in St. Petersburg; how blasé can one get?  Yet business travelers understand.  Sightseeing gets old; eating out becomes a chore, the unfamiliarity itself is soon a burden.  There are only so many museums and cathedrals that one cares to see.  Today was the Russian Museum, with several items I recognized from art history and Russian art in particular.  It was pleasing to see them “live” but only for the moment.  I long for my own bed, my own kitchen, the rest of my own clothes.  Troubles at home matter but don’t prevent me from being homesick.  Perhaps if the class were more lively, perhaps if I felt more positive feedback from the students, I’d be more energized about St. Petersburg.  But it isn’t so, and I must persevere.  I count the days, the number of classes remaining (two), the number of showers (ditto), the number of—well, anything that is part of the routine.  I am grateful for the university WiFi that services this hostel.  It failed for a few hours yesterday, reminding me that things could always be worse.  I would gladly have forgone a kitchen to have been put up in a real hotel, with not only Internet access but also cable-TV.  What little Russian television I perused on the set in the living room convinced me that TV was the same all over: news, kiddie shows, police shows and soap operas.  I could even have derived interest from CNN.

In this post-communist Russia, so much has been grafted on of Western consumerism that I wonder what is “West” and what is merely “human.”  Do we all gravitate towards discount prices and brightly colored advertising?  Is all this universal?  There’s also a lot of English word and Roman alphabet mixed in with Cyrillic letters.  How does that mesh in a Russian’s consciousness?  Is it just an exotic touch or is it considered snobbish?

I went to the synagogue yesterday, a long walk through nondescript, almost uniform streets.  The architecture here does not vary and the stores do not have plate glass or bright awnings.  They barely stand out from the facades of the buildings they occupy.  The result is to make the streets look blank and dreary.

The synagogue is large and well maintained.  Two nattily-dressed middle-aged women entered as I left.  The place was empty otherwise; not surprising, because no services mid-morning.  Traditional architecture, with the women’s gallery on top, domed, with small towers flanking the main sanctuary.  Gift shop and kosher café off to the side of the courtyard.  Private security guards at the gate, who gave only a cursory look at my fanny pack.  There’s a massive photo of the Wailing Wall wallpapering one of the sides of the courtyard.  I emptied my wallet of kleingeld into the pishke in the lobby. The Lubavitchers run the place with their usual thoroughness and attention to halakhah.  The Website sports a dating service along with times for services and events for the holidays—all of the holidays.  I was sorry not to have had a Friday free to attend services but I was not motivated enough to attend Saturday services.  My loss, as one might say.

Another CILS Teaching Stint - St. Petersburg

I had to see if I could duplicate the Riga experience, so I put in for another Senior Lawyer "professorship."  I was assigned to St. Petersburg, the Herzen Pedagogical University, Faculty of Law, for April 15-26, 2013.

My quarters are on Kazansky Street, in a student hostel, which is like a residency hotel on the Upper West Side.  In fact, the neighborhood is rather like the Upper West Side, with lots of little restaurants and cafes. Griboyedov Canal is a block away and parallels the main commercial street.   Kazan Cathedral marks the eastern end where Kazansy Street meets Nevsky Prospekt, St. Petersburg’s Fifth Avenue.  Can’t ask for a better location for this city, redolent of history and past glamour.

I have an entire apartment: bedroom, bath, sitting room, dining room, kitchen.  It faces the building courtyard.  Empty benches surround a pile of dirty snow along one half of the open space, a line of trees and hedges behind them.  The other half of the courtyard is bare concrete.  The walls are yellow-dun, lined with windows.  There are dezhurnayas on the floors to provide hot water for tea but the kitchen is equipped with a plug-in teapot.  A small convenience deli is right off the lobby and there are also small grocery stores nearby.  I stocked up on some easy food: cheese, salami, bread.

Jet lag is still a problem; I cannot wake before 10 a.m.  At 4:00 I met my contact, Marianna Muravyeva, for a brief tour of Herzen campus and help with class preparation.  The campus is a little world within the city, a series of courtyards surrounded by dun-yellow and sea-green 19-century buildings.  It was initially an orphanage, then a teacher-training school, now a university.  No special fame, except age (230 years or so).  I tagged after Marianna through halls with parquet floors overlaid with fading red runners, making appreciative noises at paintings of tsars and former rectors (the tsar paintings were hidden during the Soviet era).  I learned where the law department was, learned how to get the room and equipment keys from the dezhurnaya, and where the civil law faculty room was.

Marianna helped set up the equipment in the room and introduced me to the class.  I have 16 students, 12 of whom are women.  They seem friendly and respectful.  The first presentation was just a get-acquainted one, mostly about New Jersey and me.  It lasted all of ½ hour of a class that is scheduled for an hour and a half.  My confidence sunk as I frantically wondered how to fill the time.  I gave them a 15-minute break, and then told them to spend 10 minutes reading the hypothetical cases in class.  I then asked them one by one to describe their aims in the legal field.  That got some conversation going on land use law, civil rights law and mediation.  When I dismissed the class, about 10 minutes early, one student approached to continue the discussion on land use law.  I enjoyed describing planning board politics and prerogative writ cases and was gratified to hear him say it was interesting.

Dinner was at a US-style hamburger place on the Griboyedov embankment, offering a score or more of hamburger variations (including the “Brooklyn”) and decorated with videos of early ‘60s US rock ‘n’ rollers for atmosphere.  The hamburger wasn’t all that bad.  St. Petersburg’s past seems so unreal, the communist world like something from fiction.  Yet as I sit in my apartment, I wonder whether the hall outside once rang with the tramp of KGB footsteps in the ‘30s, whether late-night knocks on the doors and police cars were a feature of life in this shabby building.

On Reflection

On our last night in Jerusalem, my cousin Tammy took us to Talpiot, to the grounds of Government House Hill, former HQ of the British High Commissioner, now HQ of UNTSO.  It’s a handsome park, overlooking Jerusalem from the southeast, about 3 miles away.  The sky was cloudy, a soft haze diluting the light: Jerusalem of silver, not Jerusalem of gold.  Along the walkway, there are places to stop and look out over the hills.  A plaque on an overlook had been scratched out, the labels for various landmarks defaced and “Al Quds” and “Palestine” scrawled over the top.  The muezzin calls swelled and faded down the hillside of Silwan.  We were in mixed territory, Arab villages interspersed with Jewish.  We saw the security wall snaking along ridges far in the distance, practically blending with the dun-colored buildings.  A boy raced a grey Arab down and back on a short trail below us, his two pals watching.  We rounded Government House, noting the white vehicles in the lot with large “UN” lettered in black and the security fence surrounding the compound.  An Arab family was finishing their picnic grill outside.  We walked up to the Tolerance Monument, off Goldman Promenade and peered down at the city.  The Dome of the Rock paled into the hazy blue-gray background as the street lights came to life.  A young boy waved and said “hello” and we said “hello” back.

It was a treat to see Israel through the eyes of a non-Jew.  It was like tasting a new “flavor” of spirituality; it was like a rounding-out of the historical and religious experience of the land, of the sights and most of all, of Jerusalem.  The experience was mutual; Kevin grasped the sense of being at the Wall, as he described it.  Whether from the ostensible nearness to the shekhinah (God’s “presence”), which is supposed to emanate from where the Holy of Holies is, or whether it was from the fervor of the worshipers there, it was the same experience that I had at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  If only all people, of all faiths, would understand that faith is merely a search for the divine, not its capture, we might be able to avoid religious strife.  If only.

On Spirituality in Jerusalem

“I love this city,” said Kevin, gazing on the Jaffa Gate as we approached it Monday morning.  “Not surprising," I replied, “This is the city of God.”

A Christian pilgrim’s first stop is the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  My previous visits there were cursory.  This time, I went with someone to whom it mattered and I paid attention.  I was immediately and intensely moved as we entered, not by the Stone of Unction just inside the doorway but by the fervor of the pilgrims who draped themselves over it, kneeling, kissing, rubbing the flat stone, sprawling in prayer.  “Now you get it,” said Kevin, “it’s the search for God.”  “I’ve always known that,” I replied.  “The point of observing 613 commandments is not to get the observance ‘right’ but to keep God in mind as we go about our daily lives.”  That having been established, we continued into the church.  My burst of emotion faded as I watched pilgrims jostling to get their photos taken touching the rock of Golgotha and kneeling in the niche said to have been Jesus’ tomb.  Kevin explained that the rock in which the niche was located had been cut down so that a shrine could be placed over it.  The church was subsequently built over the shrine.  Over the centuries, the shrine was rebuilt in different styles.  Its structural integrity has been compromised by earthquakes, and it is supported by steel scaffolding.  But it can’t be rebuilt or remodeled because the different denominations controlling the various parts of the church can’t agree.  Yes, I remember reading about this in Simon Sebag Montefiore’s book Jerusalem, The Biography, I thought.  We have our “who controls the Wall?” and they have the free-for-all over the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  Funny, the ways in which religions are similar.

From the church we went directly to the Western Wall for a kind of religious balance.  The women’s section of the wall was crowded, people were standing three and four deep, reaching over the women sitting down and praying so they could touch the stones and stuff wish-notes into the cracks.  I was barely able to stick my little piece of paper in, which I had decided to do at the last minute.  After saying shehekhayanu, I turned my back too early to walk away – one is supposed to back away from the Wall, the closest physical spot on earth to God’s presence according to Jewish tradition.  I quickly corrected and hoped God wasn’t too exasperated.

We next stood in line to run the gauntlet of security men and machines to walk up the ramp to the Temple Mount.  Muslims enter freely at the north side from the streets of the Muslim Quarter.  That entrance is also an exit for the non-Muslim tourists, who must enter only through the ramp, which is located in the plaza at the Western Wall.  Perhaps someday archeologists will ponder the remains of this ramp as they now ponder the remains of Robinson's Arch and Barclay's Arch, two ancient access ramps to the Temple during Herod's era.

The Temple Mount is essentially a vast plaza, a paved-over park.  The Dome of the Rock is one-third of the way from the north end and the Al Aksa Mosque is up against the southern end.  There is a large fountain in the middle for the hand- and foot-washing required before prayer in the mosque.  There are small groves of trees and benches off toward the eastern end; a couple sat amicably under a tree.  The north side of the Mount, behind the Dome of the Rock is entirely paved over.  There weren't many people around.  Two separate groups of men sat under trees by the central fountain, listening to what appeared to be lectures.  A few women and children strolled into Al Aksa.  Capitals and drums of Roman-era columns were displayed next to the mosque.  Non-believers are no longer permitted to enter the Dome of the Rock, we were told; they were never allowed into Al Aksa. The area seemed empty of feeling as well as of people, despite--or perhaps because of--the passion it generates.  Perhaps it's something like the eye of the storm, a deceptive calm, the stasis of a place that could lose its balance and hurtle wildly out of control.  One misstep, one forbidden act of worship (all non-Islamic prayer is banned on the Temple Mount), could cause an eruption in this vast plaza that would reverberate around the world.

Returning to the street, our next stop was “David’s City,” the excavations south of the Wall, which are introduced by a walk through the Davidson Center, a touristy exhibition of Temple history.  Seeing old tumble-down stones got “old” before long but I made it through, tired as I was from the previous hours of walking.  Along the southern retaining wall of the Temple Mount are portions of the original stairs that led up into the Court of the Gentiles, the largest of the three courts of the Herodian structure.  Other notable finds are traces of the arches supporting Robinson’s arch and shops cut into one of the piers of that arch, inscriptions on some of the giant Herodian-era stones and a gigantic pile of tumbled multi-ton stones, lying where they’d been hurled 1,942 years ago by the Romans when they destroyed the Temple.  Underneath those giant ashlars, the paving stones are buckled.  That made it real.

After four visits over the years, I have had my fill of the mundane aspects of the Old City.  The main streets of the Christian and Muslim quarters are a gauntlet of trinket shops, all selling items I could easily live without.  The vendors buzzed around like mosquitoes: “Hello, lady, how are you today, would you like to come into my shop, where are you from, would you like to see some nice …?”  I smiled, shook my head and kept walking.  Kevin finally had enough.  “I wouldn’t buy water from them even if I was on fire.”  We concentrated on modern Jerusalem that evening.  Mamilla is a mall surrounded by a luxury high-rise apartment complex.  It’s Jerusalem’s stab at elegance and is a very pleasant place – a couple of good restaurants -- but I doubt that Jerusalem can ever develop a functioning secular economy.

On Tuesday, our first mission was walking the battlements of the Old City wall from the Jaffa Gate to the Zion Gate.  I had walked them in the opposite direction, from the Jaffa Gate to Herod’s Gate, six years ago, alone and blithely confident.  This time, I sidestepped up and down the steep steps along the towers, legs wobbling, clutching the railings like a little old lady, utterly terrified that my hat would blow away, that my overshirt, draped over my shoulder, would blow away, that I would slip on the ancient stones and lie with one foot dangling over the precipice under the iron safety balustrade.  What happened to my confidence?  I who hiked along the Palisades with nothing between me and oblivion over the Hudson River, on a path that was just as wide as the rampart path, with no guardrail.  Perhaps it was the comfort of being in nature—or maybe just wearing hiking boots. My walking shoes, while comfortable, tended to slip on the Jerusalem stones.

Muezzin calls echoed each other down the Hinnon Valley as we peered through the parapets, imagining crusaders and Turks and bandits and who knows what else.  The muezzin calls were not as melodious as church bells, but I appreciated them nonetheless, for the idea is the same.  Below us, the Armenian Quarter gave way to the Jewish Quarter.  We gradually lost altitude, which was comforting.  Exiting the Zion Gate, we took a taxi to the Mount of Olives.  Kevin specifically asked the driver for the Church of All Nations, quite easy to spot by its multiple gold, onion-shaped domes.  After shaking free of the traffic tangle in front of the Zion Gate, which is the closest entrance to the Western Wall, we headed up a winding, steep road wide enough for one car only and enclosed by high stone walls on either side.  The driver kept his hand on the horn all the way, to warn other cars as well as pedestrians.

He deposited us in front of a green door set in the wall, asking if we wanted to go farther.  He told us the church was closed and sure enough the sign said open until 11:45 a.m. then closed until 2:30 p.m.  Kevin tried the door and was about to turn back when it was opened by a caretaker, no doubt alerted by our noise.  We were told that this was not the Church of All Nations but the Church of Dominus Flevit - the Church of Jesus Weeping. Kevin quickly dismissed the cabbie, who was all for taking us back down the hill for an extra fare, of course.

The caretaker invited us in and said we could wait on the property for the church to open.  Since every other church on the Mount of Olives was closed for lunch, it made sense to accept his generosity.  The church is about 2/3s of the way up the mountain and its garden provided a spectacular panorama of the Old City, including Mount Zion across the valley and the Jewish cemeteries next door to the church.  I rested my feet while Kevin and I discussed the nature of religious belief and its parallel, political ideology.

When the caretaker returned to inform us that the church was open, we entered and found a small jewel.  Completed in 1955, the church is named for a passage in the Gospels where Jesus contemplates Jerusalem and weeps over the fate he foresees for it.  The church has a teardrop-shaped dome.  The floors have fragments of first-century mosaics.  It’s a small church, could seat maybe 50.  The caretaker said the church has excellent acoustics and invited us to try.  I had that typical brain freeze when one is asked to sing a song, any song.  I rapidly inventoried my repertoire, looking for something appropriate in Latin.  Carmina Burana or Gaudeamus Igitur were the only things that immediately came to mind and they were obviously not going to be suitable.  Then I thought of the Hallelujah Chorus and began to sing.  My voice grew stronger and I more confident on the “For the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.”  Maybe it was the church; maybe it was just my voice getting exercise.  It seemed like the right sort of song to sing even though it is associated with the Church of England, while Dominus Flevit is Catholic.  The echo effect was unusual, perceptible but not detracting from the sound.

We went back downhill, past the Jewish cemetery. I explained that many pious Jews want to be buried in Jerusalem to get front-row seats at the return of the Messiah.  We never found the entrance to the Church of All Nations, but Kevin wasn’t looking for it anyway; he was looking for the Garden of Gethsemane.  It’s down near the bottom of the Mount of Olives.  The garden is small, neatly kept, divided into four quarters by graveled paths.  Olive trees have been planted by pilgrims since the 17^th century and their gnarled trunks are surrounded by flowering bushes.  Kevin went into the church.  I hung back but ultimately entered briefly, to see if it had the same spiritual “presence” that I felt in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.  It did.

We walked back to the Old City, entering through the Lion’s Gate.  There, the Bethesda pool and Church of St. Anne was our first stop.  I stayed in the churchyard while Kevin walked through the ruins of the Byzantine-era church built over the pools where Jesus healed the sick.  I’d had enough of spiritual tourism, but Kevin waved me into the Church of St. Anne, restored in the 19^th century on the ruins of the 12^th century Crusader church that Saladin had turned into a school of Koranic law.  He said there was singing and indeed, a Filipino chorus was engaging in a spontaneous sing-in.  They sang “Amazing Grace,” which did indeed sound quite nice in the medieval setting, like an organ, swelling against the vaulted walls.  A photographer took a group photo when they were finished and they were then scurried away by their tour guide to a waiting bus.

We continued walking through the Muslim Quarter down the Via Dolorosa, which begins at the Lion’s Gate, following the discs on building walls that denote Stations of the Cross and being badgered by souvenir sellers and would-be guides.  I was agonizing over an as-yet un-bought, un-selected gift for a friend, trying to avoid the kitsch, yet getting desperate for something suitable.  One shop we passed had just the right item; I knew it was right when I saw it.  Perhaps there really is “something” in Jerusalem after all.

On Going to Jerusalem

Going to Jerusalem should not be easy.  One should not be able to just “pop into” the holy city.  One’s arrival in Jerusalem should be the result of difficulties overcome and dangers averted, the kind of trip that turns the traveler into a weary, thankful pilgrim.

That was why our car was covered in bird poop Sunday morning when we emerged from the hotel in Tiberias.  We had parked it at the only available spot near our hotel when we returned from our Kfar Kama/Nazareth odyssey.  Since it was Shabbos, no one had moved their cars and we felt lucky to get the space.  But it was under the pedestrian crosswalk from the hotel to the swimming pool and the local birds make it their motel.  I was reminded of Mel Brooks’s parody of Hitchcock, High Anxiety.  We searched in vain for a car wash despite the directions we were given and wound up cleaning the car ourselves at a nearby gas station, using the squeegee and plenty of paper toweling.

In a streaked and encrusted car, we left Tiberias looking for Jordan River water to bring home to a couple of friends.  We first tried Degania Bet, one of the oldest kibbutzim in Israel and built near where the river flows out of Lake Tiberias.  The receptionist at the guest house directed us to Kibbutz Kinneret, a short way back north along the lake.  The kibbutz has built (or someone has) a tidy, well-organized access area, with multiple ramps for pilgrims to step into the water.  A biblical verse referring to John's baptism of Jesus, translated into many languages (some quite esoteric), was written on tiles inlaid in the limestone walls.  Yes, there was a gift shop, but one could easily ignore it.  When I got my first look at the narrow river, bright green between low-hanging trees, I was moved in a way; I did experience a spiritual moment.  I then realized that for me, spirituality is more connected with natural surroundings than with, say, the venerable streets of Sfat.  A couple of bold muskrats crawled right up the steps that led into the water and stared at us, hoping for treats.  Two very large catfish swam near the steps, among many smaller fish, minnows maybe among the others.  A turtle swam by.  A kingfisher swooped back and forth along the farther bank.  A pigeon and a dove fought over space in the rafters.  I filled my two bottles and watched a group preparing for total immersion.  One man alone, somewhat off from the group, was sunk in the water up to his neck, just contemplating.  I thought of spirituality, how it originates, whether it is intrinsic to the place or whether the place becomes important by chance and the successive generations of people who venerate the place pour their spirituality into it, leading to a feedback effect.

Thus inspired, we resumed our trip.  But Jordan River water was not enough to ward off the challenges of traveling to Jerusalem.  On highway 65, I gradually became aware of a strange noise from the car.  It didn’t fade, even when the road surface changed, and I finally pulled over.  Our right front tire was shredded.  Oh great, tires aren’t included in our insurance, I thought.  And here we are on a busy main road, on the shoulder, trying to change a flat, with cars and trucks whizzing by…just what we’ll need, a careless driver to smash into us and we with no flares….  Such were my cheerful thoughts as Kevin jacked up the car and changed the tire. And we had run out of Handi-wipes, so we made ourselves as clean as we could with Kleenex and spit.

I re-took the wheel gloomily, wondering what next.  Every whine of the road sounded to me like another tire blowing.  I suddenly became aware of the “idiot light” glowing – now what?  Again, I pulled over to the side; Kevin checked the oil (after puzzling out how to open the hood).  No, the oil was fine.  That’s a relief, but let’s get to the next gas station, he said, there are a couple of other things I can check out—this car’s a Ford Escort; I have some familiarity with it.  We pulled off the highway to a hotel with gas station attached and parked in front—and at that moment I realized the emergency brake had been on while I was driving and that was the reason for the warning indicator.  We didn’t say anything to each other; words would have been futile.  We just exchanged sickly grins and headed back out onto the highway.

Still worrying about car trouble, I drove west, then south, then east, skirting the West Bank to get to Jerusalem.  My cousin had reminded me that morning that today was Jerusalem Day, when Jews celebrate the re-unification of the city; she said traffic would probably be heavy.  We decided not to try any detours; we’d had enough trouble already, so we stayed on the main highway all the way to the city.  Fortunately, we did not hit any serious problems.  In fact, the only real delay was way back at Afula, where construction reduced the road to one lane and we crawled agonizingly slowly.

Highway no. 1 to Jerusalem climbs through hills full of pines, planted by the Jewish National Fund as a reclamation project since the beginning of the century and subsidized in part by little Jewish kids like me selling coupons for 10 cents a piece in the ‘60s.  If Nazareth is spread out over three hills, Jerusalem seems to be spread out over a handful.  Arab villages cluster at the bottom of the mountains.  Apartments and other buildings spill over every hillside.  I said the prayer of thanksgiving, the shehechayanu, as we entered the city on the ring road curving north.  And a prayer for not getting lost or having any more car trouble as we negotiated the maze of streets near the Old City.

We could not wait to turn in our accursed car, but one last task remained: to find a gas station.  Our contract required us to return the car with a full tank, and what with the excitement of the flat and emergency brake and trying to thread our way through the streets of Jerusalem, we forgot to look for gas.  Well, we found it: right across the street from the rental agency.  No fool, that gas station owner.  We handed over the car and with great relief schlepped our suitcases to the hotel a couple of blocks away.

We passed through the thick of Jerusalem Day partying.  Our hotel was on King George Street, a major thoroughfare that was blocked off to traffic.  A band was playing.  Around the corner, at Independence Park, another band was playing.  Young men, virtually all Orthodox, were dancing horas.  Everywhere kids carried flags.  At 6:30, the parade began.  We watched from our window as the line moved from King George to King David Streets.  The Old City and the King David Hotel were a far backdrop; the gold of the Dome of the Rock barely visible.  I looked over the roofs of the city out to the Mount of Olives, over to Mount Zion, hard to distinguish from the buildings covering it.  I saw the far, bare hills to the north and east.  The parade continued below my window along G. Agron Street connecting King George with King David Street.  After almost 2,000 years, I thought, Jerusalem is back with whom it belongs; politics be damned.