Wall, E-world

 Another night's wake -- I dozed from 11 to 1AM and then that was prett much it. I started another book, and watched sports highlight videos and movie bloopers. I listened as the world woke up and I eventually decided it was time to stop pretending to be asleep and just pretend to wake up. That was 7:30 local time. I chatted with Nomi and David for a while and then went to shower but accidentally fell back into bed and actually slept! For 2.5 hours! I woke up again, got out of bed, again, dragged a comb across my head, again. At some point I showered and got humaned. Then it was out to share my humanness with the masses, washed and unwashed.

As is my wont, I headed down to Ben Yehuda. With all the world my ktchen I prepped myself for some combination of breakfast, a 10AM meal and lunch. It was going to be huge! But as is my wont, I got a cup of fresh pomegranate juice and felt very happy with that. I made it to the confluence of Ben Yehuda and Yaffo and sat in the sun, listening to a heavily bearded man play electric guitar to a backing track (like the regular song but somehow washed of the lead guitar track). He was playing for coins but he was really good.When I showed up, he was working through a long version of Pink Floyd's Comfortably Numb. Then some Elvis. Next, he cued his electronic sound system up to the lead in to the guitar solo of Hotel California and played that. Polite applause all around.

There is an equal amount of English and Hebrew in the area because this is tourist central. There is also Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Italian and a bunch of languages I'm not expert enough to identify. I still had nothing that I needed to buy so I walked past the jewelry, the books, the home goods and the cell phones and did nothing in particular other than enjoy the sunshine, the music and the juice. Onwards towards the Yaffo Gate. Past a trumpet playing guy playing Halleluyah (you know the one -- from Shrek) and then another guitarist, this one bald and with tatoos, playing Money for Nothing. I gave him no money because somehow I though that that was the underlying message. Jerusalem is a musical city, Public pianos and music blaring from inside each store. Next up was a chasid strolling by the gate singing a capella. I kept moving. I passed through the gate and into the Old City. It has its own musicbut it never gets old.

I walked through the winding but familiar paths to the kotel. I watched the complex mix of religious students, young and old, unaffiliated Israelis coming to reconnect even if just for a moment, tourists of all stripes, some pilgrims, some merely curious. For the religious folks, some were visiting from abroad and some were locals, for whom the kotel is less a thing to stare at and more a place to exist most fully. I don't know where and how I fit in to all of it. Some people ignored me, some spoke to me in Hebrew and some sussed me out as a tourist quickly and spoke in English (the Armenian store owner who tried to get me to follow down an alley to his shop, and a Yiddish speaking chasid with his 5 children). Groups of students (Israeli) of various levels of religiousity were shepherded towards the wall. Is the wall to them like the Statue of Liberty? An interesting and singular experience? Or is the visit designed to spark more visits and more time? Should I be heartened that they have access to the holiest site we have or disheartened that they go there because of a scheduled class trip?

To get to the wall, one must pass a number of beggars -- some hawking red threads, some offering blessings or playing music and some just sitting, shaking a cup and hoping for donations. Do I help one? All? None? It all makes me sad. Here I am, a spoiled tourist walking to a remaining retaining wall from a destroyed culture, being asked for spare change by a clarinetist. Something about all of this seems wrong. I stood at the wall for a while, hoping for some mystical or even supernatural and ecstatic epiphany. Though that didn't happen, I do feel that I recharged my spiritual batteries, so that's nice. As I sat and contemplated, I was approached by a man whom I did not recognize. He introduced himself as Eric Cohen and said that I was his 11th grade English teacher some 25 years ago. He told me a story of how I threw him out of class and how that led to a particular nickname (Anshi). He did say nice things also, and has gone into education, so I couldn't have screwed him up too much. I hope.

I watched as non-religious boys (wearing the white, plasticky kippot) walk backwards away from the wall. Though they know very little, the still understand, somehow and maybe innately, how to act respectfully at the wall. I sat a little longer and then went inside the covered area in the corner of the wall and saw the revolving series of minyanim. I was quickly recruited for a mincha service which was made "real" by the presence of a small child being held and not held by his father, who cried and screamed "mama" the entire time and was planted directly next to and slightly behind my right ear. Then a quick last word with the wall and I started walking away. I shan't spend too much time on the family of 2 parents and 6 children (American tourists, religious) who acted very disrespectfully and inappropriately at the wall. Most uncool. On the way out I donated my pocket change to a couple of poor people (but not to the ange for a family of accordion lady or the clarinet guy). I saw the Greenfield family on their way IN (in 3 groups, strange for a family of 5) and running late for the tunnel tour. I stopped at Papa Di Pizza for a couple of slices (their motto is something like "money can't buy happiness but it can buy pizza and that's pretty much the same thing"). The pizza was servicible and the music playing was the 74 minute dance remix of Disco Inferno.

Outside the gate, the solo singer now had backing tracks to work with and he was singingAni Maamin and Ashrei to the music of "Heaven" by Bryan Adams. Karaoke gone wild, indeed. The guitarist was ripping through Sweet Child O Mine while young men were walkinig, wearing tefillin at 2 in the afternoon. Up Yaffo to shop for the two esentials that make Maddie's life happy: chewing gum and headbands. I had her on video so that I could be sure to buy the right thing. Saw a Weisbrot, some Bodoffs and (I think) a Hourizadeh. Mr. Candy for gum and Bandana on King George for head accoutrements. Fatherly duties thusly discharged, I headed back. I might read some, maybe grade a paper or two and/or head to Moshikos later for dinner. The possibilities are finite but seem endless.