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ISRAEL
Writing - Under, Beside, and On the Wall
By Jheri St. James
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Temple Mount looking towards
the Garden of Gethsemane and the Mount of Olives in
Jerusalem, Israel. Note the "Wailing Wall"
in the right front foreground. Above Right: No words
necessary.
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The State of Israel seems to get more written
about it in the press more than any other country on earth.
The human activities on this soil are like a boil on the face
of Mother Gaia, a place where ancient toxins are trying to
break free and be released--a heated, painful process. From
Gilgamesh to Moshe Katsav, foment and ferment have characterized
life in this land. Gilgamesh was an historical king of Uruk
in about 2700 B.C. Many stories and myths were written about
him on clay tablets which still survive, in the Sumerian language,
which bears no relation to any other human language. Versions
of the Gilgamesh stories survive in Akkadian (the Semitic
language related to Hebrew spoken by the Babylonians) but
also on tablets written in Hurrian and Hittite (an Indo-European
language, a family of languages which includes Greek and English).
Twelve stone tablets were found in 669-633 B.C. and were written
by Shin-eqi-unninni, the oldest known human author we can
name. Written words will be found to have enormous importance
in the story of Israel.
 For
instance, the name “Israel” is rooted in the Hebrew
Bible, where Jacob was renamed Israel after wrestling with
a mysterious adversary. (“a man”, and later “God”
according to Genesis 32.24-30; or “the angel”,
according to Hosea 12:4). The biblical nation fathered by
Jacob/Israel was then called “The Children of Israel”
or the “Israelites”. Citizens of the modern State
of Israel are referred to, in English, as “Israelis”.
(The angel proceeded to change his name to Yisrael, “because
you fought with God and with men and you triumphed”
(32:29)). The earliest known mention of the name “Israel”,
probably referring to a group of people rather than to a place,
is the Egyptian Merneptah Stele (clay tablet shard) dated
to about 1211 BCE. This is an ancient word.
The State of Israel is an arrowhead-shaped country
in Western Asia on the southeastern edge of the Mediterranean
Sea and is bordered by Lebanon in the north, Syria, Jordan
and the West Bank in the east, and Egypt and the Gaza Strip
in the south-west. It has coastlines on the Mediterranean
in the west and the Gulf of Eilat (also known as the Gulf
of Aqaba) in the south.  It
is a parliamentary democracy and the world’s only Jewish
state. For over 3,000 years, some Jews have regarded the Land
of Israel as their homeland, both as a Holy Land and as a
Promised Land. The land of Israel holds a special place in
Jewish religious obligations, encompassing Judaism’s
most important sites—including the remains of the First
and Second Temples, as well as the rites concerning those
temples. Starting around 1200 BCE, a series of Jewish kingdoms
and states existed intermittently in the region for more than
a millennium.
Under Assyrian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek, Roman, Byzantine,
and Sassanian rule, Jewish presence in the province dwindled
due to mass expulsions, in particular, the failure of the
Bar Kochba Revolt against the Roman Empire. It was during
this time that the Romans gave the name Syria Palaestina to
the geographic area, in an attempt to erase Jewish ties to
the land. The Mishnah and Jerusalem Talmud, two of Judaism’s
most important religious texts, were composed in the region
during the period. The Muslims conquered the land from the
Byzantine Empire in 638 CE. The area was ruled by various
Muslim states (interrupted by the rule of the Crusaders) before
becoming part of the Ottoman Empire in 1517.
 There
have been five distinct waves of Jewish immigration to Israel—the
first in 1881; another in 1904-1014; a third in 1919-1923;
and the fourth in 1924-1929 after World War I. The rise of
Nazism in 1933 led to the fifth wave of Aliyah, increasing
Jews in the region from 11% of the population in 1922 to 30%
by 1940. By this time 28 percent of the land had been legitimately
bought and was owned by Zionist organizations, plus additional
private land owned by Jews. The Holocaust in Europe led to
additional immigration from other parts of Europe. By the
end of World War II, the number of Jews in Palestine was approximately
600,000.
In 1947, following increasing levels of violence
together with unsuccessful efforts to reconcile and Jewish
and Arab populations, the British government decided to withdraw
from the Palestine Mandate. The UN General Assembly approved
the 1947 UN Partition Plan dividing the territory into two
states, with the Jewish area having roughly 55% of the land
and the Arab area roughly 45%. Jerusalem was planned to be
an international region administered by the UN to avoid conflict
over its status. Jews were unhappy with this allotment, as
60% of their territory was in the Negev Desert and not a single
religiously significant site was included. David Ben-Gurion
tentatively accepted the partition, while the Arab League
rejected it. Several Arab attacks on Jewish civilians soon
turned into widespread fighting between Arabs and Jews. On
May 14, 1948, before the expiry of the British Mandate at
midnight on May 15, 1948, the State of Israel was proclaimed,
and the current boiling began, which has been ongoing for
the last half century and more.
“The soil is finally on its way to you
. . . sorry it took so long to collect, but it is a long story
concerning the fact that I had to sell my car and I still
haven’t gotten a replacement but I was able to get a
car from my kibbutz and make the trip finally.
“I want you to know that I am a channel in Israel for
the 72 Angels of the Tree of Life and also a medium. When
I go to visit Mount of Beatitudes every few months I meditate
there and channel the spirit of Jesus of Nazareth. I asked
Jesus of Nazareth for a message for you and I have attached
it to this message.
“I don’t know if you are spiritual at all or
believe in channeling but it really doesn’t matter because
what is said in the channel is true. This soil was blessed
and has love energies and people who can feel energies will
feel it. I gave it to a good friend who can see and feel energies
to hold and he told me he felt strong waves of love coming
from the soil.
“The soil is quite damp because it rained a few hours
before I collected it but you can dry it out if you want .
. . I feel very honored that I could send this soil to you
since it has special meaning . . . the angels wanted me to
do this. I also sent you angelic help and the angels told
me they are helping you with the project.
“The angels want to say one last thing to you: ‘Know
that the energies of love will be emanating from this work
and many people will be affected by it. You are doing a wonderful
service for mankind and we honor you for it.’ Shalom
and Peace, Carol Levine” – Soil Collector from
the Mount of Beatitudes, Israel. (The Church of the Beatitudes
is located on the Mount of Beatitudes, which is where Jesus
delivered his Sermon on the Mount.)
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The Church of the Beatitudes (Soil
Collection Site), and the Church of All-Nations |
 
The Church of All Nations, officially named
the Basilica of the Agony, is located at the Mount of Olives
in Jerusalem next to the Garden of Gethsemane. It enshrines
a section of bedrock in the Garden of Gethsemane that is believed
to be where Jesus prayed on the night of his arrest (Matthew
26:36). The Basilica of the Agony was built from 1919 to 1924
using funds from 12 different countries, which gave it its
common name, Church of All nations. The symbols of each country
that contributed to the church are incorporated into the inlaid
gold ceilings of each of 12 cupolas, which rest on six monolithic
pillars. The Church of All Nations lies on the foundations
of two earlier churches: a 12th century Crusader chapel abandoned
in 1345 and a 4th-century Byzantine basilica, destroyed in
an earthquake in 746.
And so goes the story of Israeli and human life—evolving
atop former lives, which gradually sink into the soil then,
in Israel, becoming caves, like the Avshalom and the Ramle
Caves. Recently Israeli scientists said they had discovered
a prehistoric ecosystem dating back millions of years in the
Ramle Cave during rock drilling at a quarry. Eight previously
unknown species of crustaceans and invertebrates similar to
scorpions were found, all of them unknown to science. The
cave ecosystem probably dates back around 5,000,000 years,
when the Mediterranean Sea covered part of Israel.
 
* * *
 The
underground world of caves offers more in Israel: the Dead
Sea Scrolls, discovered by chance by a Bedouin tribe in the
winter of 1947 in caves on the northwestern shores of the
Dead Sea. Excavations have continued since 1956, but the original
seven scrolls are all that have been found. Most scholars
have concluded that Khirbet Qumran and its environs were inhabited
by a sect of Jewish Essenes. The majority of the scrolls are
written in Hebrew, but there are also texts in Aramaic Greek.
The illustration is of a frament of a Dead Sea Scroll - Palestine:
Qumran, Cave 4; 1st century A.D. Parchment and ink. It is
housed at the Oriental Museum. This fragment from a Hebrew
manuscript was once part of a library of scrolls hidden in
caves near the Dead Sea. The parchment texts, wrapped in linen
and stored in pottery jars, were hidden in the first century
A.D. and recovered between 1947 and 1956, at which time they
became known as the Dead Sea Scrolls. The biblical writings
on many of these scrolls are the earliest known Hebrew copies
of Old Testament texts. The text on this fragment comes from
a non- biblical Essene psalter, similar to the Psalms of the
Bible."
A soil other than cave dirt is the Ramon Crater
in the Negev Desert. It contains geological formations unparalleled
in the world, presenting a fascinating story of geomorphologic
evolution. Shaped like an elongated heart, the crater is 40
kilometers long, 2 to 10 kilometers wide, 500 millimeters
deep, and is part of the Ramon nature Reserve that includes
also the surrounding Negev mountains. The formation began
hundreds of millions of years ago when the ocean that covered
the Negev began to move north.
Men bring holy prayer writings to the Western or Wailing
Wall, a retaining wall in Jerusalem that dates from the time
of the Jewish Second Temple. It is sometimes referred to as
the al-Buraq Wall, in a mix of English and Arabic. In recent
centuries, Jews were allowed little or no access to the site
until the Israel Defense Forces won a victory in the 1967
Six Day War. According to Judaism’s religious texts,
when the legions of Titus destroyed the Temple, only a part
of an outer courtyard “western wall” remained
standing as a bitter reminder to the Jews that Rome had vanquished
Judea. Some Jews, however, attribute it to a promise made
by God that some part of the holy temple would be left standing
as a sign of God’s unbroken bond with the Jewish people
in spite of the catastrophes which had befallen them. Jews
believe that that spot has greater holiness than any other
accessible place on Earth. The tradition of placing prayers
on a small piece of paper into a crack in the Wall goes back
thousands of years and the prayers are pleas that god return
to the Land of Israel, ingather all the Jewish exiles, rebuild
the Third Temple and bring the messianic era with the arrival
of Jewish Messiah. Many Jews spend their last years near the
walls of Jerusalem, spending much of their time in tearful
prayer in front of the wall.
The site is also holy to Muslims who believe Solomon to
be a prophet. Muslims believe that Muhammad made a spiritual
journey to Jerusalem on a winged horse, al-Buraq, in 620 A.D.
While there, he tethered his horse to a wall, which some Muslims
believe to be the Western Wall. Due to the holiness of the
site in Islam, in 687 A.D. Muslims built the Dome of the Rock
and the nearby Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount, encompassed
by the wall.
On February 16, 2004, a portion of a stone retaining wall
that forms one side of the Western Wall Plaza and supports
the ramp that leads from the plaza to the Gate of the Moors
collapsed. On March 30, 20056, the wall was found to have
been the target of vandals. The word “Allah” in
half-meter tall Arabic script was found newly etched into
the eastern wall of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. The word
was discovered on a section of the 2,000 year old wall and
the vandalism was attributed to a team of Jordanian engineers
and Palestinian laborers in charge of repairing that section
of the wall.
In January of 2004, the Guardian Unlimited wrote in a headline:
“Jewish Women Fight Holy War”, a story about a
group known as Women of the Wall, an organization launched
in 1990 to challenge centuries of tradition that permits only
men to wear shawls and speak prayers from the Torah at the
wall. But the organization’s broader aim is to break
the grip of men over Orthodox religious practices that, among
other things, exclude women from becoming rabbis. A female
speaker said, “Judaism has no dogmas; you can interpret
it. We say the Torah has at least 70 interpretations, so why
not a feminist one also that says we don’t need men
to represent us before God?” Orthodox members of the
Israeli parliament drafted a bill to amend an existing law
that regulates behavior at holy places, including a prison
sentence for women wearing a prayer shawl or reading aloud
from the Torah near the Wailing Wall of three years. The women’s
struggle has been before Israeli courts. “Some of the
Orthodox men spat on us, beat us, threw rocks,” said
another female speaker. “Many many women we meet there
hush us when we start to pray out loud, because they believe
it is forbidden by religious law. When we said the men couldn’t
hear us from their part of the wall, one of the rabbis answered,
“The wall hears you and it is offended.”
MENDING WALL, Robert Frost
Something there is that doesn't
love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
to please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
no one has seen them made or heard them made,
but at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
and on a day we meet to walk the line
and set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
we have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
one on a side. It comes to little more:
there where it is we do not need the wall:
he is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
if I could put a notion in his head:
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Oh, just another kind of out-door
game,
one on a side. It comes to little more:
there where it is we do not need the wall:
he is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
and eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
if I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
what I was walling in or walling out,
and to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
that wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
but it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
he said it for himself. I see him there
bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."
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(Salt crystals in the Dead Sea) |
“Yes, this is Jesus of Nazareth and
I am being channeled by Carol Levine in Israel at the Mount
of Beautitudes and this is a channeled message to Gary Simpson
who is being sent a cup of holy earth from this place . .
. these energies will stay in these people and it is as if
they will be receiving a personal blessing from this holy
place. When you receive the soil in the mail, be aware of
what you are holding in your hands and know that just by its
being incorporated into this work it will have a positive
effect on many people.”
Writing is a mysterious process; one teacher
called it the highest activity of humans. The written word
can cast a pall of violence over a people, or conversely wave
a wand of serenity. Certainly the writing that has been inscribed
over the millennia in the earth’s country called Israel
represents a compendium of many of man’s thoughts and
beliefs. The tables, the scrolls, the books, the prayer slips,
one word written on the Wall, the heated words in the press,
the e-mail writing of our soil collector, and even this journal
entry are either ephemeral musings in a dying language like
Sumerian, or ageless philosophies of great importance. And
beyond the writings, the foment and ferment of Israel will
lead ultimately either to war or peace. Only Time will be
the judge.
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NASA Image of Israel from space… |
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