Shabbat Shalom. Shalom Yerushelayim

Friday was a weird day.  It started off well enough.  Jen, the kids, Bryant, Mary, Ian, and Mark headed out to the Mount of Olives to track down the grave marker of the great, great grandfather who is buried there.  I assigned myself the task of walking several blocks to the cleaners to pick up our laundered clothing.  I saw everyone off, wished them well, donned my iPod shuffle, and shuffled-off to the laundry.  I arrived several minutes later to find our clothing ready to go.  I picked up the canvas laundry bags, hoisted one onto my shoulder and slung the second, lighter one onto my back and headed back down Ze’ev Jabotinsky Street to the intersection with King David Street.  Along the way, I rested and continued on.  I crossed the busy King David/Jabotinsky intersection with my bundles and turned a bit northeast toward the Yemin Moshe  Montefiore windmill, listening to Stewart Copland’s Rhythmatist in my ears.  I was a happy tourist.  

Ian searches in vain at Mount of Olives for great, great grandad's final resting place.... (photo by Ella)

Continuing in my happiness, after I dropped off the clean clothes at our apartment on Hamevasser Street, I turned the tunes up loud and pointed myself north on King David toward Ben Yehuda where I planned to use the Bank Hapoalim ATM to get some cash before Shabbat, and before we headed out of town on Saturday.  We’d had good luck with that ATM all week. 

I arrived at the corner of Ben Yehuda and Jaffa Road to find a rock band warming up on a stage on the square, and I was bumpin’ ready to get into it after retrieving the ‘ol cash.  I proceeded up the stairs to the large bank on the square to use the outdoor ATM, inserted my card and….uh oh…card going in very slowly.  Very, very slowly.  I poked my finger in to move things along, but I’d been there and done that before that with bad results so I was becoming concerned. Things were not right with this ATM.  After a moment, the card went through, I sighed relieved but not completely, and entered my transaction.  I pressed “enter” and waited for my 1,000 shekels to be regurgitated  through the mouth of the ATM. The machine said, first, “take your card.”  Problem! Said card was regurgitated by said ATM in a way that would not allow me to retrieve it.  I stuck my finger in, again, to try to coax the plastic lifeline from its keeper, but no.  And then, the unthinkable:  “Your card has been retained.” RETAINED! WTF! NO WAY! Okay, don’t panic, go into the bank and tell them what happened.  No can do, bro.  Bank is closed on Friday.  CLOSED ON FRIDAY! WTF! NO WAY! Wait there’s an emergency number posted on the bank’s front door.  I’ve got my cell phone and this is certainly an emergency, so I dial.  Of course, I get a phone tree on the other end of the line…. IN HEBREW! WTF! NO WAY!  Okay, now I’m getting worried because tomorrow’s Shabbat and we’re leaving Jerusalem and aren’t planning to return.  

Tourists beware: This bank sucks.

Long story short:  So called “emergency number” completely useless; the abrupt Israeli lady on the other end of the line tells me it’s my problem.  Sorry.  So, no dice on retrieving the debit card, and the machine debited my account for money I didn’t get.  I’m very unhappy.  I really could have been up a creek but, fortunately, Jen’s got an ATM card that can access our joint account.  Still, I’m pissed because this means I’ve got to call Bank of America, cancel the damned ATM card, and file a claim report  with Bank of America for the debited money. That’s precious minutes on my prepaid cell phone. WTF! 

Next stop, meet Jen at Budget car rental place near our apartment to rent our car fore the remainder of the Israel leg of the trip.  Two hours later, I’m finally able to drive a Mazda 3 out of the driveway with an empty tank of gas. 

There’s more, but I’ll spare you the finer points.  It wasn’t a banner afternoon on Day 8 of our trip. 

Things got substantially better that evening, however.  In the late afternoon, we found ourselves in the Old City’s Armenian and Muslim Quarter souks. Mark was searching from Roman coins, which he found in a nice shop and the rest of us just looked at all of the junk and cool stuff for sale, drank some juice, and avoided the shop owners. Sam coveted a fake, small dagger so we negotiated a price for that with the shop owner.  Funny.

Our Old City tour guide, Moshe (who’s an IDF buddy of Jen’s brother, Barak), had invited all of us to his family’s home in the Jewish settlement of Har Homa for Shabbat dinner.  Ian and Mark declined the invitation, but the rest of us were excited to go, so we piled into  our rented Mazda 3 and sped south toward Bethlehem (the real one; not the rusted steeltown in Pennsylavnia) at about 6:15pm. 

It was the beginning of a beautiful evening.  We made it there easily, with Jenny Jenkins at the wheel, and proceeded to apartment 5.  Moshe’s lovely, petite, and ebullient Japanese wife, Tamar, answered the door holding a baby and accompanied by her daughters Sarah (9) and Nama (5). After mutual introductions, and finding out that we’d procured a bottle of Bombay Sapphire Gin for Uncle Mordechai (Barak’s recommendation), Tamar sent us one floor above to his apartment to make the delivery. Sarah and Nama served as our fairy-ambassadors and announced our arrival to Mordechai who emerged quickly to insist that we call him Merlin and invited us to come in to have a drink with him.  We all proceeded to his apartment’s balcony; a spectacular view of Israel/Palestine, looking southwest. Merlin pointed out Bethlehem just across the main drag and some other surrounding Palestinian villages.  He provided generous helpings of gin, offered the kids some orange juice, and engaged Bryant and me in what was to be the beginning of a thoughtful thrust and parry.

At just before sundown, after receiving a kind admonition from Merlin about the use of electronic devices following sunset, we made it back down to Moshe and Tamar’s to say the blessing over the candles and get the Shabbat ball rolling. Meanwhile our kids were hitting it off with theirs – Sam quickly becoming the object of nine year-old Sarah’s attention -- and the Sabbath Bride was welcomed heartily.  Tamar served a wonderful dinner of olives, hummus, etc. along with Shepherd’s pie, and veggies. We discussed the Jews and Catholics on the U.S. Supreme Court, Uncle Barak’s affection for animals in his youth which drove my anti-pet mother in law crazy, and the advantages and disadvantages of a written constitution, and Merlin’s writings on Maimonides.  

Several hours and strands of discussion later, we decided it was time to go and piled back into the rental car to make way for Yemin Moshe.   It was really an extraordinary evening, not just because Merlin, Tamar, and Moshe are nice, interesting, and smart people, but because of the honor of being able to celebrate Shabbat with new old friends in Jerusalem.  This is reality in Israel.  Important for us and the kids to experience and try to understand.  Perhaps it would have been less interesting had we not spent it in Har Homa, one of the more controversial of the new settlements, and with people who understand the settlement’s origins and might feel somewhat uneasy about what it means to reside there. That is an important slice of Israel which, if you examine it, is extraordinarily complex. I knew this before, but it was an abstraction.  No longer.

Shalom Yerushelayim.