A Forgotten Museum and other Jerusalem, Israel Off The Beaten Path Tips

Rockefeller Center may be a major tourist attraction in NY, but the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem gets few visitors these days. It is an archeology museum that dates back to the British Mandate. While completely low-tech, with none of the jazzy technologies of today?s museums, it is still an intriguing place. The day I took a cab over there, the driver could hardly believe his ears. ?The Rockefeller Museum?? he said. ?No one goes there anymore.? Violent attacks in and around the Old City have kept people away, but things seem to have calmed down lately. Admission, by the way, is free.

It was 2:15 p.m. as I walked in, just as the muezzin began intoning the call to prayer from a nearby mosque. I was almost alone in the imposing stone building, a blend of British colonial and Middle Eastern architecture, built with a $2 million donation from John David Rockefeller Jr. Interest in archeology was growing, and artifacts were sent to Istanbul because Palestine lacked a museum to house them.

The chosen site, Karm el-Sheikh, was directly across from the Old City walls. Work began in 1930, only to be halted for 3 years by the discovery of ancient graves. The museum finally opened on January 13, 1938, but the official ceremony was called off after one of the guests, a well-known British archeologist, was murdered by Arab villagers on his way to Jerusalem.

Without being the world?s most exciting museum, the high ceilings, arched doorways, Armenian tiles, hexagonal central tower, Alhambra-inspired inner courtyard, and cavernous exhibition halls do impart a special atmosphere. Among the more interesting exhibits are carved wooden panels from al-Aqsa Mosque, a mosaic floor from Ein Gedi inscribed with an ancient curse, a 100,000-year old skeleton holding a flint scraper and a roomful of stone birds and human figures from Hisham?s Palace near Jericho.

The halls were freezing when I was there in the winter, although I imagine a stroll through the museum might be a nice escape from the broiling heat in the summer.

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Phone: 02-6282251
Other Contact: 10:30 am - 3 pm, Friday - closed

SAN SIMON MONASTERY, Katamon

It is hard to imagine, but this little Greek Orthodox monastery, with its silver dome, bell tower and stone fence, sitting so peacefully in the middle of a grassy park, was once the scene of a bloody battle.

In April 1948, during Israel"s War of Independence, the Palmach fought the Arab Legion for control of Katamon (Greek for "near the monastery"). It was on a hill overlooking Jewish neighborhoods, and gaining control of it was a vital military objective.

The most fortified building in the area was the church, built in 1859 over the tomb of St. Simon of Jerusalem (the fellow in the New Testament who cradled baby Jesus in his arms and prophesied that he would go on to great things...).

The Arabs were driven out and the church was taken over by Israeli troops. One of the Israelis remembers the clanging of the bells in the bell tower and the sound of smashing glass as bullets whizzed through the windows, shattering window panes and hanging lamps.

Of the 120 Israelis who took part in battle, 40 died and 60 were wounded. The injured lay on the floor of the besieged church and the situation seemed hopeless. In desperation, the remaining fighters considered the "Masada option" - blowing up the building and committing mass suicide rather than dying at the hands of the Arabs. The commanding officer, Yitzhak Rabin (who went on to become an Israeli prime minister) would not hear of it. The battle resumed with renewed vigor and the tides turned. The commander of the Arab forces, seeing defeat before his eyes, got into his jeep and sped off.

I visited San Simon in April, 57 years after that terrible campaign. The gate of the monastery, usually locked, was wide open. I walked in. In the dim light of the church, I made out a group of Christian pilgrims gathered around a table-like structure in the corner, covered by a slab of marble. The pilgrims took turns laying their heads on the marble. If you listen carefully, they said, you can hear the beating of St. Simon's heart.
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If you keep your eyes open as you walk down Jaffa Road - Rehov Yafo - Jerusalem's "Main Street," you will come across buildings with strange histories. Tucked between the dollar stores, clothing shops and kiosks, hidden behind a high wall and an iron gate, is a beautiful old Arab mansion embellished with stone carvings.

Today it belongs to the Ministry of Health. Air-conditioners are mounted on the windows and black electric wiring is strung in crazy loops across the yard. For many years it was the laboratory of the District Health Office. This laboratory was run by Prof. Werner Zilberstein, a German Jewish physician who was a close friend of my husband's family for many years. Uncle Werner, as he was known, a charming and erudite man, lived alone in his elegant Jerusalem apartment, attending classical music concerts and entertaining friends (he even had a girlfriend - my mother-in-law) until way past 100. He died at the age of 102.

Ask the Russian security guard at the gate about the history of this building, where travelers headed for exotic destinations used to come for their shots (faded notices hanging on the iron gates attest to that). He will stare at you blankly. Even the taxi drivers who pass by every day are oblivious to the building's creepy past. But the old-timers know.

In the 19th century, the house belonged to a wealthy Arab family whose son died on his wedding day. But they didn't let that spoil the party. They dressed him in his suit, sat him on a chair - and went ahead with the wedding as planned.

Since then, Jerusalemites have called it the House of the Dead Groom.

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The streets off Jaffa Road in downtown Jerusalem are a world of their own. Just past Zion Square is a small street called Rehov Harav Kook, named for Rabbi Kook, Israel's first chief rabbi, who was greatly revered for his "modern" approach to Israel and Zionism. On one side of the street stands a handsome stone building with carved wooden doors and balconies of intricate black grillwork that housed the Italian Consulate in the late 19th century.

This building has had a colorful history in itself. Over the years it changed hands, serving as the Lebanon Hotel, the offices of The Jerusalem Post, and the home of a famous local design and crafts shop called Maskit. I vividly remember the fashion shows held here in the 1970s. Now it is the Franciscan House, where Catholic mass is held in Hebrew.

Directly across the street is a little alleyway with signs pointing you to Beit Ticho, the home of a famous eye doctor and his artist wife, Anna - today a museum and garden cafe. In a stone courtyard off this narrow lane is the home and studio of Moshe Zvi Berger, an artist from Transylvania who paints what he describes as "modern religious pictures." They even have the "kosher stamp" of a rabbi (he will gladly show you Rabbi Mayer Yehuda Getz's endorsement if you have any doubt).

Berger lives in one room, puttering around and listening to classical music. When visitors come, he escorts them into his "Museum of Psalms," a set of rooms with vaulted ceilings where his brightly colored acrylic illustrations of the Psalms cover the walls. He sells prints of these paintings for NIS 95 apiece, with explanations on the back. Every color has mystical significance. Purple, he told me, is the color of wisdom. Red is courage, and light blue - mercy and compassion.

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Other Contact: Rabbi Kook Street, off of Jaffa

Wherever you dig in Israel, vestiges of the past leap up at you. Build a road, excavate foundations for a building, install an underground pipe – any kind of earthwork leads to archeological finds. Many blueprints have had to be changed and roads rerouted as construction teams stumble upon old burial caves, ancient arches and ritual baths.

Wedged between the homes on a quiet street in the middle of Rehavia, an upscale residential neighborhood, is a funerary monument with a pyramid-shaped roof from the late Hellenistic-early Roman period: Jason’s Tomb – in Hebrew, Kever Yason. No one knows for sure who this Yason was, but he is believed to have been a high priest from a wealthy priestly family forced out of Jerusalem by rivals in 172 B.C.E. (according to the writings of the famous historian Josephus).

The tomb, dating to the 2nd century B.C.E., was discovered accidentally in 1956, when a house was being built. It sits back from the street, inside a little courtyard with vines growing up around it – a kind of secluded secret garden you would never see unless you were specifically looking for it. Inside the tomb are rock-cut burial niches. A charcoal drawing of naval vessels discovered on the wall has led to speculations that Yason may have had some connection to shipping.

A Greek and Aramaic epitaph reads: A powerful lament make for Yason, son of P…(my brother) peace…who hast built thyself a tomb, Elder rest in peace.

Thanks to this tomb in town, Yason, long dead and gone, still lives on in some people’s minds (admittedly, not many…).

(10 Alfassi Street - Make a left on Radak Street and then a right)
Buses: 9, 19, 31, 32

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“Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare” (Psalms 124:7)

I can still see them in my mind’s eye: dozens of black birds, their wings spread, circling the Western Wall as the sun rose over the Old City on that morning in May.

One of my brothers was celebrating his bar-mitzvah that day (when a Jewish boy turns 13, he is ushered in as a member of the community by performing certain rites, one of them wearing tefillin – phylacteries - and being counted as an adult in a prayer quorum.)

The whole family went with him to the wall to pray that morning. It was very early. The air was cool, and the plaza in front of the wall, usually crowded with visitors, was almost deserted. We could come right up to the wall and touch the ancient stones. They were smooth and worn. Stuck in every crack and crevice as far up as people can reach were little bits of paper (it is customary to stick a “kvitl” in the wall inscribed with a prayer or wish). Higher up, various species of plants, among them thorny caper bushes with delicate purple and white flowers, jutted out between the stones.

But those birds – they kept hovering overhead. Around and around they went, silent and eerie.

They appear every day at the crack of dawn, an old woman told us. They are the souls of the dead.

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Mary's Spring, Ein Karem

Ein Karem (“Spring of the Vineyard”) is one of those neighborhoods that landscape painters adore: winding lanes, old stone houses, cypress and olive trees, creeping vines - attractive, but in a kind of rambling, disorganized way. It is not so much a neighborhood as a little village at the bottom of a terraced valley in western Jerusalem.

Apart from being a quiet, pretty place (although there are times when the
road leading down to it is choked with tourist buses), the draw of Ein Karem lies in its being the traditional birthplace of John the Baptist. According to the New Testament, his parents, Elizabeth and Zacharias, lived in an unnamed village in the “hill country” of Judea, which the Byzantines decided fit the description.

The Virgin Mary (Miriam, in Hebrew), newly pregnant, spent three months here with her cousin Elizabeth (Elisheva, in Hebrew), who was also pregnant. It was a great escape from the gossip in Nazareth, and besides, Elizabeth had no one to talk to, because her husband, hearing that his old barren wife was expecting a child, had been struck dumb.

Tradition holds that when Elizabeth first greeted Mary as she neared the village, a spring of water welled up at the feet of the two women. Another version is that Mary drank from this spring before she climbed the hill to Elizabeth’s house.

This little trickle of water, which you can still see today, has been known since the 14th century as the Spring of the Virgin, or Mary’s Spring. Of course it was probably a lot purer back then. Today I wouldn’t advise anyone to drink from it. About 100 years ago, the Arabs built a mosque and minaret over the site, and used it as a primary school. Since the 1950s, the building has been vacant, but Mary’s Spring, covered by a stone archway, continues to attract a stream of Christian pilgrims and tourists.

Take the 17 or 17a bus to Ein Karem.

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When I travel to another country, going to the zoo is not usually my top priority. My figure is that zoo animals are usually more or less the same wherever you go, so better to spend my limited time on sites unique to that country.

But the zoo in Jerusalem really is in a class all its own. The Tisch Family Zoological Gardens, as it is officially called – everyone knows it as the “Biblical Zoo” - is a zoo that focuses on animals mentioned in the Bible. Not that you won’t see others: Another focus is endangered species, a number of which are being bred in captivity with the hope of returning them to the wild. But unlike other zoos in the world, the cages and enclosures here sport signs quoting relevant passages from the Bible.

For 41 years, the Biblical Zoo was in Romema, near a very religious neighborhood. It was a small zoo, just over an acre in size, with a rather skimpy collection of animals. The landscaping was nothing to write home about, and it was a pretty dismal place with more empty cages than filled ones. More interesting than the animals were the visitors: The zoo was always crowded with black-garbed ultra-Orthodox Jews with countless children in tow.

In 1993, the zoo moved to a new location in Malha, a neighborhood in southwestern Jerusalem. It now covers 62 acres of land, with a large artificial lake in the middle and enclosures that try to recreate the animals’ natural habitat. It is beautifully landscaped, with lawns and flowers and well-marked pathways.

Tip: Wear good walking shoes and don’t forget a hat and a bottle of water. This is a very hilly zoo, and it can get pretty hot. You can also take the zoo train up to the higher level, and walk down.

If you get tired, have some ice cream on the deck of Noah’s Ark. Inside is an auditorium for films and lectures, and a room with computers for more information about the animals.

Opening hours: Sunday – Thursday 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Saturday 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Friday and holiday eves – 9 – 16:30.

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If you are visiting Israel with a group, are willing to spend a little money, and want to do something different, call up the Zoo Rabbi – Rabbi Nosson Slifkin. This British-born rabbi gives 2.5- 3 hour tours of the zoo (in English) that mix zoology, Bible, ethics and stand-up comedy. I haven’t done this myself, but I read some articles about his tours in the paper, and spoke to him personally before writing this tip. He takes a flat rate of $250 (admission to the zoo is separate) and needs a few days’ advance notice.

The monkey in the photo is a Golden Lion Tamarin, a highly endangered primate species. There are only about 1,000 of them left in the wild. The Biblical Zoo is one of a number of zoos in the world trying to breed these cute fellas in captivity, to save them from extinction.

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Phone: Rabbi Slifkin: 0554-995058
Website: zoorabbi@zootorah.com

The Cenacle on Mt. Zion, also known as the Room of the Last Supper, is an example of the kind of religious tug-of-war that has gone on in this country for thousands of years. Over the centuries, a tradition grows up about some religious event occurring at a certain site – and all the religions want to get in on the act.

According to a Christian tradition, the second floor of the building housing King David’s Tomb is the place where Jesus celebrated the Passover feast with his disciples before he was arrested. There is also a tradition that he appeared here again after his resurrection. The word “cenacle” means dining room.

The hall we see today was built by the Crusaders, with ornate capitals and vaulted ceilings. One capital is decorated with pelicans – a symbol of Christ, based on the observation of the Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder that pelicans will feed their young with their own blood, sacrificing themselves if need be.

The Franciscans bought the site in 1335. In the early 15th century, the Jews tried to purchase the building to gain control of the tomb on the first floor. At that point the Muslims stepped in, banned the Christians from setting foot there, and transformed the site into a mosque honoring Nabi Daoud (the Prophet David). A “mihrab” (prayer niche) and a “minbar” (pulpit) were added, along with various Arabic inscriptions.

The Room of the Last Supper is thus a mish-mash of Crusader and Islamic architecture: columns, vaults, stained glass windows, prayer niches. Even so, the room has a kind barren look. The latest addition is a rather sad-looking bronze olive tree - the gift of the Catholic association that renovated the building in more recent times.

Somehow, none of this looks anything like the venue of the Last Supper in Leonardo da Vinci's painting...

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