Strolling Through Old Jerusalem

Tourism is booming in Israel, particularly in Jerusalem. Yet the threat of annihilation from Iran is real. A flare-up of hostilities would quickly halt the flow of visitors.

Israel is a small country where two-thirds of the terrain is desert. It’s a nation where girls and boys must join the military immediately after high school. A land where soldiers armed with machine guns routinely congregate at the confluence of Jewish and Muslim neighborhoods.

As I entered the Jewish Quarter in Old Jerusalem and descended to the temple area, an orthodox rabbi approached me as though I was a long-lost comrade. He spotted my Hebrew-inscribed St. Louis Cardinals T-shirt, which I had bought nearby to cope with the 90-degree heat on an unseasonably hot March day.
“I love Missouri!” my new friend in black assured me. “Let me pray for you.”

He proceeded to ask my name, my wife’s name, the name of my children and the name of my parents, muttering a short heaven-sent prayer for each in between.
What a sweet guy, I thought. Then came the pitch.

“We’re building the temple here,” he told me. “I need a donation of $160.” I thought this kind of fund raising was confined to televangelists. I gave him a few bucks, which left the impression that I was a chintzy American tourist. Maybe he did better with somebody from Oklahoma or Alabama.

I had an interesting buying experience in the Muslim Quarter. Hospitable shopkeepers greet you as though they have all the time in the world. I sat down for a cup of tea before haggling over the price of a pair of fur-lined goat-skinned gloves. Negotiating is an expected part of the process. The prospective buyer starts bidding seriously low while the store owner begins artificially high. In this case, that meant $5 and $67. We met at $18, without me feeling as though I had been ripped off and he realized at least some profit.

In a stall across the walkway I found an opal piece of jewelry for my wife for $30, down from the $140 starting price. When I walked away without paying another $15 for a chain, the seller called me “cheap.” That didn’t encourage me to reconsider.

The peddling doesn’t cease at “holy” sites. Outside the Garden of Gethsemane in the Muslim Quarter, hawkers incessantly shill postcards, palm fronds, hats, bookmarks, and even donkey and camel rides.