Medieval History

Force of Will (Koach Ratzon)

"Stop and look, and you will realize you are in the midst of a miracle." -- Theodore Herzl

Caesarea

This phrase "force of will" started playing in my head within a day of being in Israel. What is it about this land that encourages impossible feats? Sees them through to historical realities that change everything from Nature to God? Here you see what remains of Herod the Great's Caesarea, a harbor he willfully carved out from Israel's absurdly straight shore line (from 22-10 B.C.E. Josephus tells us) in his efforts to flatter and impress the Roman Emperor, Caesar Augustus. It still makes a point, even though the harbor is long gone after the passage of Romans, Byzantines, Persians, Crusaders, Ottomans, and now tourists.

Construction at Caesarea

It has been demonstrated that in order to create this harbor, Herod built cement foundations out into the water itself, sending workers out to dive in order to build a wooden structure held in place by beams into which the concrete was poured. How badly do you have to want to build a harbor to do that? How much do you have to decide you're going to defy convention and received logic? How profoundly do you have to know that this is what needs to happen? Welcome to Israel.

Western Wall of the Temple Mount

Herod would go on to expand the Temple Mount and renovate the Temple itself in Jerusalem in 20-19 B.C.E. and of course he did so on an unprecedentedly grand scale. The Romans destroyed it all in 70 C.E., and many stones (these enormous stones known as Herodian ashlar) still lie today where they fell then. How could Herod know that the harbor he built in Caesarea would be so close to the port city of Haifa, which welcomed Jews arriving to build the country of Israel in the early 20th centutry? How could he know that his massive Western wall would become one of the holiest sites in Judaism? What's amazing about Israel is that you find yourself asking "How could he not?" It's a constant, and insistently seductive, illusion, a kind of spiritual mirage maybe, that here everything adds up; that these events layered so intensely one on top of the other in order to mean one grand thing. Three of the world's major religions have thought so anyway. And I cannot deny reveling in the marvel of these great narratives as they unfold in telling ruins which had no possibility of becoming mundane.

Western Wall of the Temple Mount

I can't show you the image that took my breath away the most, and made me decide on this as the first of several entries I hope to write about this trip. It was Shabbat and taking photographs has fallen under at least a couple of the 39 prohibitions against work that one should honor (has to do with closing a circuit). And so while you see a clear view of the section of the Western Wall that, since the time of Suleiman the Magnificent in the 16th century, has been a sacred site, what you would need to imagine is thousands of people welcoming Shabbat as the sun set. Singing and dancing in enormous circles, rejoicing, laughing, chatting, praying, touching the Wall, walking away from it backwards to keep your gaze lingering upon it longer, just a little bit longer. Having just entrusted small Oliver to David, our guide, who shepherded him through the men's side of the partition, I found myself completely unmoored in this sea of celebration. I was awed then, forever humbled, to think of what was being celebrated: Shabbat, yes, a day of rest and family after so much work - but the scale could get bigger and bigger until it was easy and thrilling to see these throngs made up of Ultra-Orthodox and IDFs, men and women whose faces were upturned in laughter or bent down in prayer, and children for whom these grand occasions are starting to become the rhythm of their lives as celebrating Israel itself: the phenomenal necessity and unlikelihood of this nation state. The force of will (which David did not hesitate to transliterate as "koach ratzon") it took, has taken, still takes for Israel to exist traces many a pendulum swing. But there, in the midst of that perfect joy, it felt like history stood still in acknowledgment of Jewish koach ratzon.

Masada

The last site for this idea is Masada where we once again find Herod, this time amplifying a 2nd century B.C.E. stronghold that he conquered in 43 B.C.E. Here you're seeing the lowest level of this three-tiered defense palace which grasps onto the side of a mountain rock face. It's a small space on the narrow prow of the edge of the cliff, and would have been Herod's private palace. Who builds himself a palace our here in the mountains near the Dead Sea?

View from Masada

No really, who?

View from Masada

It's unspeakably beautiful and terrifically harsh. We climbed up the 1300 feet up to Masada, about a 45 minute hike, at 5 in the morning having spent the night in a Bedouin camp (surely Western tourists have been doing this since the 19th century). The view we had looking up as we were climbing was the same beheld by those who lived the events of 74 C.E.. The Temple in Jerusalem (Herod's great big beautiful idea) had been destroyed in 70 C.E. and now the last of the Jewish resistance had retreated to Masada. Josephus is our only source for the story, so there's controversy as to its absolute veracity, but that doesn't matter for the thousands of IDF soldiers who used to take their oaths there, or the Birthright group from Argentina that was there with us. Or for most of us for that matter.


Masada

You can see better in this photograph taken by a National Geographic helicopter how the Romans built a ramp, whose remains you see stretching down to the right of the rock face; so you can better imagine the siege towers battering away at the walls until finally fire broke through and Masada's defenses began to crumble. So confident were they of their victory, goes the story, that the Romans paused for the night, giving the leaders of Masada time to make their historic suicide pact, leaving 960 dead. Modern archaeology has not found so many bodies, but Yigael Yadin, the grandfather of Israeli archaeology, found the ceramic lots on which names were drawn to decide who would be the last man to kill himself as the Romans came. Two perfectly matched forces of will, with all the historical controversy that entails. And so I'm pushed to think of what is possible, of what is not impossible, from harbors that defy nature, to walls that house the divine, to cliffs that hold very important secrets. Of all the things from this trip that I want to keep reading and learning about Herod the Great emerges as a subject I crave to know more about. That and 1930s Israeli pioneer songs. But that's tomorrow.

- Ancient Seal Discovered In Jerusalem
In archaeological work in the 2,000 year-old drainage channel between the City of David and the Jerusalem Archaeological Garden, remains were discovered of the building closest to the First Temple exposed so far in archaeological excavations. The...

- A-crusading We Will Go
Crusader walls of CaesareaToday was the first day of "The Crusades: Fact, Fiction, and Film," and all was good: enthusiastic students, some work with the five versions of Urban II's speech, the first part of Terry Jones's wonderful documentary,...

- Stones (avanim)
Crusader Column in BethlehemIs it possible to write the world's shortest blog entry? I am so so tired, and tomorrow am giving a talk to my colleagues that I'd like to be peppy for (is 46 images of monsters, orientalism and morality too much for...

- Walls - Eretz Israel/arde Falastin (land Of Israel/land Of Palestine)
Ok, let's talk about the difficult stuff. Somehow, as I thought about writing, I envisioned this post coming towards the end, after a lush and leisurely remembrance of the beauty and wonder of Israel. But that is not to be. Reading those...

- Israel Tomorrow
Rembrandt. Jeremiah Lamenting Jerusalem. 1630This painting does not express the mood all around here, which is one of jubilee and anticipation, but it's just too beautiful a painting to not consider for just a bit. Of all of the things that I have...

Medieval History