We’re going out to dinner, and we have seats with the best view in the world.
I’m a grandmother, so I’ve seen a few spectacular views in my life: from the Eiffel Tower and Mount Fuji, from the Grand Canyon and the London Shard, from the Iguassu Falls in Brazil and the Blue Nile in Ethiopia.
But spread out before me on the hillside, in glittering stone as the sun begins to set, like a tender heavenly candle, is Jerusalem.
Beauty is, of course, in the eyes of the beholder – or, as William Shakespeare said, “Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye.”
We’re sitting at the lookout where Abraham and Isaac (my uncle’s name) first spotted Mount Moriah.
“Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. Abraham said to his servants, ‘Stay here…”’ (Genesis 22:4-5).
My late father’s name was Abraham. My oldest child’s name is Abraham. And now, after all these generations with their vicissitudes of Jewish history, we are again privileged to gaze at the Temple Mount – and at a city growing upward and outward.
I have a flashback to the expulsion after the fall of Betar. Historian Heinrich Graetz wrote in History of the Jews:
“From among the youths above 17 years of age, the tallest and handsomest were selected for the Roman triumphs, whilst others were sent to labor in the mines for the rest of their lives, or were relegated to the Roman provinces to take their part in the fights of the arena. Youths under the age of 16 and most of the female captives were sold into slavery at an incredibly low price, for the market was glutted. How many scenes of horror must have been witnessed and enacted by those unfortunate ones?”
Jewish heritage
WHEN I’M challenged in a political argument and asked where I come from, I answer that my roots are with Abraham and Sarah, that my family left what is now Israel in 135, transported by the long-gone Romans to Ostia, the port near Rome (I’ve been there, too). We spent 900 years in Poland, took refuge in Connecticut, and then made it back home to Jerusalem.
Graetz is said to be lachrymose. I’m that way, too, but I haven’t come to this spot tonight to wax emotional. We’ve come tonight to eat dinner.
Auto Ohel, the annual Jerusalem Food Truck Festival, has been moved from the ingloriously named Hinnom Valley (hinnom means “hell”) to Armon Hanatziv (“the palace of the commissioner”) from the thankfully bygone days of the British Mandate. My husband and I are here with friends, celebrating their aliyah a year ago from Las Vegas.
I love the concept of the Food Truck Festival, with Jerusalem’s finest restaurants paring down their menus to food truck applications.
“Applications” – that’s a good word. You are advised to download the application on your smartphone with a QR code. We overcame the challenge.
I admit a fondness for food from a truck. My youthful experience of it in Connecticut was racing to catch up to the distinctive music-box sounds of ice cream trucks. Ice cream trucks, first fitted with a bobsled bell to which children responded like Pavlov’s dog, were invented in 1920 by an Ohio confectioner named Harry Burt.
No running needed here at Auto Ohel. The trucks are stationary, parked on the crest of the hill of what we popularly call the Tayelet (promenade) in East Talpiot, Jerusalem.
The food trucks are lined up, with those serving dairy products separated from the meat ones – a nice touch in our town where kosher is the default.
The existence of such a variety of kosher traditional and gourmet restaurants in Jerusalem is a happy reflection of the creativity and vibrancy of the city. We grandparents all go for a local favorite: asado – pulled beef; what they call “ribs” in the American South and what my family called flanken growing up. Three different restaurant trucks offer it, so you can choose from asado on Oriental buns, in a pita, or in a challah sandwich.
THE BEAUTY of the setting is enhanced by the crowd: hundreds of mostly young Israelis. Many are in the regular army and on leave, identifiable by the weapons slung over their shoulders. Others are holding the hands of their small children, and probably serving in the reserves. It’s summer vacation, and the usual vacation haunts in the North and South are closed because of the war, so there are lots of families here.
Jerusalem’s cool evening breeze ameliorates the heat. The mystics praise the very air of Jerusalem.
There’s also a free concert on Wednesdays. Bringing their lively music to the evening we were there was Hadag Nahash, the popular Israeli hip hop and funk band that got together in Jerusalem 28 years ago.
The band and audience express their hope for the return of the hostages, naming Jerusalemite Hersh Goldberg-Polin.
In a particularly stirring moment, the band plays its “Stickers Song.” The song was written in 2004 by Jerusalem novelist and bereaved parent David Grossman. It draws on the contradictory bumper stickers of the time. Twenty years later, the song has become a classic. The young audience, most of whom were in nursery school when this dark humor song was written, sing along with the band. “Dor shalem doresh shalom, tnu l’ tzhalal l’natcheach...” – “An entire generation demands peace, let the IDF win; a strong nation makes peace, let the IDF hit hard.”
Somehow, we Israelis have retained a sense of humor about ourselves. We have the equanimity to accept that 20 years after the “Stickers Song” was written, it’s still relevant – and the resignation to realize that it may be relevant in the future.
Whence comes our resilience?
An evening like this, drawing on the beauty and strength of our country, helps.
The final act: The night sky is illuminated. This time, it’s not rockets heading our way and laser-directed Iron Dome interceptions. It is light returning skyward, reflected from Jerusalem of gold.
The best view in the world.
The writer is the Israel director of public relations at Hadassah, the Women’s Zionist Organization of America. Her latest book is A Daughter of Many Mothers.