EXCERPT
T
he Muslim Quarter of the Old City
of Jerusalem is a warren of cobbled
alleys that twist through arches and
around crooked corners, then suddenly
become stairways as they climb and des-
cend along the ancient contours formed by
the land and the centuries of ruins that lie
below. Behind the stone walls of the houses
that crowd along the edges of these narrow
passageways, tiny, unseen courtyards pro-
vide spots of green, perhaps a lemon tree
and a stable for a donkey, and a common
center of gossip and friendship and family.
In daylight hours, the main alleys ring
to the cries of vendors and the pleas of mer-
chants and the abrasive cackle of radios
tuned to the dissonance of the world out-
side. After noon prayers at al-Aqsa mosque,
a torrent of worshipers floods through el-
Wad Road toward Damascus Gate in a
festival of faces and robes and headdresses.
By dusk, the shops are mostly shuttered,
the alleys empty, and the light soothing.
As the configuration of Jerusalem has
shifted under successive conquerors, Jews
have found various places to live and study
and pray within the Old City walls. Al-
though the Jewish Quarter was the center
of Jewish residence in Jerusalem from an-
tiquity, Jews spread later into the adjacent
area that came to be known as the Muslim
Quarter. In the nineteenth century, Hasidic
religious groups from Eastern Europe
establshed yeshivas and synagogues there,
as close as possible to the place where the
Thmple had stood, had been burned, and—
many believed—would stand again. After
1967, which ended the Jordanian period in
which no Jews were permitted to reside in
the Holy City, efforts to reestablish a
Jewish presence centered on the Jewish
Quarter. But some Jews also had their
sights on formerly Jewish buildings scat-
tered among the Arabs of the adjacent
Muslim Quarter.
The old Jewish presence was clear to
anyone with a keen eye. The shadows could
be seen in many of the doorways—a
shallow hole carved in the stone, a blotch
of concrete or plaster smeared by Arabs to
cover the place where Jews once fastened
the mezuzah, the small case containing a
piece of parchment inscribed with two
passages from Deuteronomy. On the third
story of one stone building, a small, in-
conspicuous synagogue even survived
thanks to the Arab custodian who lived in
an adjoining apartment. The Ibrat Hayim
Synagogue, as it is known, was established
in 1887 and abandoned abruptly in 1948
when the Arab Legion conquered Jeru-
salem; the Jews there fled in such haste
that they left holy books open on the
tables. The Arab neighbor, from the Aby
Lachim family, stacked the 20,000 books
in a small room and thus saved them all;
they included dusty Hebrew commentaries
on the Talmud that were printed in the
1820s in Warsaw. The Holy Ark remained
intact, and the original furniture was
preserved. When the Israeli army entered
the city in 1967, the Arab custodian
presented surprised soldiers with the key.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s about
200 Orthodox Jews took up residence in
the Muslim Quarter once again, reestab-
lishing yeshivas and creating new ones to
study 'Temple rites in preparation for what
they believed would be the coming of the
Messiah and the construction of the Third
Thmple where al-Aqsa mosque and the
Dome of the Rock are now. And in a ges-
ture of pragny tism, one group also in-
stalled plastic windows to thwart Arab
children who periodically stoned their
building.
Some of the Jews were able to insinuate
themselves into a wary, somewhat accom-
modating relationship of neighborliness
with the Arabs. As I walked through the
quarter with Eliezer Gorodetzer, a twenty-
eight-year-ol. nicknamed "Eli" who had
immigrated to Israel thirteen years earlier
from Brookline, Massachusetts, Arab
youngsters called, "Shalom, • Ali!" He
chuckled at the Arabic rendition of his
name. And he carried a pistol beneath his
jacket. At first, Arab families tried to lock
him out of the courtyard through which he
had to pass to get to his apartment; they
used the excuse that they did not want him
to see their women. They relented when he
threatened to break the door down, and the
subsequent relationship evolved into one
of benign courtesy.
But other Jews created trouble so
serious that Mayor Teddy Kollek, fearful
that the precarious balance of Jerusalem's
calm was being disturbed, appealed to the
chief rabbis to press them to leave the
quarter. His concern centered on one
yeshiva that took ex-convicts and turned
them religious. The pious thugs, bearded
and dressed in black, repeatedly beat up
Muslims with clubs, hammers, and iron
bars and got beaten up by Muslims as well.
A stroller through the area could see both
Arabs and Jews bearing bandages and
scars. Yeshiva residents even beat an elder-
ly woman unconscious in an effort to take
B
(mind
for
Wound
How fears and
sterotypes make
co-existence
so difficult.
BY DAVID SHIPLER
Reprinted with permission from
Arab and Jew, Wounded Spirits
in a Promised Land, by David K
Shipler, Copyright © , 1986,
Times Books, New York, N.Y.
15
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