I'm way behind on updates but I'll catch up soon because I'm gonna have a ton of free time starting in a few days when Hamerkaz ends. It's crazy how fast it's all been going but enough about that, let's get to the good stuff:
We went to Hebron on Sunday. Hebron is a city on the West Bank that's been the site of a ton of Palestinian/Israeli conflict, so much so that Birthright trips aren't allowed to go there. However, in recent years Hebron has been pretty calm, as the Palestinians in the surrounding area outside of the IDF control have accepted the Israeli military presence. When we got there, we took a huge armored bus and actually drove through the Palestinian neighborhoods, and we were surprised to see a bunch of Jews wearing kippahs walking freely throughout the streets. We found out later that these were the Na-na-chmans. Not just any Jews.
The Na-na-chmans are crazy. They are basically Israeli's beatniks. The whole movement started about five years ago when Rabbi Nachman, a very holy and esteemed Rabbi, passed away. Rabbi Nachman's star pupil was very distressed at his passing and searched through all of Rabbi Nachman's books for some kernel of lost wisdom. He found a note, written by Rabbi Nachman just before he died, which read: "Be happy. Live a happy life. Be happy." This inspired this student so much that he wrote a song dedicated to Rabbi Nachman, and started driving around the streets of Israel blasting the song and dancing in the streets and on the roof of his van. In recent years the guy has gotten a HUGE following, so much so that you can't go anywhere anymore without seeing a Na-na-chman van blasting the Na-na-chman song, with crazy hippie Jews dancing. They are everywhere. We've seen them on Ben Yahuda street, in Tel Aviv, and even, yes, in the West Bank in Hebron. The Palestinians are actually scared of them because they are so crazy and always dancing. I'm not kidding. Their song has become the theme song of our trip, check it out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4TEh6rtzOE&feature=related
The only lyrics to the song are Rabbi Nachman's name (Nachman) broken up into Na-Na-Nachman, and "Meuman" which means "from Uman", the place where the Rabbi lived. The star student may not have been the best lyricist, but the song is extremely catchy. We danced with the Na-na-chman in the fortified area of Hebron and even got up on the van, I have a video of it which will be up soon, and it was a great time. But dancing with the Na-na-chman at Hebron got us into a really good mood, which made what we heard at Rachel's tomb in Hebron even more jarring. It is the coolest ghost story ever.
The picture at the top of this post is a picture of Rachel's tomb. All the forefathers of the Torah are said to be buried in Hebron deep underground in a cave, from Abraham and Rachel to Isaac and Jacob... and even Adam and Eve are said to be buried there (Adam's body was so big it supposedly had to be folded 8 times to fit in a normal grave!). Way back when, a king built a huge castle on top of the cave where all the forefathers were buried to make it even more holy, and the site is said to be the gateway to heaven where all souls must pass before ascending to the afterlife.
Sounds pretty holy, right? Actually, this castle was one of the freakiest places I've ever been at. You can walk around at the top of the castle and see symbolic coffins for Rachel, Abraham (the first Jew), and all the other forefathers of Judaism, and their bodies are supposedly buried far underground, directly below their respective coffins. If you're like me, you're wondering... what are the chances that their bodies are actually there? I mean, Adam's body had to be folded 8 times to fit, which would mean he must've been basically a giant. Why haven't we tried to dig down there and see what's there?
Well, it's complicated. For one, it's generally forbidden in Jewish law to disturb a grave site, even moreso for the forefathers of our religion. For another, the site is important to people other than Jews - the Palestinians also view the tombs as a holy site, and 10 days a year the IDF actually opens up the border control and lets Palestinians come into the castle to to the tombs. The Muslims constantly have someone watching the site to make sure the graves are not disturbed, and even if the state of Israel were to go against Jewish law (which would be a crazy thing in itself), disturbing the 5,000+ year old grave sits could start another intifada.
But people are inevitably curious, and there have been documented times in which people have tried to descend into the cave and find the tombs of the forefathers. This is where you should start playing creepy music. Back in the 1600s, a Turkish king visiting the tombs accidentally dropped his sword down into the cave. Upset at losing his sword, the king demanded that it be retrieved. Hundreds of soldiers were sent into the cave looking for the sword, but none came back. It is said that the spirits of the cave were too great and they simply passed into the afterlife, their bodies not even decomposing. Finally, after losing hundreds of men trying to find his sword, the Turkish king sent for a very holy Rabbi to get the sword. The Rabbi was so holy that he was able to walk around in the cave without passing into the afterlife, and he picked up the sword and brought it back to the Turkish king, averting a huge political crisis.
If you're like me, hearing these stories from several centuries ago is like hearing a folk tale. Who knows if it actually happened. But even in the 20th century, this cave has been at the center of controversy. If you go to the castle today like I did, you will see there is a tiny, tiny hole nearby the tombs in the castle, too small for anyone to fit through except for a small child, but the hole goes down to the cave. The hole is constantly on guard by Israeli soldiers, and when I tried to peer in, they wouldn't even let me do that. Well, if the hole's too small for anyone but a small child to fit through, and it's constantly on guard by Israeli police, why am I telling you about it?
In 1969, a little girl descended down that hole. She was sent down there on a rope, armed with only a flashlight and video camera, in a quest to discover exactly what was down there. This incredibly brave girl walked down an ancient staircase and came to a hallway, taking pictures along the way. There was an exhibit with the pictures at the castle, but I haven't been able to find them online - I'll ask my tour guide to send me a link to them and put them up later. Suffice to say, the pictures are really creepy. Anyway, the girl was stopped halfway down the hall by a huge rock; there had been a cave in and she couldn't go anymore. The girl returned safely to the surface, and that was that.
In 2005, a group of 12 crazy Orthodox Jews decided they wanted to find out what was down in the caves. Risking a huge political controversy (remember what I said about the Palestinians seeing the site as holy too), they somehow wormed their way down the hole into the cave in the dead of night. They went down the same creepy ancient staircase, walked down the same hallway, and were stopped by the same boulder before getting to any of the tombs. They turned around and came back.
That's where the story's at today. The spirits of the place are said to be so great that nobody can go down and return alive, unless they are as holy as that Rabbi who retrieved the Turkish king's sword. Perhaps the cave-in is serving as a warning to any would-be trespassers, maybe it's even saving their life. But it's believed that the tombs of Abraham, Rachel, all of their children, and even Adam and Eve are at the bottom of that castle in the ancient cave.
I need to find the pictures of the ancient staircase and the hallway and the boulder stopping the girl from going any further. You see them, and you really get the sense that this is something very very eerie.
I wish we could just send a SWAT team armed with some dynamite down there to figure things out, but it's impossible given the current political climate. Until then, we are left to wonder what's going on down there, but I'll tell you, walking around above the spot where THE Adam and Eve and THE Abraham were said to buried definitely gave me goosebumps.
Maybe the Na-na-chman have it right. There's a lot of mysterious, creepy stuff to get wrapped up in in that castle. We came out and they were still dancing on the van, in the dark of nightfall with Palestinian homes all around. In a world with biblical tombs, haunted caves, modern political climates so heated that even orthodox Rabbis in Hebron are walking around armed to the teeth, they were keeping it simple and dancing on the roof of their van, being happy.
A lot of cool stuff left to post, hopefully I'll get caught up soon. Headed off to Tel Aviv tonight.
-Daniel
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