Those limestone slabs tell a story, one that now matters more than ever
As the days here are about to get tough, a visit to an ancient tunnel offers a reminder of why we're here at all.
On Sunday and Wednesday afternoons, I pick up one of our grandchildren from nursery school in Givatayim, outside of Tel Aviv. It’s about a five minute walk from his house to go get him. Yesterday, as I was walking up the path to the street where his school is, I was behind a dad and his young daughter, who must have been around 4 years old.
The dad was asking her what they’d done in her school that day. She told him that they’d spoken about bomb shelters. And then she recited who in her class had a safe room in their house, who had a shelter in their building, and who had to go hide in a stairwell. Kid by kid, she could name them and tell her dad what kind of shelter they did or didn’t have. They must have spent a lot of time talking about that.
“Do you know what we have?”, he asked her. “Abba,” she said, “of course. We have a safe room.” “And do you know when we have go to there?", he asked. “If we hear sirens,” she said.
She wasn’t (outwardly, at least) in the least bit upset, but still, the conversation broke my heart. That was not quite the chitchat I had with my kids when they were four years old and I picked them up from school in Los Angeles. They didn’t know what a safe room was. They didn’t know what an air raid siren was. And it never occurred to them that there were people out there who were going to try to kill them—because there weren’t.
Welcome to the place the Jews call home.
Nir Dvori, the military correspondent for Channel 12, put it succinctly on the news this morning. We have moved, he said, from לחימה to מלחמה, from “lechimah” to “milchamah,” from “fighting” to “war.”
The war in the north, it appears, has begun. Eleven months too late in the eyes of many, and with far too little power thus far according to some, Israel may be about to do what it needs to do to get the residents of the north back to their homes. Israel may be about to what it needs to do to survive.
It is not likely to be pretty. The home front command has already issued restrictions on Israeli citizens in many areas, and more broadly, we are being told to hunker down, take a deep breath and show some “composure”—ie, steeled nerves. I.e., there is to be no freaking out when the missiles start flying in our direction.
Right.
N12’s headline this morning was clear:
Israel had messages for the general public (about the Home Front’s request for “composure”), but also for Lebanese citizens and the international community. To the Lebanese, Israel is offering proof that it knows that many of their homes contain dangerous weapons, and Daniel Hagari, the IDF Spokesman, said clearly in English (while other army officers explained in Arabic) that we plan to destroy those homes.
… continues below ….
With war heating up in the north, it’s impossible to know what’s in store for us, and thus, for these posts. At present, though, here’s our plan:
MONDAY (today, 09/23): There are tunnels and there are tunnels …. I was recently privileged to see some new tunnels opened up in the City of David, which affords us a reminder of who we’re fighting, and what we’re fighting for.
TUESDAY (09/24): The Rosh Hashanah liturgy, immediately after the blowing of the Shofar, says of RH that “today is the birthday of the world.” That notion is reflected, I’m sure unintentionally, in an exhibit of new October-7-related art at Tel Aviv’s Imperial Hotel, which includes a piece called “Press here to restart the world.” We’ll look at the exhibit and what it says about Israelis’ souls today.
WEDNESDAY (09/25): Strangely, there are very few books in Hebrew about liberalism. At a time in which liberalism is on the defensive all of the West, that’s not good. We meed with Dr. Tomer Persico, a highly regarded Israeli intellectual and writer, and hear about his new book on liberalism, and why he thinks it matters to Israelis society.
THURSDAY (09/26): The ongoing memorial “sticker project”: We’ve mentioned the phenomenon of Israelis memorializing those they lost on October 7 and in the war that followed through stickers, with photos of their loved ones, a favorite quote of theirs, etc. Those projects are getting more exposure on social media, and we take a look at that.
All subject to what the war does and does not do to change things, here are our plans:
Week of September 29: We’ll post the first part of the week, before Rosh Hashanah; podcast for paid subscribers will be posted on Tuesday.
Week of October 6: Yom Kippur isn’t until the end of the week, so we will post most days, including a good deal of material devoted to the anniversary of October 7.
Week of October 13: We’ll post the first part of the week, before Sukkot. podcast for paid subscribers will be posted on Tuesday.
Week of October 20: A very light week because of Sukkot, but of course we will address the anniversary of Simchat Torah. Podcast for paid subscribers will be posted before Simchat Torah.
So yes, it seems that it’s begun. It’s not unlikely that that girl and her dad, and our grandkids and we, are going to find ourselves in safe rooms or shelters or stairwells at some point in the next few weeks. No one knows.
But if I find myself hunkered down in our safe room, I’m going to try to think about some limestone slabs I had occasion to walk on a couple of weeks ago.
Along with a small group, my wife and I were invited to a private tour of some of the recent excavations being carried out at the City of David, a first chance to visit things about which we’d read, but hadn’t yet seen in person.
One of the things that we saw was a tunnel, but a tunnel of a very different sort from the kinds we’ve been reading about in the news for a year.
Here’s what we know about this recently excavated tunnel, which had been entirely filled in for two thousand years.
Above the well-known water tunnels in the City of David lies what is known as the Pilgrimage Road. It was given the name because archeologists believe this is the path Jews took when they did aliyah l’regel, which literally means “going up by foot,” when they’d go to Jerusalem and bring sacrifices during the three pilgrimage festivals: Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. In other words, 2,000 years ago, many thousands of Jews walked on the very limestone slabs (some ten thousand tons of them) we were now walking on, as they made their way to the Temple.
This road, about 2000 feet long and some 15 meters under ground, connected the Temple Mount, where the Temple once stood, to the Pool of Siloam (at the bottom of east Jerusalem’s Silwan valley, see red arc at the bottom).
Walking along the tunnel now, you can look off to the side and down some shafts and see yet another, much smaller, tunnel. This is a water tunnel, which passes below the road we were on, and was the last hiding place used by the Jews during the days of the Second Temple period before the Roman destruction.
We know about the tunnel, and the Israelites’ decision to block it, from the Bible, in II Chronicles 32.
When Hezekiah saw that Sennacherib had come, intent on making war against Jerusalem, he consulted with his officers and warriors about stopping the flow of the springs outside the city, and they supported him. A large force was assembled to stop up all the springs and the wadi that flowed through the land, for otherwise, they thought, the king of Assyria would come and find water in abundance.
Thousands of years ago, King Hezekiah decided to block up a tunnel, and today we can see it. Millennia ago, many thousands of Jews walked along limestone slabs we on their way to the Temple, and today, we can walk on them, again.
And millennia ago, after Hezekiah blocked the stream so water would not reach Israel’s enemies, he had a message for his people.
Be strong and of good courage; do not be frightened or dismayed by the king of Assyria or by the horde that is with him, for we have more with us than he has with him.
I was reminded of that latter verse when this hit my screen earlier today:
“Be strong and of good courage; do not be frightened or dismayed by the king of Assyria” is simply how they said, back then, “brace for days ahead.”
It was to our north then, and they’re to our north, now. It was Assyria then, it’s Hezbollah now. It was our home then (centuries before Mohammad was born), and it’s our home now. It was not easy then, it’s quite likely that it is not going to be easy now.
But they had no doubt that they were home; and what they built, we can still see. We, too, have no doubt that we are home; what we’ve built, I pray, centuries from now people will still be able to see.
Whatever happens here in the weeks to come, whatever we end up having to do in the difficult days that may lie ahead, we will end up having to do because no people with any sense of who they are gives up on their home.
Defending this home is what we owe those Jews who lived here long ago—and it’s what we owe to those who will follow us.
It’s about time.
In addition to these tunnels, walking through the water channel carved out of the living rock, by the long ago Israelites is a wonderful way to connect to the history of the times.
If only there was a Jewish army and air force when my parents, grandparents, aunts,uncles, cousins, and a brother were taken to the concentration camps. The Jewish People despite our current troubles are now very strong and will be victorious. To my brothers and sisters in Israel, be strong and have confidence in the IDF and the God of Israel.