The Senior Times Online

Shalom Jerusalem: looking back 40 years
Times and Places
Barbara Moser

Jerusalem

Old City Shop

Tower of David

I have many homes, but Jerusalem was my first as a young adult. I was 18 when I stepped off the El Al plane at the end of a long journey from Edmonton — and kissed the ground. That was August 1967.
I hadn’t been brought up to love Israel. My father Leo was an “internationalist” and didn’t believe that Israel should necessarily belong to the Jews. But I was also a member of a Zionist youth group, Young Judaea, and living in Israel, at least for a while, had always been my dream. Because my parents were atheists, I’d felt rootless in Edmonton and alienated from my fellow Jews.
At 18, I wanted to live as a Jew in this small land without having to go to synagogue. It was a different Israel from the Israel of today. It was an idealistic time. The Kibbutz was a strong force in Israeli society. The ultra-orthodox were the minority, and we were proud to be secular Jews in our own land. We were the majority. Our soldiers had fought off the Arab enemies. I was to learn quickly that life isn’t that simple.
About six months before, my boyfriend, Benny Landa, had immigrated to Israel and volunteered during the Six Day War. We rented a small apartment in Kiryat Menachem, a poor religious neighbourhood in West Jerusalem. In January we moved to Wadi Joz, renting an apartment in the “house” of Captain Younes Abdullah, then captain of the police force in East Jerusalem. There were bullet holes in the windows. We bought a gun for protection. I can’t remember whom we were afraid of.
We were two of the first foreigners to enter Damascus Gate in the Old City. Israelis were afraid to enter, except to pray at the Western Wall. We bought furniture for our apartment from the storekeepers who had no idea what to charge us. At the time, one could buy a chair or table in the Old City for a few dollars.
We made friends. The shopkeepers were polite and welcomed us into their colorful shops for Turkish coffee or mint tea. They were unhurried and wanted to learn from us as we did from them. I had never met such hospitable people. They were Armenians, Christians, and Muslims. Friday or Sunday their shops were closed for Sabbath. I was beginning my education in multi-culturalism.

The "fence"

Jaffa Gate

I learned some Arabic so I could converse with the grocery store owner and my neighbours. The Israeli army was blowing up houses of El Fatah during those months. We took in four students who had lost their temporary homes. In June, the army paraded their military might through Wadi Joz on the anniversary of the Six Day War. Our neighhours closed their shutters, took their children inside and waited for the humiliating display to end. We called our friends to come over and watch the parade, but we were ashamed.


Message on the "fence": I am not a terrorist	Cousin Judy

Nothing to do (Bethlehem side of checkpoint)	A Fence message

Captain Abdullah lived downstairs. His wife would invite me for tea. She was pregnant with twins. I heard, after I had left Israel, that she died in childbirth. It was common to give birth at home in those days.
I had family in Jerusalem at the time — Frank and Sheila Moser. They would invite us to dinner and we would babysit their four children. Sheila Moser died last month. She was a warm and loving grandmother and great-grandmother — witty, charming, full of humour and good sense. I will miss her.

View from Abu Tor

Protecting the people

We weep

This summer I returned to Jerusalem to mark my 40-year relationship with this city of golden stone. I have been back many times since, but this was a special homecoming. I visited my Uncle Frank and Aunty Ruth Joy in Abu Tor, an integrated neighbourhood about a half-hour walk to the Old City.
My uncle is not well and I hadn’t seen him in five years. We had become very close after my father died in 1970. We had driven to the Golan Hieghts in 1973 to deliver packages to the soldiers. Frank has always had a very open mind about the situation in the country he adopted in his fifties.
Irwin and I stayed at the Ariel hotel, two blocks from my aunt and uncle’s home. We walked to the Old City and sat near the Villa de la Rosa drinking mint tea. Later we ate in one of the homey cave-like restaurants in the Arab market, where few tourists venture. I have never been afraid to walk these streets although Israelis often warn me they are unsafe. I loved this Old City in another time of innocence and idealism.
But that time has changed. There is palpable anger on the faces and in the voices of the shopkeepers. They are no longer my friends — although we are not quite enemies either. These are not the men I knew. They are sons and grandsons. I try to buy something small from as many as I can. The bargaining isn’t fun anymore. They ask ridiculous prices and sneer when you make a reasonable offer. After all these years I’m surprised by how little patience I have for the bargaining game.
My cousin, Judy Shoten, 80, an activist and a world traveler, took us to the Bethlehem checkpoint to see what it’s like for Palestinians coming through to Jerusalem.
Judy is a member of a group of women who go to the checkpoint every morning to intervene whenever a mother or child or senior citizen is treated unfairly by an 18-year-old Israeli soldier with little life experience.
It’s Sunday, 7 am, and thankfully for everyone, it’s quiet.
We walk through to the other side, shake some hands, take lots of pictures and then go back to our comfortable lives, but not before buying Turkish coffee from a child with a Samovar.
We spend the rest of our time in Jerusalem with our families. We go out for coffee with cousins Shani and Moti to the German Colony. Here, there are too many religious immigrants speaking English. They seem to have taken over Jewish Jerusalem. The city doesn’t belong to me anymore. Whom does it belong to?
I don’t go downtown. I don’t feel a need to walk the Midrahov, the pedestrian mall full of shops and nooks. Jerusalem is a city of extremes and extremists. The moderate element seems less and less visible.
Its warring factions have not marred the beauty. History lives and breathes within the walls of the Old City. But my love has waned for these narrow lanes of pushcarts, noisy children and old women in embroidered dresses sitting on stones and selling mint and onions. My innocence is gone and with it the dream of a peaceful land where Jew and Arab co-exist in harmony. I don’t think I will see that day in my lifetime and for this, I am very sad.
Shalom: it means hello, goodbye, and peace. Shalom Jerusalem. Peace be with you all.