Catch The Jew!

by Tenenbom, Tuvia

  Here’s an item called Shikshukit. What is it? I ask the waiter.

  “Minced meat with tahini and yogurt. It is good for your health, good for salvation, cures cancer, good for having male children, and it comes with roasted tomatoes.”

  I think Al-Jazeera should hire this person as their chief correspondent. I try the Shikshukit. It’s not as promising as I had hoped, but it beats flying camels, menstruating rabbis, and Iranian love.

  What a country. What characters!

  Jerusalem.

  Here it is where the Bible was formed, a city that the God of Israel called home, and here it is where Judaism took shape. Here it is where Jesus died and rose back to life, and where Christianity was born. From here Muhammad flew up to Allah’s House, directly above, where Allah instructed him that Muslims must pray five times a day. And here it is where secular filmmakers try to spin a story with German and Swiss funding but fail miserably.

  Vacillating between the holy and the sacred, I get a huge headache. I’m going home to sleep. I hope the cats won’t bite me.

  Gate Three

  Would you like to join thousands of dead Jews guarded by a German convert?

  WHEN I WAKE UP THE NEXT DAY I MAKE UP MY MIND NOT TO SEE ANY MORE movies. No tall tales and people on a screen for me, just the real world and live people. My only dilemma is this: Where do I find the liveliest of people? This being Jerusalem, not New York nor Hamburg, I go to a cemetery to find the liveliest of all people.

  Mount of Olives.

  Frankly, today is not the best day to go to the Mount of Olives. Today is the first Friday of Ramadan, which in Jerusalem translates into Day of Anger: disturbances, stone throwing, bullets flying, and a long list of other possible goodies. But I go anyway, reasoning that nobody will be shooting in a cemetery; it’s too late for that.

  It ain’t easy to get there.

  The Mount of Olives overlooks al-Aqsa, and access to it proves a bit difficult.

  For one full month people fast during the day and gorge themselves to death at night, and their highlight is going to pray in al-Aqsa. Anywhere I look I see police and border guard personnel. They are out on the streets in the hundreds, if not in the thousands. Many streets are blocked to traffic, about a million-plus Muslims are on the streets, up in the sky a zeppelin is flying and watching, helicopters too, and every Jewish cop around is tense. As I see it, I can’t ask for a more perfect timing: When the Muslims go to pray where Muhammad flew to heaven I go to a place where souls from heaven are soon to fly down to earth to reunite with their dead bodies in the graves.

  You might think I have lost my mind, but I haven’t.

  When the Messiah arrives he will first come here, to the Mount of Olives. He will walk on the mountain, where an untold number of dead are interned, and resurrect them all, one by one by one. He will resurrect all the dead, at least the Jewish ones, in whatever cemetery they are buried anywhere on the planet, but it is at the Mount of Olives that he is going to start.

  Did you not know?

  This is why a burial plot there costs more than a mansion in many other parts of the world. Let’s face it: if you know there is a place out there where you are guaranteed to be the first to get out of your grave, wouldn’t you want to be buried there? This is why the richest and most famous Jews are buried there. This is the most expensive Jewish cemetery of history, a five-star cemetery.

  Yet, while being buried in this holy place is reserved for the rich and famous, living in it is a different story. And, yes, there are people who live amongst the dead. Two families, to be precise.

  I show up in their abode.

  ***

  One of these families is that of Tziporah and Rechavia Piltz, whose backyard is populated with the dead. My backyard is populated by cats, theirs by the dead. This family, quite alive, likes to have the dead as their neighbors. The only problem they have is with the living. Across the street from the cemetery there is a neighborhood of living people who happen to be Muslims, and the Muslims strongly feel that only dead Jews should be allowed in this area. To keep the Piltzes alive, the Israeli government spends enormous sums of money. In addition to state-provided security, the Israeli government hires private security to make sure that the Piltz family doesn’t end up under a tombstone.

  The Piltzes have nine children, whom they named in accordance with their belief. These include: Bat Zion (Daughter of Zion), Sar Shalom (Minister of Peace), Tiferet (Glory), Geulah (Redemption).

  Outside of her window, Tziporah says, is “the southern eastern wall of the Temple Mount. You can pray here just as you pray at the Western Wall. This wall is from the Second Temple period.”

  You live in midst of a cemetery, graves touching your house. You are amongst the dead. Isn’t it scary?

  “I just heard someone saying something this week, which I really liked: ‘We should not be scared of the dead, we should be scared of the living.’”

  Very nice, but isn’t it scary to live here?

  She takes me to another window, this time her bedroom window.

  “Look! Can you see that grave over there? That’s Menachem Begin (former prime minister). And here’s Eliezer Ben Yeudah (originator of modern Hebrew). Shai Agnon (a Nobel laureate). Rabbi Zonenfeld ( Jerusalem’s chief rabbi).”

  Tziporah, why here?

  “I always wanted it, I wanted to live in east Jerusalem.”

  Why?

  “Jerusalem is the holiest city in the world, and I can’t accept the fact that the holiest city is divided, half inhabited by Jews and half by Arabs.”

  Why here?

  “Arieh King, who works for Irving Moskowitz [an American tycoon], told me about this place. Irving buys Arab properties and sells them to Jews, and Arieh told me that they were looking for people to move into this house.”

  Why here?

  “Before us, an Arab family lived here. They uprooted tombstones from Jewish graves in the cemetery and put them on the floor here. Whenever something broke in the house, they went out, uprooted some tombstones and put them here.”

  Are you happy living here?

  “Very much. It’s a privilege to live here. Any other place, if I move out of here, will be a step down.”

  Tziporah is going to the kitchen to cook. The Sabbath starts in a few hours and the food must be ready by then (Orthodox Jews don’t cook or bake on the Sabbath). She has eleven mouths to feed, and preparing the food is quite an assignment.

  Eight-year-old Tiferet, a beauty by any standard, is talking with me in the front yard, the only place Tziporah’s children are allowed to be by themselves outside of the home, for obvious security reasons. I ask Tiferet if she likes living among the dead Jews and the living Arabs. “I would like to live in another place,” she tells me, “with more place to roam.”

  What would you like to be when you grow up?

  “An actress.”

  The sound of applause fits this girl more than the sound of the muezzin that is now loudly being heard, probably even by the dead.

  I try to imagine Tiferet as an actress in The Gardener: a settler in an Iranian director’s film. Would the German journalists still applaud?

  Outside the cemetery thousands of Muslims, who have just finished praying in al-Aqsa, walk the streets back to their homes. To take a little break from the dead, I mingle with the fasting Arabs and stop twenty minutes later at Gat Shmanim (which in English got corrupted into “Gethsemane,” the place where Jesus prayed before he was crucified). I take a little sip of cold water and a man immediately screams at me: “Ramadan! Don’t drink!”

  What’s his problem?

  “Here you never know,” an Israeli policeman standing by tells me. “One person says something, or throws a little stone, and the whole area will get inflamed. That’s how things work here.”

  I keep on walking, walking and smoking. I might have left the cemetery but thousands of graves line the road I’m walking on, many of which have only partial tombstones on top of them, co
ntaining a line, a word, a letter. The rest were broken for the sake of desecration, or stolen for the sake of a better wall or floor. I look at the broken graves and ask myself: How much hate would you need inside your heart, or how poor must you be, to do this to the dead?

  I walk back to Tziporah’s. She suggests I meet her neighbors, her only living neighbors, and together we go to the Gans family.

  Gilad, father of six children, is happy to meet new souls.

  Drinking his German Jacobs coffee, the man talks unto me. While his mother tongue is German, which goes well with the Jacobs, he speaks English and Hebrew as well. Growing up in Hamburg, one of the richer cities in Germany, he felt something was missing in his life: people to trust. “Deep down,” he tells me, “the average German didn’t get over anti-Semitism. It is rooted very deeply.” Having a Jewish father and a non-Jewish mother, this feeling he had didn’t make his life in Germany easy, and one day he made his way to Israel.

  Gilad and his family love Israel and love this cemetery. As they see it, this cemetery is much nicer than Hamburg. I don’t agree, but you can’t argue taste. They offer me a cake, made of only natural ingredients, they assure me, and I take a slice. Then another slice. And another. And another. I don’t know why, but eating cakes in a cemetery is really special.

  ***

  Outside the cemetery, only a few minutes’ walk away, is the Palestinian neighborhood of Ras al-Amud. And right there, in the heart of a Muslim community, Irving Moskowitz has bought land from the Arabs and a Jewish foundation has arranged for the construction of housing complexes for Jews: Maale Zeitim and Maalot David.

  It is in Maale Zeitim that Arieh King lives. I like his name. In English it would be “Lion King.” Have you seen Lion King: The Musical? I saw it in, of all places, Hamburg.

  Arieh King deals with Jewish tycoons who can’t buy what they want on their own. Namely, Arab-owned properties. Irving Moskowitz is one of his clients and he has a number of others.

  Despite his young age, Arieh King is quite known in this land, especially in certain circles, and there are many people who wish him the worst.

  I am sitting in his living room, and we chat.

  Arieh, what would you like the world to know about you?

  “The least possible.”

  Brilliant answer! But I keep plugging: What would you like the world to know about what you’re doing?

  Arieh gets serious: “I do everything I can do for Jerusalem, because the future of Jerusalem will affect Jewish survival.”

  Why is that?

  “From the time the Jews were expelled from Jerusalem we are not what we used to be.”

  What do you mean?

  “We don’t have the capacity to worship God as we once had.”

  You mean the slaughtering of animals in the Temple? Is that what you want?

  Arieh doesn’t like the word “slaughtering” and he corrects me: “‘Offerings’ to God, as is written in the Torah. We also don’t have the Sanhedrin.” (The Sanhedrin was the Jews’ highest religious court in the Temple’s time).

  Israel has a Supreme Court; isn’t it good enough for you?

  “This is our problem! The Supreme Court is based on British law.”

  In the old days of the Sanhedrin, a woman betraying her husband would be stoned. Is that what you want?

  “The Sanhedrin will decide, and whatever it decides I will accept.”

  In the old days, the justice system of the Sanhedrin worked in unison with the Temple system. Are you planning for the Temple to be rebuilt?

  “I’m doing my best.”

  What are you doing?

  “I try to convince people, as many as I can, that the Temple is very important. It’s the only way to make peace. When our enemies see the good that will come from the Temple, they will end up liking it. The Third Temple will give them the opportunity to worship God, since the Third Temple will be a place of worship for all nations as it says in Isaiah 56:7: ‘For my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.’ And before that God says, ‘I’ll bring them to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer and their burned offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar.’”

  This man, the most secretive real estate broker in the world, a man whose life is at risk at any given moment, can’t stop talking.

  “Do you know any other religion which does something like this? You don’t have to convert to my religion, you can keep yours, and still your prayers will be accepted by my God! Something like this, the message of the Temple, is that happiness and wealth will be shared by all people.”

  I have enough of his biblical scholarship; I want the broker in him to come out. How do you buy Arab properties?

  “Almost every day between one to three proposals from Arabs, in Jerusalem and other places, come to my desk.”

  What’s the story with buying properties from Arabs, why is it so complex?

  “Twenty years ago Israeli-Arab religious leaders issued a fatwa: ‘An Arab found selling land to Jews will be killed.’”

  How many deaths so far?

  “In the last seventeen years nobody has been killed.”

  How come?

  “We use certain procedures to hide the identity of the real seller, or we give the seller a good cover story: that he sold to another Arab and not to a Jew. Sometimes we bribe Palestinian Authority officials, at all levels of government, to make no issue out of it. Other times we have to wait, three or five years, to give the seller enough time to make up stories of what happened with the land.”

  So far, how many properties have you been engaged in?

  “In Jerusalem: dozens. Rest of Israel: hundreds.”

  When did you start doing this?

  “In 1997. Ras al-Amud was my first.”

  Arieh has a cozy home, a huge apartment in a residential building that is guarded around the clock by men toting machine guns and by army jeeps patrolling the area. An impressively big balcony overlooks the Temple Mount, which the Muslims call Haram al-Sharif, and the al-Aqsa Mosque, among other Jerusalem treasures. The man lives comfortably. God takes care of His brokers and provides for them well.

  How much does your apartment cost?

  “Million and a half shekels. In 2003 it was 800,000.”

  What’s your official title?

  “Founder and director of Israel Land Fund.”

  Do you also initiate some of the deals?

  “Yes! Yes!”

  Deals, his kind of deals, means having enemies. His most bitter of enemies, he tells me, is none other than the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu (“Bibi”).

  “The Israeli government today is implementing an anti-Semitic policy in the capital of the Jewish nation. Jews are not allowed to build in Jerusalem for the past four-and-a-half years. Arabs, Muslim and Christian, are allowed. This is a policy of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

  Other than this, is everything going well?

  Not really.

  “I can enter the Vatican while carrying my Jewish holy books, but in my own holy place I’m not allowed to do this. Jews have only one holy place in the world, the Temple Mount, and when you pass through Israeli security, they check if you carry Jewish holy books. If you do, they will take them away from you.”

  Who is the bigger of your enemies, Bibi or Abu Mazen [Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas]?

  “What kind of question is this? Of course Bibi!”

  In fact, Arieh tells me, he gets along with his Arab neighbors better than he gets along with Bibi.

  “The Arabs here like me, they love me. They call me ‘Assad’ [lion].”

  Arieh has stories, and I can never tell what’s real and what’s not. And before I leave him, he says he wants to share another one with me.

  Please!

  “A German, son of a Righteous among the Nations [a non-Jew who helped shelter Jews from the Nazis], came here a few years ago and decided to help us. He founded a church, legally (on paper) b
ut not in reality, through which he buys properties from Arabs. The Arabs like the Germans and when a German church approaches them they are comfortable in selling them real estate.”

  Do the properties belong to the church, or –

  “We pay the lawyers of the church.”

  What do you mean?

  “The church lawyers are actually our lawyers.”

  Israeli filmmakers have their Germans and Arieh has his.

  Peace activists spend a lifetime attempting to talk with Arabs and Arieh lives with them.

  I leave Arieh and move on, walking about the Arab residents of Ras al-Amud.

  Across the mountain from where I am now, two young Palestinians have stabbed an Orthodox Jew on his way home from the Western Wall. From my location I can’t see it, but I read about it on my iPad. Haaretz reports that the Jew, with medium to severe injuries, was taken to a hospital. The article also mentions another stabbing that took place last year right where I am: Ras al-Amud.

  Elsewhere, I read this report by the New York Times: “The European Union issued guidelines this week that for the first time ban the financing of and cooperation with Israeli institutions in territory seized during the 1967 War.” This was almost fifty years ago. What has happened now that is making the EU get busy with this story? I don’t know. I keep reading the article: “Hanan Ashrawi, a member of the Palestine Liberation Organization’s (PLO) executive committee, welcomed the decision.”

  Hanan Ashrawi. I want to see this lady. She will be a fine complement to Arieh King.

  It is time to leave Jerusalem, seat of the Israeli government, and enter Ramallah, seat of the Palestinian government.

  Gate Four

  Facts: No Jewish state ever existed here. Jews must pay Arabs for five years of music training. Palestine was founded fourteen thousand years ago.

  HANAN IS THE “HUMAN FACE” OF THE PLO AND HAS BEEN THE “HUMAN FACE” of the Palestinians for many a year. Her business card reads: Hanan Ashrawi, PhD, PLO Executive Committee Member, Department of Culture and Information.